Getting Started: Accessibility Core Areas 

About 

This site is focused on making Canvas content accessible (not uploaded files). We have included a section on uploaded file accessibility as an introduction. That section is under development. 

Our team believes that starting with Canvas content is a great way to develop foundational knowledge of accessibility issues that will later inform your work on other mediums such as digital documents. Improving Canvas site accessibility is also is a tremendous and immediate contribution to our students, and to meeting the iSchool's and University of Washington's goals. 

Accessibility issues tend to cluster around a handful of recurring core areas, and research from groups and usability studies show the core areas discussed on this are site are the most common barriers to accessibility. As these core areas are the same for any type of digital content, your knowledge of them will apply equally to digital documents as well as Canvas' web-based content. The pages on this site will demonstrate each of these core areas and introduce you to the tools that help identify and fix them in the Canvas environment.  

Getting Started

• Review the pages on this site and become familiar with these core areas. 

• Each core issue description includes a brief overview of the tools available to identify and fix issues. Be experimental and try out different ones as you develop your skills and personal workflow.

• Work on incremental improvements to your site! The below part of this page describes the tools and approaches. If you're very new, just start by clicking one of the "selected content tools" like the Canvas Accessibility Checker.

• Whichever the tools or approaches you choose, the process of identifying and fixing Canvas content serves as rich training and helps you become knowledgeable about these core issues--and in the future, your ability to create content from the start that won't create barriers or need any fixing!