Course Accessibility

by | Jul 21, 2025 | Accessibility, Canvas, Panopto, Tech Tools

Overview

Making course content accessible for all students is clearly the right thing to do. We know this goes beyond making accommodations for students who need them. Everyone benefits when content is formatted using accessibility standards and when videos are captioned. Part of acting in good faith as University employees involves adhering to University policies related to access and accommodations, but this will involve attention and dedication to the process.

Accessibility Requirements

As of April 2026, all Western courses are required to follow a higher baseline of accessibility as the ADA requires standards to the AA level. These new standards may seem overwhelming, but there are a variety of tools and support available at Western to help in the process of making digital content more accessible.

Tools

Watch the videos on the Pope Tech Dashboard and Accessibility Playlist for an in-depth explanation of the new accessibility requirements, how to meet them, and how to use and set up the tools listed below.

Pope Tech Dashboard

With Pope Tech Dashboard added to the left navigation bar in Canvas, faculty have easy access to this evaluation tool. While Western has utilized the Pope Tech page scan tool for some time, the Dashboard allows faculty to scan all content pages in each course in one pass. It presents detailed results of alerts and errors and then guides you in correcting those accessibility issues. These issues are sorted into Errors (the most important elements to fix) and Alerts (potential problems to check). While Pope Tech can locate and help you fix most issues, it is still important to understand the basics to know what you’re fixing.

Accessibility Basics

LLATCH

For page content, LLATCH is our acronym that stands for links, lists, alt text, tables, colors, and headings. These are the key items to properly format in documents and any editable content area in Canvas, our learning management system.

  • Links should:
    • Have meaningful titles.
    • Go where they’re supposed to.
  • Lists should:
    • Use formatted bullets.
  • Alt Text should:
    • Effectively and briefly describe images for the visually impaired.
    • Not be used for decorative images.
    • Be written by you, or generated:
      • Canvas can generate automatically, but should be checked
      • Western’s Descriptive Alt Text Generator generates alt text for an uploaded image.
  • Tables should:
    • Use correct formatting.
    • Be captioned.
    • Use table headers.
    • Avoid empty or merged cells.
    • Avoid split cells.
    • Avoid screenshots.
  • Color should:
    • Be high contrast.
      • You can search for “Contrast Checker” to find help, or use Pope Tech.
  • Headings should:
    • Have correct hierarchy in order from H1, H2, H3, etc. without skipping levels.

CATCH

For page content, LLATCH is our acronym that stands for links, lists, alt text, tables, colors, and headings. These are the key items to properly format in documents and any editable content area in Canvas, our learning management system.

  • Captions
    • In Panopto editor mode, you can navigate to “Captions” to edit or add captions.
  • Audio descriptions
    • In Panopto editor mode, you can go to “Audio Description” and add for the visually impaired a written description of graphics and slides in your recorded presentation.
  • Transcripts
    • If you’re using another’s captionless youtube video, you can instead create a transcript.
      • Google NoteBookLM can generate a transcript if you add a reference, paste the youtube link, and ask the AI to generate the transcript. This may need to be edited or adjusted.
      • Similarly, YouTubeToTranscript.com can generate a transcript for free.
      • To create a transcript with time codes included, try NoteGPT or TacTiq.io
  • Clarity/Readability
    • Rather than using audio descriptions, you can read out the information on the slide during your presentation.
    • When presenting, make the browser for a screenshare as big as possible.
  • Help with Playback
    • You can adjust Zoom settings for accessibility.
    • Go into Panopto user settings, and check “Zoom” under “Meeting Import Settings” to let your Zoom recordings upload to Panopto automatically. This allows you to record and easily make available online courses and lectures for playback.

PDF Accessibility

Adobe Acrobat

You may have access to Acrobat Pro through your department; if so, it can check accessibility for your PDFs. While this tool doesn’t jump you to each problem like Pope Tech does, it does state the issues in your document.

Sensus Access

Sensus Access can be accessed through Western’s Disability Access Center (DAC), and will check your document on upload, scan it, and make it more accessible and/or convert it to another format. However, the document will likely still need checked, as this tool doesn’t have the same skills as a human mind.