Get help

• Contact the DoIT Help Desk for general assistance. Reach the Help Desk by phone at 608.264.4357, email at help@doit.wisc.edu or visit their KnowledgeBase.

• For accessibility or usability assistance for Turnitin, please contact learnuwsupport@wisc.edu.

Additional resources

• Turnitin Overview from Learn@UW (KnowledgeBase document)

Accessibility and usability barriers 

The following information is provided to help people with disabilities know what potential barriers may exist and to help people who support them. This is not a comprehensive list of accessibility barriers, but gives a sample of the kinds of barriers that the product has.

Screen reader barriers limit access for individuals using screen readers, such as people who are blind or who have a learning disability.

Using Turnitin requires uploading a document, which is then reviewed in the Turnitin Feedback Studio. The uploaded document in Feedback Studio is not screen reader accessible.   

Small click targets may create barriers with people with motor disabilities.

There are two clickable elements that are needed to enter the Turnitin application. Both of them are very small, and would be hard for someone who uses a mouse and has motor disabilities to accurately click.

Figure 1: The small box in a table cell is a click target to enter the SpeedGrader, which allows a user to enter Turnitin. Click targets to enter Turnitin are 16x16 pixels. Minimum click target size for WCAG is 24x24 pixels for level AA (required) or 44x44 for level AAA (preferred).

Figure 2: After opening SpeedGrader, an instructor clicks on a small box to access Turnitin. This click target size does not meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards.

Keyboard navigation barriers may limit access for people with motor disabilities.

Some keyboard focus indicators are missing a top, bottom, left, or right side. Some keyboard focus indicators do not have strong contrast, which makes it difficult to follow the keyboard navigation.

Figure 3: The keyboard focus indicator sometimes is missing a side. In this example, the top is missing.

Magnification and reflow barriers exist, creating barriers for people with low vision.

At 300% and higher magnification, features aren’t available, elements crash into each other and the content is nearly impossible to navigate.

Figure 4: The Feedback Studio at 300% magnification. Elements overlap and features are missing.

Some contrast barriers exist, creating barriers for people with low vision or who are color blind.

Some keyboard focus indicators and some content has poor color contrast.

Figure 5: The blue square with 0% inside has keyboard focus, but the keyboard focus does not meet color contrast standards.

Figure 6: The black number within the dark blue box does not meet color contrast standards.

Figure 7: The highlighted text to indicate “not cited or quoted” does not meet contrast standards.

Unclear language creates a barrier for students.

A student submits an assignment and clicks a checkbox to acknowledge a user agreement. It is not forthright about what is happening.

Figure 8: Unclear language what the student is agreeing to by clicking the checkbox, which reads "I agree to the tool's End-User License Agreement. This assignment is my own, original work." Additionally, scanning the End-User License Agreement doesn’t let students know what Turnitin is (a plagiarism checker).