With an increased sense of urgency to provide accessible learning experiences for all students, the accessibility conversation is shifting from a focus on all the reasons that it’s important to all the ways that we can make the important work of accessibility more achievable.
At Cidi Labs, a provider of clever, affordable tools integrated with Canvas LMS, we see accessibility as a shared responsibility–not just the job of instructional designers or disability services, but a collaborative effort across educators, administrators, support staff, and even software and service providers. By embracing an “it takes a village” philosophy, we can foster a sustainable culture and set of practices around accessibility.
When each part of the ‘village’ contributes, you can truly move the needle on course accessibility
Canvas LMS provides the opportunity and environment to consistently deliver accessible online learning experiences, but how do you best equip and enable all parts of the ‘village’ to make it happen? Cidi Labs has a suite of add-on tools, built exclusively for Canvas, that can empower and magnify each contributor’s accessibility efforts that together make a real impact.
Administrators can equip the accessibility cause
Like the town planners, administrators develop the structure and policies that drive accessibility efforts at an institution, but those policies need to translate into practice for meaningful progress to occur. By investing in and implementing the right tools, administrators can help make the work achievable for other members of the ‘village’–including course designers and educators–without creating extra burden. How can administrators best turn accessibility goals into measurable action?
Reduce the workload
When the volume of content to remediate is creating a sense of overwhelm for course designers and educators, finding ways to make the work more manageable is key to getting them engaged in the process. Promoting a course cleanup initiative is a great way to reduce the volume of course content needing to be remediated.
Enter TidyUP, from Cidi Labs, a tool that allows users to quickly identify and remove all of the duplicate and obsolete content through a convenient Canvas integration. That’s right–it’s easy to clear course clutter from within Canvas, as TidyUP reveals unused content and files that can be deleted at the touch of a button. What’s more: TidyUP’s features help rapidly surface duplicate content and files, organize files into folders, and ensure clear and consistent naming conventions to make resources easier to find and access. Clutter removal results in a reduced remediation workload, and as a bonus, tidying up your Canvas courses also leads to more accurate data on the state of accessibility at the institution.
Empower everyone to impact accessibility
Ensuring the remaining content is accessible can feel like it requires special expertise and significant training resources. But employing an accessibility tool that teaches users about accessibility while streamlining the remediation work inside each Canvas course means anyone can make a big impact!
Here, UDOIT Advantage acts as a course-level accessibility assistant that guides designers and educators through an intuitive and efficient accessibility remediation process. UDOIT features a variety of ways to make the work approachable–from focusing on the highest impact issues to remediating issues specific to a learner’s accommodation needs–and pairs actionable guidance with a simple interface to make fixing issues possible for everyone, even without accessibility expertise. Users can even convert inaccessible course files to Canvas pages, shifting the accessibility process to Canvas’ Rich Content Editor (RCE).
Unify and synchronize the efforts
As with any broad initiative, it’s critical to set goals and then measure progress on an ongoing basis–both to identify the wins as well as the areas that need more focus to accelerate progress. But accessing the right accessibility data to guide that action can be difficult.
UDOIT Advantage’s Admin features provide the specific data and insights that those leading the charge need in order to assess the state of accessibility across their Canvas courses, and how that is changing over time. With an institution-level Accessibility Scorecard, it’s easy to monitor overall progress with a Canvas account-level accessibility score as well as to drill down to see how each type of issue is contributing to that score. With this data at your fingertips, it’s easy to see, for example, whether more training may be needed around the accessibility of tables, or whether more focus needs to be directed to the accessibility of videos inside courses. Plus, built-in reports with simple-to-read graphs make it easy to communicate the details of the progress and trends that can keep everyone on track and motivated to progress toward the goals.
Scale the best practices
Of course, meeting accessibility goals is not a one-time endeavor; instead, creating best practices that are scalable and sustainable is what really makes a difference. Imagine being able to keep everyone informed of and accountable for accessibility expectations with institution-created accessibility checklists that are visible to all course designers inside Canvas. Here, ReadyGO–a “mission control” solution for Canvas–enables administrators and accessibility leaders to create and monitor aggregate results for accessibility checklists that they assign to Canvas courses across the institution. To further support your accessibility initiatives, ReadyGO has the tools to run an accessibility scan on large batches of courses, see the details of those scans alongside other key Canvas data, and communicate with course designers as needed – all from a central location inside Canvas.
