Checking for Accessibility

Overview

Bruin Learn has in-built and additional tools that help you check and address accessibility concerns in your site. On this page, you will learn about the Canvas Accessibility Checker and the Ally tool in Bruin Learn, as well as how to find accessibility checkers in other commonly used software.

Accessibility checkers will give you a sense of which materials in your course need attention and improvement. The accessibility checkers also provide guidance on how to remediate issues. Some items – like the accuracy of a description of an image or captions – will need to be checked manually to ensure that they are accurate. Use checkers as one tool to help you learn about making improvements to your materials. 

How to Use Accessibility Checkers

Canvas Accessibility Checker

The Rich Content Editor (which is used to edit Pages, Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes, and the Syllabus) includes an accessibility tool that detects common accessibility errors within the editor.

This tool only verifies content created within the Rich Content Editor. You may use other accessibility tools, such as Ally and Cidilabs DesignPLUS, to verify additional content in Bruin Learn.

The Accessibility Checker verifies the following accessibility rules:

• Adjacent links: Adjacent links with the same URL should be a single link. This rule verifies link errors where the link text may include spaces and break the link into multiple links.
• Heading paragraphs: Headings should not contain more than 120 characters.
• Image alt text: Images should include an alt attribute describing the image content.
• Image alt filename: Image filenames should not be used as the alt attribute describing the image content. Currently, files uploaded directly to Canvas create a redirect that does not properly verify image filenames.
• Image alt length: Alt attribute text is recommended to contain fewer than 120 characters.
• Large text contrast: Text larger than 18pt (or bold 14pt) should display a minimum contrast ratio of 3:1.
• Lists: Lists should be formatted as lists.
• Sequential headings: Heading levels should not be skipped (e.g. H2 to H4). However, the tool does not check if the first header starts with H2 or whether the headings are sequential with the rest of the content in the page. Tables do not begin with H1, which is designated for the page title.
• Small text contrast: Text smaller than 18pt (or bold 14pt) should display a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1.
• Table captions: Tables should include a caption describing the contents of the table.
• Table header scope: Table headers should specify scope and the appropriate structure.
• Table header: Tables should include at least one header.

You can learn more about how to use the Accessibility Checker in this Canvas guide: How do I use the Accessibility Checker in the Rich Content Editor?

Links to an external site.

Check Accessibility with the Ally Tool in Bruin Learn

The Ally tool works in Bruin Learn to make content more accessible, by generating alternate formats of class material (electronic Braille, audio, HTML). It also indicates the accessibility level of documents uploaded to Bruin Learn, and provides feedback on how to improve accessibility of this content. 

Learn more about the Ally tool from UCLA’s Digital Technology Services website page on Ally.

Check Accessibility in Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Office

You can find accessibility checkers in Adobe Acrobat (under “All Tools” and then “View More”) and Microsoft Office (under “Tools”).

Learn more about Adobe Acrobat’s Accessibility tools.

Learn more about Microsoft’s Accessibility tools.