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There still appear to be some minor accessibility issues with the content in the Growing with Canvas training course (I did not conduct an exhaustive review).  For example, 2.10 has the graphic labeled as a heading level 3.  Also, the videos in 3.5.2 about the Arc Video Tool appear to be missing accurate closed captions. ... View more

I recently learned about this new training resource from our CSM.  I was wondering why there is so little about accessibility in the Growing with Canvas content?  I did find  a mention of the Accessibility Checker in 3.2. While I was surprised to find very little on accessibility in the content, since the content can be edited, if anyone has a version they have adapted to include more accessibility strategies or examples, would you be willing to share it? Or after looking through the content, do you have any suggestions for incorporating accessibility strategies and awareness within the existing content?  For example, in the section Understanding the Course Design, it could include:  Accessibility  This course incorporates strategies to make the content more accessible to users of assistive technology. Canvas has several tools to make content accessible for faculty and staff, including the Accessibility Checker, descriptive links, closed captions, alternative text descriptions, logical heading structure, table headers for columns and rows, and more. You will have opportunities to try some of these tools. You will also find additional accessibility resources throughout the course. I would like to have Canvas release an updated version to Commons that highlights the various ways accessibility can be incorporated into Canvas content.  Or perhaps someone in this group would like to collaborate? I shared some of this feedback to our CSM.  He asked me to open a Canvas support case.  I would like to encourage anyone who is interested in having Canvas incorporate more accessibility into basic Canvas training like this to also open support cases and make requests for accessibility to be incorporated at the same time the rest of the content is available. -Nicolas ... View more

Thank you for the work to ensure accessibility of Canvas in mobile environments.  However, my understanding is that a mobile application needs to conform to the revised Section 508 standards.  "All public facing electronic content, including applications and interactive content, must meet the Revised 508 Standards." from Accessibility Resources for Developers and Authors. ... View more

We had a similar question come up yesterday.  It may be that students are participating using mobile devices.  "Currently, analytics does not measure activity on mobile devices." ... View more

Part of the issue may be that the grade categories are not labeled as such by Canvas.  The table that displays the grades for an individual student uses color (bold is a use of color) to identify that information.  As users become familiar with the structure of the table, and that the items in the bottom rows are the weighted grade categories, it might make more sense. Perhaps Canvas could add the "Assignment Group" to the row labels to make it clearer to users of screen reading software?  ... View more

We have received mixed reviews about how independently blind students can use Canvas.  We have some blind students who have shared that Canvas is not accessible with screen reading software.  Excluding the comments about instructor created content not being accessible, students have found the Canvas user interface difficult to navigate.  Part of the comments are about the labeling of buttons as links and vice versa.  When blind students get direction from a sighted user, it is confusing when an object like View Course Stream looks like a button but is a link.  We have also received several negative comments about the Canvas guides from blind students.  However, we also have some blind students who are experienced technology users and are able to use Canvas independently.  Blind instructors have more accessibility challenges using Canvas.  The Gradebook is not very accessible, for example.  Depending on the browser, the Rich Content Editor can be difficult to use with screen reading software. Some of the accessibility issues have been recently improved. For example, the "Settings" link is no longer labeled "Course settings".  ... View more

Thank you for the comment. However, perhaps it would be clearer to explain that while the Gradebook is not accessible, the limited information available in the Individual View of the Gradebook is accessible. ... View more

It is very unfortunate that the term "accessible" is used in the Beta release notes that you mentioned.  Accessible does not always mean "accessibility". The New Gradebook currently offers the following enhancements: Additional views to sort and filter assignments Custom color status options Accessible and improved grade entry The New Gradebook appears to have the same accessibility issues as the current Gradebook.  I just tested it and there still does not appear to be an accessible option within the Gradebook for an instructor using screen reading software to review the grade entries in a column for an assignment.    ... View more

I am a user of screen reading software and a Canvas Admin for our institution. I have never heard of any Canvas specific keystrokes for Quizzes. There are Canvas specific keystrokes for navigating through some of the screens in Canvas. However, if the screen reading software already has the keystroke assigned to a function, usually the user has to know to switch off that feature of the screen reading software. I just tested the instructions provided by Canvas for looking up screen specific shortcuts as a student user taking a quiz: “If a Canvas screen has keyboard shortcuts on it, you can view the list of shortcuts by pressing the comma key or , which will trigger a popup window with the shortcuts in it. Press the esc key to close the popup window.” There were no shortcuts within the quiz. ... View more

This could create an accessibility challenge for users of assistive technology.  Enter is a keystroke used commonly to switch from reading mode to edit/text entry mode on Web pages. ... View more

I believe that your concerns about accessibility are well founded.  If the cursor is placed in the answer edit field, a user of screen reading software would need to move out of the edit field in order to read the question.  Making the label for the edit field the entire text of the question could also create an issue if it is long or incomplete. ... View more