Accessibility

How to upload and link to a PDF into your Canvas course

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TOC:

How to upload and link to a PDF into your Canvas course

You might wonder How can instructors link to PDFs in their Canvas courses? To link a PDF file in a Canvas course, you can use the Files area feature. As an instructor, you can upload one or multiple files, view all details about your files, preview files, publish and unpublish files, set usage rights, and restrict access to files. Here are the steps to link a PDF file in your Canvas course:

  1. Go to the course where you want to link the PDF file.
  2. Click on the Files tab in the course navigation bar.
  3. Click on the Upload button to upload the PDF file.
  4. Once the file is uploaded, click on the file name to open the file details page.
  5. Copy the URL of the file from the address bar of your browser.
  6. Go to the page where you want to link the PDF file.
  7. Click on the Edit button to edit the page.
  8. Highlight the text that you want to use as the link text.
  9. Click on the Link to URL button in the Rich Content Editor (RCE).
  10. Paste the URL of the PDF file in the URL field.
  11. Click on the Insert Link button to insert the link.

Congratulations! You have successfully linked a PDF file in your Canvas course.

How to check and fix the accessibility of a PDF before uploading to your course

You can use the accessibility checker feature in Adobe Acrobat to review the accessibility of your PDF and fix issues. To check and fix the accessibility of a PDF take these steps in Adobe Acrobat Pro:

  1. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
  2. Run an accessibility check by selecting Accessibility, Accessibility Check, Start Checking or Tools > Accessibility > Full Check.
  3. Read the report and follow the prompts.
  4. Fix the issues identified in the report.
  5. Save the PDF.

Alternatively, you can use the ‘Make Accessible’ tool in Acrobat to automatically fix some issues.
If you need more detailed instructions, you can watch this video that shows how to use the accessibility checker in Adobe Acrobat Pro to identify and fix some common accessibility issues in a PDF document. The video covers how to:

  • Run the accessibility checker and review the results.
  • Fix the logical reading order, bookmarks, tagged annotations, and figures with alternate text.
  • Modify the tags panel to correct the nesting and tag types of headings, links, and lists.

Please note that the accessibility checker may not detect all accessibility issues, so it’s important to manually review the document as well.

Additional resources

Here are some additional resources about linking to files in Canvas course:

Articles about linking to files in Canvas courses:

Videos about linking in Canvas course pages:

How writing evergreen content can extend the impact of your blog

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One way to work more efficiently and extend the impact of your blog is to create what’s known as ‘evergreen content’. This is content that isn’t tied to a specific date or month, writing about subjects that are more timeless. Keeping up with blog posting can be a challenge if every post is date specific. It can be a good strategy to mix in some evergreen posts that will have a longer shelf life. Then you get a longer benefit for your post writing efforts.

Another idea, similar to writing evergreen content, is to write seasonal content that can be reused year to year. You might create winter, spring, summer, and autumn content that isn’t tied to a specific year, making it more reusable. It can be more efficient to preplan and schedule posts once a month or once a quarter, than to be always be publishing ad hoc.

Managing a blog is like tending a garden. It’s best to do routine checks and maintenance every month to keep your blog healthy like doing periodic content audits and accessibility checks. ‘Link rot’ is something that happens over time where links become broken. As part of the blog’s monthly maintenance, content managers should go through their site and look for broken links. WordPress makes it easy to spot broken links by crossing them out with a strikethrough. Blog authors can look for strikethrough links each month and update the URLs that they point to. Links become broken in websites because the URLs of external webpages they link to change over time from organizations adjusting the structure of their websites.

If you run a blog with multiple authors, it’s likely that web accessibility errors will pop up over time. It would be a good practice to run periodic accessibility checks as part of the blog’s monthly maintenance plan. WAVE is a free tool that is good at finding accessibility issues in individual pages. To check a large blog or website, site scanning services like PopeTech can be used. Many organizations at Ohio State have access to scan their sites with PopeTech. For smaller blogs, authors may find it more convenient to install the WAVE browser extension which can check a page for issues in one click. Forming a plan to train authors about accessible content authoring can also help lower the number of accessibility issues that pop up over time. Ohio State offers several online courses about web accessibility through the Digital Accessibility Services office (DAS).

Resources:

Evergreen Content: What It Is, Why You Need It, & How to Create It by Si Quan Ong – Updated on May 8, 2019.

Evergreen Blog Posts: Content Ideas, Examples, and Tips by James Parsons – Updated Jan 4th, 2022

Link Rot: What It is and How to Deal with It by John Hughes – Updated on Jan 25, 2023

 

Using YouTube Studio to obtain captions for your video

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Paid captioning services like Otter.ai are nice, but if you don’t have access to another captioning resource, YouTube Studio can be used to auto-caption a video for free.

