It is important to apply the heading and list style using the rich content editor in <Replace -  Course LMS>to properly format them rather than simply changing the font size, making text bold, or adding hyphens for a list. Applying these formatting styles will ensure that assistive technology will be able to easily access and read the content on the Page by adding the appropriate code (e.g., html) behind the scenes.

Please note that you can apply heading and list styles in Microsoft Word, PPT and other applications as well as in <Replace -  Course LMS>. 

When creating links use meaningful text for the hyperlink to provide meaningful context for students. For example, rather than using "click here" for the link text, an example of a better option is the following link: directions to create hyperlinks in <Replace -  Course LMS> Links to an external site.. 

Using meaningful link text is helpful to all students by improving the search-ability when students want to revisit a link. Did you know that assistive technology can be used to quickly read all links on a page? If all of the links have "click here" as the text, this would require the student to have the assistive technology read the text before the link to find a specific link slowing down their access to a particular section. 

You may like to underline important information on handouts for students. Students are not apt to mistake the underlined content on a piece of paper as a text link. However, any underlined text presented digitally may be interpreted by students as a link that is broken. Avoid student questions by avoiding underlining text that is not a link on an online course page.

When you add images to your course always add what is termed alt or alternative text.  Alt text is a brief description of what the image is and the purpose of the image, which should be connected to why it is included in the course. One example of alt text is "dog wearing an Elizabethan collar" if the collar is significant to the content. The alt text tag you add to the image will allow students using assistive technology to read this information and help them understand the purpose of the image.

The Canvas Rich Content editor makes it easy to manage alt text Links to an external site. for images in your course. You can add alt text when you first embed an image or add alt text to an image already on a page.  If an image is purely decorative and is not necessary to understand the content on the page, you can select the box next to decorative image in the image options in Canvas. Tagging an image as decorative lets assistive technology know to skip the image.

Faculty often like to have certain text stand out to students and often use the color red to do so. However, for those who are colorblind, red-green color blindness is actually the most common form. To these individuals, the color red often appears in some form of green, which may be difficult for them to discern on a course page. It is therefore not recommended to use color unless you use the Canvas Accessibility Checker to help determine what shade of red is accessible. Bolding black text is an effective and accessible way to emphasize text rather than changing the color of the text. 

Color blindness affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women in the world. People with color blindness can have difficulty differentiating between shades of color.

Activity

If you link to videos in your course that are readily available on the Internet, please be sure to check for captions. To check for captions, select the CC button. If it says, "English: Auto Generated" the captions are only about 60% to 70% accurate and no punctuation is present. This does not meet accessibility standards. See other videos that are appropriately captioned.

If you create your own videos be sure to create a script prior to creating the video. The script can be used to provide a transcript and/or appropriate captions. Check out Creating Accessible Multimedia for more information.

When considering adding third-party video links (e.g., YouTube) to your course, search for and use clips that are already captioned. If you locate a video link you really want to use, consider writing to the source to see if a captioned version is available.