With tools like ReadyGO and UDOIT Advantage, administrators and accessibility leaders can keep each member of the ‘village’ in sync, informed, and equipped to develop accessible courses.
Instructional Designers can model and mentor
Building accessible Canvas courses is significantly easier with a structure that was designed with accessibility in mind. Here, instructional designers can act as the ‘village’ architects, creating blueprints in the form of accessible course templates that jumpstart and lighten the load for educators when creating accessible courses. Not only do accessibly-designed templates save educators and course developers time, they can also serve as a model for best practices and provide a concrete example to reference during training.
Lead by accessible example
With advanced course design tools like DesignPLUS, it’s easy to create and distribute accessible, engaging, and customizable templates–right from the Canvas Rich Content Editor (RCE). Through a Sidebar conveniently integrated with Canvas’ editor, users have access to dozens of design tools, from columns to flipcards, that make styling high-quality, accessible content a breeze.
Provide support right where it’s needed
While accessibly-designed templates provide a great start, educators may need additional training and support to maintain accessibility when adding multimedia content or customizing a template to fit their learners’ needs. To further boost successful implementation, DesignPLUS Action Items allow designers to add instructions–visible only to editors– right inside the templated Canvas content. By embedding accessibility considerations and resources into templates, designers can provide effective guidance and just-in-time support that allows educators to put accessibility learning into practice.
Educators can leverage their learning
Faculty are like the builders and caretakers in the ‘village,’ ensuring that accessibility is embedded in the courses they create and maintain. But between curating and delivering course content, grading student work, providing feedback, and more–adding accessibility work to an already overflowing plate can leave educators wondering whether the effort is worth it. Here, understanding that accessibility is good for all learners (and why) can be a much-needed motivator. And when applying that understanding is easy and efficient–course accessibility becomes an integrated part of the Canvas course design process.
Build accessibility know-how as you go
Here again, UDOIT Advantage streamlines the work of learning about accessibility and remediating content–without leaving a course. UDOIT emphasizes the “why” behind accessibility issues and boosts accessibility know-how through explanations, actionable guidance, and helpful tips for accessible course design. Educators learn while remediating issues, not only making course accessibility possible, but potentially also gratifying.
Improve accessibility the efficient way
Educators know well the power of introducing a concept then providing students an opportunity to apply their understanding. Just like the learning experiences educators develop, UDOIT Advantage encourages users to focus on an accessibility concept and apply that learning to all instances of that issue across the course. Once you learn about writing alternative text for images and apply a few fixes, you’re able to move through other instances with greater speed. In this way, tackling course accessibility remediation through issue grouping increases remediation efficiency–ultimately saving educators time. What’s more: all that application and repetition reinforces the learning, empowering educators to build accessible practices into their course design and delivery work moving forward.
Building Sustainable Accessibility Practices–Together
Accessibility isn’t a solo effort, nor is it someone else’s job—it’s a shared mission. With a unified approach, every member of the ‘village’ can contribute to real, lasting change. Equipping each of the contributors with the right set of tools makes it easier to:
- Lighten the remediation load by clearing unused, inaccessible content and files with TidyUP.
- Provide reusable course design elements that ensure accessibility is built into course development from the start with DesignPLUS.
- Empower educators to continuously learn why accessibility matters while easily making significant course improvements with UDOIT.
- Scale best practices by consistently communicating expectations inside Canvas with ReadyGO.
- Measure progress and gain valuable insights to focus efforts with UDOIT Admin reporting.
Ready to equip your ‘village’ with the tools for success? Join our webinar, “Many Hands, Lighter Work: Scaling Accessibility in Canvas”, to hear success stories from three institutions that are using tools from Cidi Labs to create a unified, scalable, and impactful approach to accessibility in Canvas.
