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Welcome to our August 2022 issue of the Accessibility Minute Newsletter! This newsletter is produced by the CU Boulder Digital Accessibility Office and covers one accessibility skill or topic per month. As always, thank you for taking a minute (or two!) to read.

Creating an Accessible Canvas Course

As we start the Fall 2022 semester, consider how to make sure your Canvas course is accessible to your students.

Since Canvas is a robust platform, this newsletter will just cover some of the basics of Canvas accessibility, and you can find more in-depth accessibility guidelines on our Creating an Accessible Canvas Course page.

Prepare Your Course

Design and Structure Your Course for Ease of Use

Cognitive load refers to the amount of information that working memory can hold at one time. When creating a Canvas course, reducing cognitive load for your students can help them find and access learning material more easily. This is especially important when teaching students with certain disabilities. Some ways you can reduce cognitive load for your students include:

  • Provide consistent and clean visual design throughout your course by utilizing Cidi Labs design templates.
  • Turn off unnecessary navigation items in your course-level navigation.
  • Organize your Modules chronologically by week or course topic. We recommend including actual dates in your module names (i.e. “Week 1: 8/22-8/26).
  • Use consistent naming conventions, and label content clearly and concisely throughout your course. For example, consider adding “Assignment:” and “Quiz:” as prefixes to your content names, or using a numbering scheme to help students keep track of assignments.
  • When creating content in the Canvas Rich Content Editor (RCE), run the Canvas accessibility checker and review our guidance on creating accessible content in the RCE. You can also utilize Cidi Labs accessibility features to improve the accessibility of tables and review headings, images, and links in the RCE.
  • Use the course calendar to help students keep track of upcoming events and due dates. Aim to have a complete record of all important upcoming dates, so that students only need to look in one place to find all dates and events.

Communicate Expectations Clearly and In Various Formats

Help all your students succeed by clearly communicating what you expect from them in and outside of the classroom.

Make sure that you provide all of this important information in multiple formats (written, spoken, video, etc.) and allow for participation in various ways, since students have diverse needs and preferences associated with receiving information and communicating with others.

  • Identify how you plan to communicate with students and how you’d like them to communicate with you, particularly related to office hours and emails.
  • Offering virtual office hours is a good way to allow more students to attend. Depending on a student’s disability, visiting office hours in person can be difficult.
  • Walk your students through the structure of your Canvas course during the first week of class. Consider doing this in person during class and also recording a video for students to watch on their own.
  • If you are assessing participation, consider allowing students to demonstrate participation in various ways (online discussions, in-person discussions, peer-to-peer support, etc).

Share Files and Documents in Advance

Students who need additional time reading, comprehending, and completing assignments may work ahead to stay on track with the pace of the course. Additionally, some students will need to coordinate with Disability Services to have content converted into alternate formats. For this reason, share all course content with your students as early as possible, preferably at the beginning of the semester, and avoid adding new content to your course at the last minute.

Caption and Transcribe Video and Audio Content

Closed captions and transcripts allow d/Deaf and hard of hearing individuals to watch videos and help many people to focus on and remember the information more easily.

In Canvas, you can use Canvas Studio to generate and edit automated captions. There are also automated captioning tools available outside of Canvas. Make sure you take the time to review and edit the captions for accuracy once they have been created.

August Challenge

  • Identify 1-3 practices from the suggestions above that you want to try to implement in your courses this month. Once you've gotten comfortable with those, you can come back to select additional practices to try out.
  • Partner with a colleague who is interested in accessibility to discuss how you might implement these recommendations in your Canvas courses.
  • Not an instructor? Forward this email to an instructor you work with!

DAO News

We have upcoming DAO office hours happening on:

  • August 23, 2022 from 1:00pm - 2:00pm
  • September 12, 2022 from 1:00pm - 2:00pm
  • September 27, 2022 from 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Headshot of Allyson Bartley
Welcome to Ally Bartley, our new Accessibility Training Coordinator. Ally joins us from California State University, Chico, where she spent 5 years working as an Accessible Content Specialist as well as supporting and advising students, staff, and faculty with disabilities. We are very excited to have her join our team!

We are also in the process of expanding our team further by hiring new accessibility and usability testers!

Did you know that we conducted 60 in-depth user experience accessibility tests last year? Learn more about DAO Highlights from FY22.

Your Thoughts

We want to hear from you about any questions or issues you run into while trying out this accessibility practice this month! Please send us your thoughts on this month’s topic.

If you have questions, comments, or would like support with accessibility, please contact us at DigitalAccessibility@Colorado.edu.

If you enjoyed this month's topic, please feel free to share this newsletter with your colleagues!