Should you be making your Canvas assignments WCAG compatible?
YES!! In 2024, the federal government changed the language of the Americans with Disabilities Act to include colleges’ websites. This will include Canvas and all the content provided to students through it. While Ranger College, and community colleges in general, will be among the last to have these new laws enforced, it is easy to see that change is coming. The sooner we start, the easier the transition will be. Fortunately, your librarian, Helen, has some experience with this. When I was teaching at Dallas College, they had just lost an ADA compliance lawsuit and were going through all these mandated changes. With our jobs at stake, faculty learned a lot about the process to make the changes. Once the compliance requirements start here, there will be deadlines. If we start now, with all new creations, the process will be much easier. For a quick overview, watch the library video on accessibility.
Some tasks will be easier than others. On this page, find tips on the easiest ways to make your content accessible. If you do these things starting now, when the regulations arrive you will be almost entirely compatible.
1. Probably the most important thing you can do for accessibility is create your content in Microsoft products. Word, PowerPoint, and Excel all have built-in accessibility tools that make it easy to meet standards. In fact, it is so easy, it will not take extra time. Going back later or trying all the workarounds to get the job done in Google will, however, cost you many extra hours.
2. PDFs are very complex to create as accessible documents. The recommendation is to create them in Microsoft, then export to PDF. Even then, you will have to do a lot of adjustments that require a lot of complex techniques.
3. Ranger College does not provide Adobe products to assist with PDF creation or editing. The Kami program provided by Ranger College is not a good substitute and you will not be able to create PDFs in it. If you convert a Word document to PDF in Kami, all formatting is lost. You cannot access the tag tree in the free Adobe Reader version.
4. Google products, especially Google Docs, are widely used for collaborative writing and sharing information across campus. Bear in mind that Google does not have a built-in accessibility checker or tools. You can still create accessible, inclusive documents by using some complex workarounds. A best practice, even for documents you will be collaborating on, is to do most of the initial work in a Microsoft product, then drop it into the shared drive for others. Google will not strip away any accessibility features already present.
5. Anytime you insert an image into any program, Google or Microsoft, immediately right-click on it and add the alt text. Alt text should be specific. For example, Jon and Helen in the library, instead of two people inside. Do not start with 'image of...' because the screen reader will do that for you.