Making Your Course Accessible With Panorama and TidyUp

Overview & Process

New ADA Title 2 rules require digital content to be accessible. These rules are meant to ensure digital information and experiences can be accessed, participated in, understood, and made use of by all. Content should not only be available, but equitably accessible, without barriers or burdens placed on any individuals or communities. Implementing standards and practices that center on the needs of people with disabilities achieves this. Digital accessibility is especially important in courses. Prioritizing it helps all students be successful in their learning goals. 
 
This document will guide you through using TidyUp to remove unused files from your course and using Panorama to identify and remediate accessibility issues in the rest.
 

Create, Remove, Fix

1. Create accessible content when you’re making new materials. Start new documents from templates when possible and use checklists and built-in accessibility checking tools to ensure compliance.
   1. Various guides and checklists are available on the U-M digital accessibility How-To pages.
2. Remove content you no longer need. TidyUp is a tool integrated into Canvas that identifies whether or not files are used in the course and simplifies deleting those that aren’t. 
3. Fix the remaining content. Panorama is a tool integrated into Canvas that scans the course, identifying accessibility issues in files, pages, and modules. It will also help you remediate issues. 

Prioritizing Remediations

Remediating files in your course can be overwhelming. Setting priorities can help manage the work. There are a few ways to approach remediation:
 

• Chronological Order
  • Prioritize materials in the order students encounter them. 
  • Best approach for courses that are in-progress or starting soon. 
• Frequency of Use
  • Focus on templates used across courses or content students access most often. 
  • Best approach when you have core resources used repeatedly. 
• Complexity
  • Start with simpler materials (e.g., documents with basic headings and a few images) before moving on to those with more complex elements (e.g., tables, infographics, equations).
  • Best approach if you want to progressively build your accessibility remediation skills.
• Panorama Accessibility Score
  • Begin with materials that have the lowest Panorama accessibility scores.
  • Best when most of your course materials can be scanned by Panorama. 

Part 1: Using TidyUp to Remove Unused Files

TidyUp is a service integrated into Canvas that identifies where files are used in the course. Use TidyUp to clear unused files from the course before checking for accessibility issues in Panorama. Panorama will check every file in the course and include them in the course’s accessibility score. Cleaning unused files out first helps avoid extra remediation work. 

1. Launch TidyUp from the course's navigation menu. 
   
2. Scan the course. When complete, TidyUp will display the files in the course alongside their locations, last updated date, and size. 
   1. The “Used In” column shows what page, assignment, module, etc. the file is used in. 
   2. A red trash can icon appears in “Actions” next to files that aren’t used in the course. This allows you to easily delete those files from the course. 
3. Determine which files can be removed from the course. 
   1. Unused files are great candidates for removal. 
   2. Duplicate files are also great candidates for removal. These will have the same (or nearly the same) file names and are of the same size. Open them to confirm they’re the same file. 
   3. Download a backup of the files you identified for removal. 
      1. Select them with the checkbox icon in TidyUp and click “Download Selected.” 
      2. Save to a folder on your computer or in Dropbox. 

Part 2: Using Panorama to Identify and Remediate Accessibility Issues

Panorama is an accessibility compliance checking tool that scans files in Canvas courses and identifies accessibility issues. The following processes will guide you through using Panorama to identify and remediate various issues.

 

Alternative Formats Menu

While looking through your course, you’ll see Panorama icons next to pages and documents. The icons look like a person inside a shape. Shapes and colors change to indicate the file or page’s accessibility score. A green hexagon indicates the asset is mostly accessible, a yellow triangle indicates there are some minor accessibility issues, and a red pentagon indicates there are many or major accessibility issues. A blue icon with a circle indicates that the file’s accessibility report has not been generated. Clicking the icon will open the “Alternative Formats Menu.” 

    Students are able to use the alternative formats menu to generate different formats of the document or page. However, this feature is not a perfect solution and its availability does not mean the file is accessible. Assets should still be remediated. Students are not able to see the accessibility reports. For a more in depth guide of what the alternative formats menu can do, please see the vendor’s Accessing the Alternative Formats Menu guide. 

    The Alternative Formats Menu can also be used to view the file or page’s Accessibility Report. This report will show you what issues have been found in the content. To open the report, click “View” under “Accessibility Report.” 

Panorama Course Report

    Panorama creates a report of all the accessibility issues present in the course. The course identifies accessibility issues present in all files and pages in the course. Open the course report by clicking on “Panorama” in the navigation menu. 
 

Score

 

• The “Overall Accessibility Score” gives a percentage estimating how accessible the course is. While no specific score is required, higher is better. Ideally, aim for at least 90%. 
• “Total Files Processed” counts how many files Panorama reviewed. Many files are likely able to be removed from the course by following the TidyUp instructions in this document. 
• “Total Remediations” counts how many files have been remediated in Panorama. 
• “Cumulative Alternative Formats Downloaded” counts how many times students generated and downloaded alternative formats of course files. 

