Canvas and low or no vision students blind

[feinstein_lisa]

How can I best use Canvas to reach students with low or no vision? My face to face classes have students with low or no vision. I wish for my low/no vision population to not miss out on online learning through this LMS if I teach using Canvas.

[Stef_retired]

Hi,  @feinstein_lisa  Welcome to the Canvas Community! I've shared your post with the Accessibility‌ group and have flipped the format over to a discussion to encourage open-ended participation with no single response likely to emerge as singularly correct. In addition to browsing the resources and conversations in that group, I hope you'll find good solutions for your learners in https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-2061-accessibility-within-canvas 

[jlugo1]

Hi Lisa,

Aside from the great tools that Stefanie shared, I'd add that canvas has a feature to create and embed audio files. We recently created a handout on writing for screen readers to use internally. 

[ashleya2]

Hi Lisa!

The handout provided by  @jlugo1 ‌ is really handy. To those tips, I would add:

• Avoid using tables where possible. Tables are necessary for, say, tabular data, but sometimes I see tables where a bulleted list would do just as well. Many users of screen readers have expressed that tables are tricky to navigate. We can make tables better using the Canvas accessibility tool, but where we can sidestep tables altogether, that's even better.
• Use built-in styles where possible: Use the built-in header styles rather than bolding text, and use built-in list styles rather than typing dots or dashes.
• Think carefully about your text alternatives. I've seen a lot of alt texts in my time that say things like "graph of diagnoses over time", but alt texts like that don't convey much. Ideally, we would write text alternatives that convey the same information as the graph, e.g. "diagnoses grew rapidly in the first five years, but the trend slowed after that".

[DavidOlderman]

Are there any updates or improvements for blind students since the posts 3 years ago? Thanks