Canvas Accessibility Tool

Ally Benefits Instructors and Students

When you make your content more accessible it becomes easier for everyone to use. Remember that making your content more usable is a process and that lots of help and training is available to help you. Some of the fixes are quick and easy for and others may require some help, even small changes can make a big difference.

There are three parts to the tool available to help both you and your students:

Ally success

Course Accessibility Report

You can add the Accessibility Report to your course menu to see how accessible all of the content in your course is and see a list of easy issues to fix!

View Your Course Accessibility Report External Link Icon

Accessibility Feedback on Course Content

You have probably seen red, orange or green symbols in your course. You can click on those icons to understand how accessible that piece of content is and how you can improve it.

Needs help!

A little better.

Almost there.

Perfect!

Student Alternative Formats

Besides helping you make your content more accessible Ally automatically provides your content to students in formats that can help them access your content easier, for example a student can download an audio version of a PDF file from your course to listen to on their way to school.

Learn more about the student experience here.

Reach more about each of these resources below. You can also contact the Center for Innovative Design and Instruction (CIDI) for help anytime.

Additional Resources for Using Ally

Your students have access to the alternative formats they do not see the feedback icons on individual files.
The first time an alternative format is created it may take a few minutes, but after that it should download right away.
It may be helpful to clean up old content from your course, you can use TidyUP! to identify and delete old or unused content.
Check out this Ally Quick Start for Instructors Guide for additional information including:
- Learn more about the Ally Accessibility Scores
- Understand the Instructor Feedback Panel
- Ideas on how to Improve Content Accessibility
Supporting Diverse 21st Century Learners through Universal Design for Learning Workshop from Dr. John Scott

Some of the feedback that Ally provides is quick and easy to fix while other content may require more resources. Much of the feedback on how to fix your files can be found directly in Ally, but additional help on improving content is available and you can always reach out to CIDI for help as well.