 

Files and Issues

    Issues are tracked in the “Files and Issues” section of the course report. The Files tab shows each scanned file’s accessibility score. 

The Issues tab shows each accessibility issue found. “Instances” shows how many times that issue is present throughout the course. This generally corresponds to how many files have that issue. 

 

 

Remediating Canvas Pages, Modules, & Assignments

    Panorama integrates directly into the WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) editor for Canvas pages. This provides an easy to use interface for resolving issues directly on the page. While Panorama can assist with remediations from the “Files and Issues” section, it is not as easy to work with as the WYSIWYG editor. The simplest workflow is to work through pages and modules in the order students encounter them. Depending on how the course is structured, this may mean starting on the course’s home page, modules, assignments, or pages. 

1. Open Modules or Pages (whichever makes the most sense in your course). In the example below, we’re looking at Modules. 
   
2. Open the page and click Edit.
3. At the bottom of the edit window, click the “speedometer” icon to open the page’s Panorama accessibility report. This icon also shows how many accessibility issues were identified on the page.
   1. Note: open the editor in full screen (diagonal arrows icon) to assist with editing. 
4. Click each issue in the accessibility report to locate that issue in the editor. 
   1. Some issues are best resolved with the “Fix Issue” option, while others are easier to fix by editing the page directly. Alternative text for images is a great use of the “Fix Issue”option, while formatting text as a proper list is better fixed in-line using the WYSIWYG editor. 
   2. “Learn More” can give very helpful information about each issue and how to fix them. Panorama’s vendor, Yuja, maintains comprehensive documentation that’s often linked to here.   

 

Remediating Files in Canvas

    Panorama scans all the files in the course for accessibility compliance. The scan will inform what remediations should be made to make the file accessible. 

Viewing a File’s Accessibility Report

1. Launch Panorama from the Canvas navigation menu. 
   1. This opens to the course’s accessibility report. 
2. Choose the “Files and Issues” tab. 
3. Click the “speedometer” icon in the Score column to open the Alternative Formats Menu, then “View”under “Accessibility Report” to open the file’s accessibility report. 

 

PDFs

While looking through your course’s accessibility report, you’ll notice that many accessibility issues are in PDFs. PDFs are generally not accessible. It is recommended to avoid using them when possible. For example, a PDF version of a Word document or PowerPoint slides should be published in their original formats (i.e., Word .docx, Powerpoint .pptx). It is much easier to fix accessibility issues in these document types than in PDFs. Refer to the PDF Decision Tree page on U-M’s digital accessibility website for guidance on when to use a PDF. Journal articles are often uploaded as PDFs, but can be made accessible by providing a library link. Instructions for this are available in the next section of this document. Below are tips on how to work with various types of PDFs you may have in your course. 

• Documents created in Word, PowerPoint, or another application
  • Remediate the original file, then upload it in place of the PDF. 
• PDFs from a website
  • Provide a link to the source page. The PDF can remain in the course if an accessible alternative is offered. 
• PDFs with no alternative/accessible source
  • Attempt to find similar content that does have an accessible source.
  • Remediate the PDF with Panorama’s Remediation Engine.

 

Journal Articles

In many courses, journal articles account for most of the PDFs. Attaching a library link to the article will suffice to provide an accessible alternative. When a library link is provided, the PDF can remain in the course. The University of Michigan Library is working to create accessible versions of resources it offers. Follow these instructions to attach a library link:

1. In the file’s accessibility report, click the three dots to open “More Options.”
2. Choose “Library Reference. 
3. Add a University of Michigan library link if available. Review the library’s in-depth instructions to locate and link to the article through the U-M Library. 
   1. If no U-M library link is available, add the information from the source of the article. 

 

Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Etc.)

Panorama will identify issues in Microsoft Office files such as Word or Powerpoint. It’s best to fix these issues in the original document then reupload the file. Panorama’s Remediation Engine can fix some issues in these files, but the end result is not as clean as it is when editing the file directly. 

1. Open the file’s Accessibility Report in Panorama. 
2. Open the file in Word/PowerPoint/etc.
3. Make changes to the file as recommended by Panorama. 
4. Replace the document using Panorama’s “Update Document” feature. 

 

Additional Resources

• Accessibility Issues That Can Be Resolved With Panorama
  • Table of all issue types Panorama can resolve.
• Panorama’s Remediation Engine
  • Collection of articles to guide users through using Panorama’s remediation engine.
• Accessing the Alternative Formats Menu
  • Guide on accessing and using the Alternative Formats Menu
• U-M Accessibility Guides
  • U-M digital accessibility collection of guides for making various digital assets accessible. 
• Course Accessibility Expectations
  • U-M digital accessibility page detailing the expectations around course accessibility.