Steps to upload a video to YouTube Studio for free auto-captioning:

  • Go to your YouTube channel in YouTube Studio: https://studio.youtube.com/channel/
  • Click ‘Create > Upload Videos’ and choose the video(s) you want to upload with ‘Select Files’.
  • After it has been processed, choose the video you want to obtain captions from, from your list of videos.
  • Scroll down, find the Subtitles link, and click on it.
  • You’ll see ‘English (Automatic)’ for the automated captions track.

Here is some info about how to download your captions from YouTube:

Now you have a captions file to go along with your .mp4 video. You can upload the .srt file to other video hosting like MediaSite. Find your subtitles.srt file in your Downloads folder and edit it for accuracy in a text editor.  Now you are able to use it in another video hosting service like MediaSite.

Video about obtaining captions from YouTube Studio:

Here are some other resources related to obtaining captions from YouTube Studio:

Adding alternative text to images in a WordPress post

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There is an alternative text field attached to images you upload to WordPress. This alt text provides a description of the image to people with visual impairments. We should strive to add descriptive alt text to all the images we upload to posts in WordPress. Missing alt text registers as an accessibility error in the WAVE scanner from WebAIM.

To add alt text to an existing image in WordPress.

  • Go to the Media.
  • Click on the image that you want to add alt text to.
  • Add some descriptive alt text about the image in the alternative text field.
  • Click anywhere and WordPress saves the field.
Opens in new window: An example of adding alt text to an image of an alarm clock in WordPress
Click above to view an example of adding alt text to an image of an alarm clock in WordPres.

To test if your alt text is really attached to the image you can run the post by the WAVE scanner or inspect the image code for an alt attribute. In some cases if the post code has been customized the alt text entered in the Media area might not appear in customized image markup.

Additional videos and resources about adding alternative text to images in a WordPress blog post:

Document accessibility resources for FCS educators and Extension staff

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Here are some document accessibility resources for FCS educators and Extension staff.

Document accessbility checklists:

Courses about document accessbility:

Short videos about document accessibility:

Other resources:

Also see the Digital Accessibility Essentials Training from the LOD group to learn more about these accessibility topics.

 

 

Video editing & video filming resources

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General video for education resources:

Checkout EHE’s Multimedia for Learning page on their website. There are some good articles in there about using multimedia in education.

Creating a Course Introduction Video –
Look Great in Video Conferences –
Getting Started with Adobe Spark –
– Includes How to Create An Infographic With Adobe Spark Post
Getting Started with Adobe Premiere Rush –
Recording Quality Voice Overs –

From the podcasts channel:
What is podcasting? (0:17):

What is ‘lecture capture’ and screencasting?

Lecture capture is the process of recording classroom lectures as videos and making them available for students to review after the class. The term ‘lecture capture’ is in reality quite broad and can be used to describe a variety of solutions, software, and hardware (from screen recording software to recording with web cams or other external cameras). In the flipped classroom paradigm, instructors record lectures for students to watch as homework and in-person class time is used for discussion and active learning activities. Lecture capture is not always intended as a replacement for in-class instruction, but it does enhance the learning experiences of students. Some lecture capture solutions include TechSmith Camtasia, TechSmith Relay, MediaSite, Panopto, and Echo360. See this Techsmith article to learn more abot lecture capture.

Here are some lecture capture resources and screencasting at Ohio State:

The MediaSite video hosting service from OTDI includes the Mosaic desktop recorder. It’s a screencast recorder that can record at higher resolutions than Zoom. Here is some information from OTDI’s teaching resources center about downloading the MediaSite Mosaic recorder.

Also see the EHE tips on Screencasting from the Education and Human Ecology Office of Distance Education and Learning Design

Recording with Zoom – video tutorials and more information coming soon
During the pandemic a lot of people became familiar with recording with the teleconferring app called Zoom. Here’s some information from OTDI’s teaching resources center about Zoom Recordings (cloud recordings or local device recordings). The only disadvantage of using Zoom to record screencast is that it doesn’t always record at a higher resolution so if you require a high definition video you might consider another lecture capture option.

Here is some information from OTDI’s teaching resources center about inporting Zoom recordings into Mediasite’s video hosting. Zoom video have a 120 day rentention limit, so for longer term storage it’s a good practice to upload Zoom videos to MediaSite.

Filming with camcorders and smartphones:

Using your smartphone as a camcorder to film video – The video resolution and quality that smartphones can film at these days is comparable to traditional camcorders. This video mentions some video filming accessories you can use with your smartphone like tripod mounts and light-boxes. A new photo/video light-box recently was built for this video. You can create your own by following this YouTube tutorial.

