Pope Tech and Canvas Accessibility

What Canvas elements can faculty test with Pope Tech?

Most areas where faculty use the Canvas Rich Content Editor can be tested with Pope Tech:

• Canvas pages
• Syllabus
• Quiz descriptions
• Discussion Topics
• Assignments
• Announcements

To test a Canvas item for accessibility concerns, activate Pope Tech by selecting the button at left of the Cancel and Save buttons while editing any of the Canvas items above. Pope Tech works even when the item is not yet published.

What does Pope Tech check for?

• If headers are present or skipped 
• Flags suspicious alt text for images (contains “image of”, “image”, etc.)
• Color contrast between text and highlighted colored-background
  (Note: doesn’t check color contrast within images)
• If font size is readable
• Flags non-descriptive links such as “click here”, “link”, “more”, “read more” 
• Flags redundant links 
• Flags tables that lack at least one header and caption.
• Flags YouTube, Canvas embedded video and Canvas embedded audio to bring awareness media will need to be manually reviewed for captions
• Flags potential inaccessible files that need to be manually reviewed

Using Pope Tech is simple and intuitive.

Step 1: Open Pope Tech 

To access the PopeTech Course Dashboard tool, click Pope Tech Accessibility in any Canvas course menu.

To test an individual Canvas item for accessibility concerns, activate Pope Tech by selecting the icon next to the Cancel and Save buttons on a Canvas item while using the Rich Content Editor.

Step 2: Use Pope Tech to Locate and Fix Accessibility Issues 

When Pope Tech is activated, the Pope Tech menu appears on the right-hand side of the screen. At the top of the interface,  the number of errors and alerts will need to be addressed. 

• Errors are accessibility errors and should be looked at for remediation.
• Alerts are suspicious areas. Alerts may or may not be an accessibility error. The user should review these and fix if necessary.
• Rescan can be used once errors and alerts are fixed. This will allow the user to scan the page a second time and verify that all fixes were applied correctly.

Note: Files, videos, and audio will always be listed as alerts, as these require manual review with human eyes!   

In the example below, we have 11 errors and 4 alerts.

In the Pope Tech interface, results are organized by the following categories:

• Images and Links
• Text and Contrast
• Headings
• Tables and Lists
• Documents and Videos 

Each of the categories can be expanded to show the errors or alerts. To view the content raising an error or alert:

1. Select the arrow displayed next to any category name. Once you expand a category, Pope Tech will display fields grouping together issues within that category. 
2. Click any field to view detailed results and how to fix them.
3. Click a particular result to highlight the indicated content within the Canvas editor, enabling you to fix that content.

This quick (42 second) video demonstrates the process described above:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0izZNAG-BMu0026feature=youtu.beu0026ab_channel=YoussefFrancis

Fixing Alternative Text

Alternative Text errors are listed in the Images and Links category of the Pope Tech tool. This video demonstrates how to fix such errors:

https://youtu.be/sHs7gQLaihs

Fixing Color Contrast

Color Contrast errors are listed in the Text and Contrast category of the Pope Tech tool. Users can fix color contrast errors by one of two methods:

• Adjust the color in the Canvas rich text editor.
• Adjust the contrast by using the sliders in the Pope Tech interface until the interface displays a “Pass” message.

This video demonstrates how to fix such errors:

https://youtu.be/2aDRvb-VGBA

Fixing Table Captions and Headers

Table errors are listed in the Tables and Lists area of Pope Tech. Using Pope Tech, it is very simple to add a table caption and designate whether the first row or the first column must be the header. This video demonstrates how to fix such errors:

https://youtu.be/AFPkAQ4knDw

Click any link below for details about common accessibility issues, why it matters, and what to do to fix/avoid the issue.

• Very Low Contrast
• Suspicious alternative text
• Suspicious link text
• Alternative text
• Linked image missing alternative text
• Very small text
• Underlined text
• Heading level 1
• Heading level 2
• Ordered list
• Unordered list
• Layout table