Get help with a usability or accessibility barrier 

• UW–Madison Accessibility Assistance:
  • Contact the DoIT Help Desk for general assistance.
  • Contact the DoIT Learn@UW Team by emailing help@doit.wisc.edu for assistance with creating learning content in Canvas.
  • Additional resources: Canvas overview, Canvas help
• UW System accessibility assistance:
  • Users should contact their campus Help Desk for general assistance or to report an accessibility or usability barrier. Campus Canvas administrators can contact the UWSA Digital Learning Environment Team for assistance.
  • For general documentation on how to use this tool, see Instructure’s Canvas Instructor Guide or Canvas Student Guide.

Canvas Pronoun Feature

Through a new feature in Canvas, UW–Madison students, faculty, and instructional staff can now choose the pronouns they want to be associated with their online profiles. (Preferred name use is already available in Canvas.)

Accessible Canvas Course Content Design

All students, with and without disabilities, benefit from accessible course content. Read about accessibility considerations when designing content in Canvas.

Turn on “High Contrast” in Canvas

The high contrast user interface (UI) features enhance the color contrast of text, buttons, and other elements so they are more distinct and easier to identify in Canvas.

Known accessibility and usability barriers 

The following information is provided to help people with disabilities anticipate and navigate potential barriers while using Canvas.

People with colorblindness and/or low vision may experience difficulty

The following elements have low color contrast and may pose a barrier for people who are colorblind or have low vision: 

• Course menu navigation text may be difficult for some users to read and navigate as a result of low contrast.

• Links and link text throughout Canvas have low color contrast and may pose a barrier to some users, including:

  • The “skip to main” content button text

  • Table links have low color contrast

People who are navigating via screen reader may experience difficulty

Those navigating via a screen reader or other assistive technology may experience difficulties reading content in Canvas as some pages have heading levels that are out of order. This may make it difficult for some users to find their way via clearly identified sections in the content that they are viewing.

Some quiz question items also may present barriers for those navigating via screen reader. Some of these issues include:

• Text fields that are missing a descriptive label
• Buttons that are missing descriptive label and/or are not usable via screen reader

People who are navigating via keyboard may experience difficulty

Some secondary functions within Canvas are not consistently keyboard accessible and may be difficult to operate for those navigating via keyboard. For example, the “Select file” checkbox in file upload does not operate properly via keyboard consistently. Additionally, text styling for rich text input fields may not be consistently reachable via keyboard for some users.