Removing the SD card from your smartphone to transfer .mp4 video files – This is part of a series of editing video tutorials intended to help educators learn more about different ways of filming videos for their projects.

Video tutorial about transferring .mp4 video files from a Cannon camcorder – Covers using a Cannon R600 camcorder to record to SD card and transfering video files via to a laptop for editing.

Filming 360 videos with an Insta360 OneX camera – video tutorial and more information coming soon
360 videos and still panoramas can be used in H5P Virtual Tours.
See this Creating an H5P Virtual Tour tutorial for more information about this form of VR (virtual reality). Hotspots linking to 360 videos or regular 2D videos can be added to H5P virtual tours.

High Production Video Creation workshop recording from Ohio State Extension LOD covering filming with camcorders and DSLR cameras.The camcorder form factor typically has a longer zoom capibily while DSLR cameras have more add-on lens options.

Using a GoPro style camera to film video – video tutorial and more information coming soon

Video filming accessories:

Phohoto/video light-box:

A photo/video light-box a great accessory to enhance your photography and videos. You can create your own by following this YouTube tutorial.
Materials list:

  • Cardboard box
  • Sheer interfacing fabric – for the light diffuser sides
  • White poster board – for the infinite curve background

overhead tripod CAD drawing

Standard tripods and overhead tripods – more information coming soon

Blogging Tips: Perfect Pictures and Easy Videos with your I-phone is an article that mentions how to build photo light-boxes and overhead tripods for holding phones and cameras.

Some materials you would need to build an overhead tripod out of PVC pipe include:

  • 10′ of 3/4″ PVC pipe
  • 3 Elbows
  • 2 T Connectors
  • 2 Caps (just for looks)
  • Package of screws size: 1/4″ 20 x 1/2″

Smartphone mounts for tripods – more information coming soon

You can obtain smartphone mounts for tripods from electronics stores like Microcenteror B&H Photo.

Microphones – more information coming soon

Green screens and backdrops – more information coming soon

Camera bags – more information coming soon

Editing Videos with Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro is available to OSU employees as art of the Adobe Creative Cloud license. Premiere Pro offers more advanced editing capabilities for creating highly engaging video content for more experienced video producers.

Useful things to know about Premiere video tutorial – a video covering some tips and tricks when editing videos with Adobe Premiere Pro.

Adobe Premiere Pro video production workshop recording from Ohio State Extension LOD. This hour long session covered the basics of using Adobe Premiere Pro.

Information about other Adobe video editing apps:

The spectrum of Adobe video editing apps:

  • Adobe Spark Video – basic, easy video editing – used for posting quick videos.
  • Adobe Premiere Rush – easier to use than Premiere Pro, more capable than Spark – more flexible then Spark video but less capable then Premiere Pro.
    Here’s an Intro to Adobe Premiere Rush workshop recording from Ohio State Extension LOD covering the basics of using Rush.
  • Adobe Premiere Pro – professional level video editing but more difficult to learn how to use – used by video editors across campus and in other organizations.
  • Adobe After Effects – Hollywood level motion graphics composting app – used by motion graphics animators who want to composite a large number of tracks together.

Stock audio, video, and photos for video creators

Music is great to include in videos but you would have to pay to use copywrited music.

The YouTube Audio Library is a good resource to find roalty-free music to use in your videos.

Pre-production: Planning for Video recording workshop from Ohio State Extension LOD exploring pre-production strategies. Pre-production may include gathering assets like stock images & b-roll and using storyboard templates to plan scenes.

Video and multimedia accessbility considerations

Uploading captions to your MediSite video – a screencast of uploading captions to your MediSite video.

Video Accessibility Considerations – a presentation about accessibility considerations to think about when creating video content.

Here is some information from OTDI’s teaching resources center about Captioning your presentation for MediaSite.

Here is recording of a digital accessibility training session from OSU Extension LOD about video and audio accessibility. LOD is the Learning and Organizational Development group in Ohio State Extension.

 

 

A blog post accessibility & optimization checklist

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This checklist covers some major accessibility items to check when writing a high quality blog post.

Major areas to check:

Images

Do all of your images have alternative text descriptions?

Alternative text will describe the image to screen reader users and be seen by sighted users if the image can’t load.

See the Adding alternative text to images in a WordPress post for details of how to add alt text to an iamge in your Blog.

Have your images uploaded to your post been sized / optimized for the web?

Today’s digital cameras take high resolution photos with larger file sizes. But in a blog post you don’t need high res photos. You can work with your web developer or graphic designer to resize your images to an optimal size or use an application like Photoshop. Then the images will load faster for people on mobile connections and won’t eat up their data-plan bandwidth.

