Making Your Course Accessible

Panorama tool offers easy, accurate remediation within Canvas

Reviewing your course materials in Canvas for accessibility ensures all learners can participate without obstacles. As the importance of digital accessibility is demonstrated, the tools available to meet those requirements are more prevalent, accurate, and easier to use. 

Panorama is one such tool and is currently available on Canvas. It can scan, evaluate, and fix content directly within the learning management system. Using automatic scripts and machine learning, Panorama reviews course materials and matches them to accessibility standards for color contrast, text, graphics, tables, and other issues that can pose barriers to learning for students with disabilities. 

Like many major accessibility checkers, Panorama is built around Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG (commonly referred to as WICK-ag), which are considered the universal standard for digital accessibility. The University of Michigan’s Digital Accessibility Strategic Initiative aims to meet WCAG and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations by April 2026. 

Getting Started

Panorama automatically audits all of the items in the course and checks their compliance with the prescribed accessibility standards. 

Once Panorama scans every Canvas course for accessibility issues, and there are several ways to access those results and start making corrections.

Accessibility scores are also found next to each item in your course materials. Those scores appear in three colors: 

• Red – Warning icon. This indicates significant accessibility issues with this item.
• Yellow – Caution icon. There are some issues that may be difficult for learners to navigate.
• Green – Proceed icon. This means the item meets or mostly meets accessibility criteria, which is the ultimate goal for mandated requirements.

You can see the accessibility report for that item when you click on the accompanying icon. Instructors and designers can also open a full course report by selecting Panorama from the left-side navigation menu in your course. It should be noted that these scores are not accessible by students; they are solely to inform you as instructors or designers.

Full course reports give you a snapshot of a course’s overall accessibility and a complete list of items with their accompanying score. From this list, you can prioritize the remediation as issues are filtered by severity or content type, so you can rank the findings accordingly. 

If you are creating pages in Canvas, the Panorama accessibility tool icon, which looks like a temperature gauge, appears underneath the text box. As content is added, any accessibility issues appear as a numeric count on the icon. Clicking it opens a report where you can review a list of all accessibility issues Panorama has discovered.

Making Corrections

Panorama allows course designers and instructors to create, scan, and fix digital content directly in the Canvas platform.

The most common issues flagged include:

• Alt-text – Alternative text is a short description of an image and should be accurate, short, and contextual.
• Tables – Tables should be used to help explain data, not create a visual layout.
• Headings – Short text phrases that introduce sections in a document or page, and should follow a hierarchy of levels. 
• Color contrast – Difference between lightness and darkness of two colors that improves visibility of text. 

Once you access the list of issues by clicking on the relevant icon and viewing that item’s accessibility report, instructors can make repairs using a few different options.

Fix Issue

The easiest way to update a not accessible item is to click the Fix Issue button listed on the accessibility report, if that button is available. 

Clicking the Fix Issue button launches a pop-up box that lays out what the issue is, how you can fix it, and recommends a change. Clicking Add Change will automatically make the correction.

Manual Remediation

The remediation process depends on different factors like the type of item or what accessibility problems are prevalent, so not all issues will have automated repair options. 

In those cases, instructors will have to manually correct the accessibility problem. Solutions can be found by clicking Learn More next to the listed item, which will provide step-by-step instructions on remediation. 

If the issues are with a source file, you can download the file, make corrections as advised, then upload it again using the update document feature in the accessibility report. Panorama rescans the item, then registers the item’s new accessibility score. 

Don’t Delay

Since reviewing and updating every page, document, and activity in your courses can take time, accessibility advocates advise planning time to work with Panorama and improve content over multiple months to meet your deadline.

While ideally it’s recommended to build accessible content at the beginning, remediation will still need to occur. Working through your materials ahead of time means you won’t be scrambling to make everything accessible on the first day when, for example, a student using a screen reader can’t access a PDF. Trying to remediate content on demand is not only an added stress for instructors, but also forces the student to wait and risk falling behind in the class. 

So, avoid the scramble and the burnout and start using Panorama to check your course materials. Those working with faculty emphasize that progress, not perfection, is the current goal. With such a large volume of materials to review, accessibility advocates hope to see broad improvement rather than 100% accessibility ratings for a handful of courses.

As new guidelines are released, Panorama will update to meet those standards. This means that the sooner instructors implement its usage, the better they’ll be prepared to meet the needs of incoming students.

Practical Tips

• Share your experiences and issues with the ITS Service Center. Any problems are sent to the vendor for corrections and updates.
• Register for a training session or take the Canvas Accessibility with Panorama course from the Canvas Accessibility Service.

Resources

University of Michigan

• Panorama for Instructors
• Students with Disabilities & Digital Accessibility
• Find out who your unit’s Digital Accessibility Liaison is at the U-M Digital Liaisons Network

Additional Resources

For those who don’t have access to Canvas and Panorama, there are external resources that can help check your course’s accessibility.

• WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools (wave.webaim.org) are available as a browser extension, subscription-based or stand-alone products that identify issues in web content.
• Axe accessibility testing tools (deque.com/axe) include a free browser extension as well as more in-depth products.

Americans with Disabilities Act Title II Web and Mobile Accessibility