How can I use the course Accessibility Report to improve access to my course materials?
You will learn how you can use the course accessibility report to make improvements to your course materials (like documents, images, charts, PowerPoints, etc.), in order to make your materials more easily used by all of your students.
1. Enter your course.
2. Click on Accessibility Report.
3. The Ally Accessibility Report page will display.
There are four main areas in the report to view. Decide which one you would like to use:
1. Click on the View button.
2. Click on the number for the desired file.
3. Click on All issues.
4. All issues are displayed.
This PDF has two issues: it is untagged which can be fixed by adding headings and the language can be set using Adobe Acrobat.
These are the issues which may be the easiest to fix.
1. Click on Start.
2. Click on the number.
You can choose any of the items below which have a reported issue.
3. Click on All issues.
Tip: See the "Add image description" textbox below in the screenshot, you could add an appropriate ALT text there; however, when you copy your course, that ALT text will NOT copy and you will then need to add it again.
4. All issues are displayed.
So, as you can see this image that we are looking at has two issues that need to be resolved: the image is missing a description and the image has contrast issues. Now, the contrast issue must be at least a 7:1 contrast between the foreground and the background. For example, looking at the main text of the image, the yellow/brownish text has a 7:1 ratio and the white text has an 11:1 ratio. Therefore, the text in the image that you are supposed to read has the right ratio. However, the screenshot of a PDF file (on the right side of the image) may not. Unfortunately, the report does not show us where the contrast is insufficient (it may show us on a PowerPoint, Word or other type of document, though).
These items should have the greatest impact on the file's score report.
1. Click on the Start button.
2. Click on the number.
3. The Ally report displays.
The Ally report shows this is a scanned PDF. Meaning that it was scanned on a copy machine or printer from a book or newspaper. The problem is that a student using a screen reader will see that the entire document is a single image with no useful information.
In order to fix this issue, use Ally to convert it to a text-based PDF. Then, replace the original with the new text-based PDF.
As an alternative, you can view the entire list of all issues by viewing the Remaining issues section down the page.
1. Click on the item to view the file.
2. Click on the item.
3. The Ally report displays.
This PDF was scanned on a copy machine or printer from a book, and so is useless to a student using a screen reader. Read this guide to learn how to use OCR to convert it from an image-based PDF to a text-based PDF. After the PDF has been converted, heading and language (English) should be added in Adobe Acrobat.
Article Summary
You have now learned how you can use the course Accessibility Report by Ally to see how you can make improvements to your documents (PowerPoint, PDF, Word, etc.) in your course in Canvas.