Obligations of the University of Auckland Disability Action Plan

In order to meet the university's legal obligations of accessibility via the Disability Action Plan, the Canvas Baseline Project has set minimal requirements for digital content on Canvas. It has also provided the UDOIT tool within Canvas that you can use to run an accessibility check on all your content. UDOIT has more functionality than the inbuilt Canvas accessibility checker.

What students need this?

Accessibility issues arise mainly for visually impaired students and neurodiverse students. Both groups may use screenreaders. Vision impaired students who do not use screenreaders have needs in relation to contrast, colour etc. Neurodiverse students also have needs in relation to structure etc.

Main problems for accessibility

The main common problems for accessibility are:

Headings not using heading styles - a screenreader cannot identify them as headings
Poor contrast between text and background colours
Using colour as the only means of emphasis - make sure you also use bold, underlining, italics or similar
Images that don’t have descriptive alternative (alt) text.
Vague descriptions on hyperlinks.
A lack of table headings.

Using the UDOIT tool

There is a plug-in to Canvas now that will run a check of your site for accessibility isuues. The tool is called UDOIT, and Teachwell has videos and UDOIOT help materials which will explain how the check is done, the kinds of accessibility issues it will likely find and how to fix them.

Help is available 1:1 every Wednesday

If you would like some 1:1 support, then make a time with our co-located learning design person (Xiaowei Ding) xiaowei.ding@auckland.ac.nz from Learning and Teaching Design Team | Ranga Auaha Ako who is in the faculty (on level 5 of building 810) on Wednesdays in 2024 from 10 am to 2 pm.

Why does it matter?

Steve Leichtweis from Learning and Teaching Design Team | Ranga Auaha Ako presented on Accessibility in Canvas and here is a link to his presentation Links to an external site. which explains why it is important.