API call for accessibility in a course

[todowd1]

Has anyone developed an API call that would provide some accessibility information about a course?  Such as captioned videos, accessible documents (Word, PDF), images (alt text), etc?

[christopher_phi]

Great question  @tjodowd ‌, I don't know of any accessibility API, but there are some tools who are using the Canvas API to do some of the functionality you are discussing. See Comparison of Canvas Accessibility LTI Tools for a few of those tools as well as the open source Canvas accessibility checker. 

All of those tools check for missing alt text (at a page, course or institution level) and two of those services (Ally and UDOIT) use the YouTube API to check YouTube videos for captions. 

In addition, there are other accessibility tools that can check content for accessibility such as axe (free) or WAVE (paid) that could in theory be integrated with Canvas to do this kind of work. Besides the above mentioned tools, I am aware of at least a couple of other upcoming tools that will provide similar accessibility functionality within Canvas. 

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @todowd1  

Canvas partner ALLY has created an accessibility checking and remediation tool for Canvas that does some of what you are asking for, and includes an admin panel that can provide account overall and course-specific findings. Unfortunately, this tool does not yet evaluate for captioned videos, but that is coming.

This is a pay service, but worth every penny!

Kelley

[dtod]

Since it's part of the Rich Content Editor, it would be great if we could use the same function via the API.

[dtod]

Looks like it's part of the actual editor rather than an external call

https://www.tiny.cloud/docs/plugins/a11ychecker/