tbeaton88
Community Novice

When I first started using Canvas I surprised about the lack of accessibility features available to users, so i decided to create my own and to share them with the wonderful community.

Below I have attached some JS and some CSS too which I highly recommend that you implement into your version of the LMS. (I will happily write up a guide on how to implement it as well as how it works if anyone would like).

The accessibility tools below allow learners to change the text size of each custom page that you create. (Nothing native to Canvas, simply any pages, quizzes, assignments, etc that you have created).

It also allows the user to change the background colour of pages too (I may be implementing a text colour option soon too).

Clicking 'Accessibility' on the global navigation toggles the menu that you can see in the bottom left:

306588_pastedImage_4.png

I hope this helps your instance of Canvas become more accessible and that you all find it useful Smiley Happy 

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tdelillo
Community Champion

A long, long time ago, in an office somewhere in my building (I'm guessing), a conversation probably nothing like this took place:

vintage secretary

"Okay, it's time to implement the new LMS, Canvas."

"Hooray! Anything special we need to do?"

"Well, we should probably decide if our Canvas instance should be one big bucket of stuff, or if we need sub-accounts for our 5 separately accredited colleges."

"I'd think sub-accounts by college would be smart!"

"Definitely. Oh... wait... We're integrating Banner with Canvas, right?"

"Of course!"

"Well, we have Banner set up to essentially treat our district as a single entity."

"And?"

"Well, there's no easy way to tell Canvas which sub-account the course should be in."

"Oh. One giant bucket, it is!"

Fast forward a year or two. The transition from Blackboard to Canvas is complete. Faculty adoption is growing rapidly. Online course offerings are expanding. Requests for adding account-level LTIs keep coming. Data and outcomes and analytics are hot topics. People begin to question with more regularity why we don't have sub-accounts to keep these things useful, streamlined, and logical. The answer continues to be "because we don't have Banner set up in a way that makes sub-accounts possible". Fast forward a few more years. People are asking at least weekly why we can't do a thing that can't be done because we don't have college sub-accounts. The requests finally prompt action. The action hits numerous brick walls. There is a script written that seems to solve the problem by moving the courses from the root account to the correct sub-account after the fact. Testing is going well. There is dancing and singing. Then someone performs a section sync in Test Banner, and the course in Test Canvas gets thrown out of its sub-account and back to the root account. Canvas insists that "account" should be sticky. Testing continues to prove that Banner is a jerk and refuses to listen to what Canvas says. Other avenues are considered and defeated. Tears are shed. And here we are, seven long years into our Canvas adventure, without any hierarchy whatsoever. And we've exhausted every reasonable idea, short of demolishing the entire Banner > Middleware > Canvas structure and starting from the ground up.

cartoon guy at computer

So what's the point of my blog post / stream of consciousness rant / discussion prompt / cautionary tale / plea for help? Well, first, my words of advice:

  1. If you are new to Canvas, consider your account/sub-account structure, very very very carefully.
  2. Canvas is a wonderful company full of wonderful people, but they do not have expertise in your SIS of choice, so make sure your SIS of choice is ready and willing to work with you on establishing (and maintaining, and adjusting as needed) a good integration with Canvas.

And my points of discussion:

  1. I know people have created a sub-account structure "after the fact". What makes our situation challenging is the way we set up Banner. We are unable to change how Banner is configured.
  2. We have had various vendors swear they can help us using APIs. This may be true, but they neither understand our Banner setup nor possess actual, practical, deep Canvas knowledge.
  3. We are still using Luminis Message Broker as our middleware. My understanding is that LMB is an outdated tool. But the alternatives (Ethos, ILP) are described to me as not mature enough, not robust enough, and/or possibly not compatible with our current portal (or version of).
  4. We haven't completely ruled out turning off real-time events and doing automated batches. BUT we have a bazillion (actual number) Banner users across our 5 colleges who would need to be re-educated on new processes and that is... daunting.

The plea:

  1. Is there anyone out there that knows Banner really well AND knows Canvas really well AND is not already working full time for a Banner/Canvas institution? We have tried the "hire a consultant" route, and a creature with such expertise (in the land of hire-able consultants) appears to be rarer than a 3-legged unicorn.
  2. Has anyone had a similar situation and come up with a miracle workaround that they'd be willing to share? I will pay you in cookies and a coffee mug that says "You're Awesome!" [side note: don't search Amazon for "You're awesome" coffee mugs. Someone apparently decided not to stop there and made all the mugs NSFW]
  3. Please consider this an open discussion, and throw any ideas into the comments, no matter how wild and insane they might sound. Tag any groups or spaces I missed, or any smart folks who might know something, anything. It's possible there will be points for creativity, but it depends on whether I'm continuing to lose ground in the Community. I once made it to 17th. Those were the days.

Thank you in advance, Canvas friends!

unicorn

Also tagging Canvas DevelopersInstructional DesignersHigher EducationHigher Education SIS

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jasond
Community Contributor

Canvas Community y comunidad española,

There are many one-sheet guides out there, but just in case if you were looking for a single-sheet (dual sided) instructional PDF on Canvas...

Attached are the same guides in English and in Spanish. 

Example in English

Example of One-Sheet Guides for Canvas

Ejemplo en español

Ejemplo Canvas Guía del Maestro

Profesores de español, agradecería su ayuda si mi traducción y la de Google están desactivadas. 🙂

The PDFs are editable. The branding and specified Canvas URL are the only edits you will need to make in Adobe Acrobat DC Pro or another PDF editing tool.

Hope they help!

-Jason

Community team ( @scottdennis ‌ et al.) - I wasn't sure where else to tag or post this Doc page. 

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