Headings

Are your headings structuraly nested correctly?
A post should have only one H1 heading at the top that is usually the same as the post title. The post title you enter in WordPress becomes the page’s H1. Be sure your H2 headings and H3 headings underneath them are nested properly. Never skip to a lower heading level without nesting it under a higher heading. In the past some designers have thought of heading levels as font sizes and skipped to a lower level because they like the font size of that level. Actually headings are semantic elements for creating a structural hierarchy in the page. This aids screen readers in navigating the page and has SEO (search engine optimization) benefits.

Colors and Typography

If you’ve added colors, do they have the right contrast?

For WCAG 2.1 level AA: have a 4.5:1 ratio for normal text and a 3:1 ratio for large text (bold and 18px or higher or normal and 24px or higher)

Use the WebAIM Contrast Checker tool or the Colour Contrast Analyzer tool.
The WCAG 2.1 guidelines related to color contrast is: 1.4.3

Are you using a standard font that’s easily readable?

You should use standard serif (Times Roman) or sanserif fonts (Arial or Helvetica) for maximum legibility. Novelty fonts with unusual letter-forms might be harder to read for people with low vision. Also you should avoid setting long lines of text in All-Caps because capital letter forms can be harder to read and process as words.

Are your links descriptive and not just ‘click here’?
This can help give context about where the link goes to. You could instead say, click here to learn more about (the subject…). Links should make sense out of context so if screen reader users land on them they will know where they go. Short phrases such as “click here,” “more,” “click for details,” are ambiguous when read out of context. Screen readers have key shortcuts that can jump between links in a page and using the tab key jumps between focusable objects like links & buttons. So a screen reader user may not have read nearby text that would give a short ‘click here’ more context. You should include the context withing the link text itself.

See the Introduction to Links and Hypertext guidance from WebAIM for more information about writing descriptive hyperlinks.

Tables

If you have tables, are they only used for tabular data?

Tables should only be used to show numerical data. They shouldn’t be used for layout like organizing out parts of the page into columns. In the late 1990s some designers used table-based layout which wasn’t an accessible practice.

Do you have a header row specified in your data table?
Each label on a column should be a true header cell TH instead of a regular cell. In WordPress you can tell that something is a header cell clicking in the cell while editing the post. Below the table if it says ‘TH’ in the tage tree it’s a header cell. For example the tag tree at the bottom of the editor might say: ‘TABLE > THEAD > TR > TH’. This is just above where it says “Word count”.

Are you using any complex tables with multiple header rows or both vertical and horizontal heading cells?

You should avoid using complex table because they can be challenging to make accessible and confusing to navigate for screen reader users. It may be better to convert a large complex table into two or more simple tables.

Testing

Can you tab keyboard your way through the web page?

A lot of assistive technology uses a form of tabbing to go through a page. If you
can’t tab through your page, you’ve got some issues.

Have you tested your page with an accessibility checker tool?
You can use a tool like the WAVE tool, Axe by Deque or Google Lighthouse from the inspect code developer’s tools in Chrome to check your page for accessibility issues.

Have you tested your webpage with a free screen reader like NVDA?

If you don’t have a screen reader installed you could contact your organization’s digital accessibility expert to ask if they could test it. Screen readers use keyboard tabbing & other key shortcuts to navigate through a webpage. For non-visual users, they know where they are in the page through audio announcements. Headings and other semantic elements become audio landmarks when navigating a page non-visually. Screen readers have key shortcuts that jump between headings and other landmarks so non-visual users can jump around in a non-linear fashion. The location where the Screen reader has navigated to is called the keyboard focus.

Some other good screen readers include:

You may already have a free screen reader installed in your OS.

References and Resources

Blog Post/Web Page Accessibility Checklist from Jacob Martella Web Development.

How to write an accessible blog from the University of Edinburgh.

Introduction to Links and Hypertext guidance from WebAIM.

Understanding the WCAG 2.1 guidelines related to color contrast from WAI (the web accessibility initiative).

Narrated PowerPoint presenation about blog post accessibility 13:21 – covering accessibility for images, headings, colors, typography hyperlinks, and tables.

WordPress accessibility course in LinkedIn Learning – covering creating accessible themes, plugin accessibility, authoring accessible content, and testing.

How to Make Your WordPress Website Accessible video 14:16 – covering how images, colors, and text should be accessbible and how plugins can help.

Digital accessibility videos for FCS educators and Extension staff:

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Use your OSU login to sign in and watch the videos.

Other resources:

Also see the Digital Accessibility Essentials Training from LOD group to learn more about these accessibility topics.