WHY THE CANVAS RICH CONTENT EDITOR MATTERS FOR ACCESSIBILITY

This course contains a lot of advice and best practices for making your Canvas course accessible. Many of these practices come down to one thing: Use the features built into the Rich Content Editor (RCE) to structure your content.

Why? Accessible content on the web has a strong foundation in HTML code. The built-in features of the Canvas RCE properly structure your content's code so that it is accessible.

What you see on the "front end" of your content isn't what really matters for accessibility. It's the HTML "back end" that matters, and the Canvas Rich Content Editor's built-in tools will create accessible code.

For example, here are two headings that look identical on the front end:

Example Heading Using RCE Heading 2 Feature

Example Heading Using Paragraph with Size Changed

While those headings appear identical visually, their underlying code is different.

<h2>Example Heading Using RCE Heading 2 Feature</h2>
<p><span style="font-size: 28.8px">Example Heading Using Paragraph with Size Changed</span></p>

The <h2> correctly indicates to assistive technologies like screen readers that this is a level 2 heading. The <p> of the second, however, indicates a paragraph. There is no way for assistive devices to tell that this is a heading. This can cause confusion for those using these devices, as they might not realize they have moved into a new section or topic.

This type of code is often referred to as semantic, meaning that the code itself is attached to the meaning of the piece of content. Semantics are absolutely essential to digital accessibility. You don't need to be a tech wizard or know HTML code to create semantic content, though. Just use the Canvas Rich Content Editor's built-in tools (and follow the advice in this course!) and your content will use accessible code.

COPYING AND PASTING CONTENT FROM OUTSIDE CANVAS

The primary way people go awry with the Rich Content Editor is in copying and pasting content from outside Canvas. Usually, when you copy and paste content from elsewhere, such as a Word document, Canvas will treat it all as "paragraph" content, including headers, bullet lists, and more. This is the root cause of a lot of Canvas accessibility problems.

Instead of pasting as normal, you should instead use Paste Without Formatting. Thankfully, this is made easy by a quick keyboard shortcut.

PC: Ctrl + Shift + V
Mac : Cmd + Option + Shift + V

Once you paste without formatting, you can then use the Rich Content Editor to format the content. Select your headings and change them to headings, select your lists and change them to lists, etc.

If you have already copied and pasted in content, you can use the Clear Formatting tool in the Rich Content Editor (next to the Table tool) in order to clear out any formatting from your content.

CANVAS PAGE, WORD DOCUMENT, OR PDF?

Wherever possible, try to make your content in a page in Canvas, since by "default" Canvas pages are generally more accessible than Word documents or PDFs. If it's important that your content have a specific format, such as an annotated bibliography, then a Word document or PDF is better suited to that task. Elsewhere in this course, you can learn how to make these documents accessible.

If your content is already in a document, feel free to leave it in a document that you have made accessible. If you want, you can also move that content into a Canvas page and link to the document. This gives students the flexibility to either view the content in Canvas or download the document (often they will do both). If you do this, just make sure your content is identical in both, since students shouldn't have a different experience if they download vs. view in Canvas.

If you use Google Chrome, you can also set up a Canvas page, then Print it (Ctrl+P or Cmd+P) and Save as PDF. This will automatically create a tagged PDF, meaning that the PDF version retains the accessible code structure and will interact well with assistive technologies. This way, students can either view the content in Canvas or download it for their convenience, and you can ensure all your content is accessible in any format.

Quick Recap

Use the Canvas Rich Content Editor to structure your content, being particularly careful if you copy and paste from outside Canvas. This ensures the underlying code is properly structured for assistive technologies.

Further Reading

What is the Rich Content Editor? (Canvas Basics Guide)
Rich Content Editor Video Tutorial