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Canvas - How to Use the UDOIT Digital Accessibility Tool
- What is UDOIT?
- How is this different from the Canvas Accessibility Checker?
- How do I use UDOIT in my Canvas Course?
- Need Help?
What is UDOIT?
UDOIT is a tool available in UW-Superior Canvas courses that identifies digital accessibility issues in your course content. It also explains how to resolve these errors to improve your course. UDOIT can even solve some common issues for you.
For more general information about UDOIT, visit the Cidi Labs website. For more information about digital accessibility, training opportunities, and the resources available to you, visit the Universities of Wisconsin "Digital Accessibility" page.
How is this different from the Canvas Accessibility Checker?
UDOIT is designed to complement Canvas's native Accessibility Checker. You should use both tools to get the most complete view of how to improve your course's accessibility. If you are working on one page, the Canvas Accessibility Checker is a great option. If you want a scan of your whole course, UDOIT is more efficient and comprehensive.
Canvas Accessibility Checker Features
- Scans Content within the Rich Content Editor (RCE)
- Scans one page at a time
- Looks for 11 accessibility issues
UDOIT Features
- Scans published and unpublished HTML content
- Scans published files
- Scans entire course at one time
- Looks for 44 accessibility issues
How do I use UDOIT in my Canvas Course?
Step One: Scan Course for Digital Accessibility Issues
Use Canvas's Dashboard or Courses page to navigate to any course where you have the Teacher role. In the course navigation menu on the left, select Course accessibility checker (UDOIT).
You may see a prompt indicating "Cidi Labs UDOIT is requesting access to your account." Click Authorize.
UDOIT will automatically scan your course (which may take a minute or two). You may have to skip past a "Welcome" page and navigate to the UDOIT Home tab to see your report.
Your scorecard separates identified accessibility issues by impact: high, medium, and low. Click any of the impact levels to see how many issues in that level were identified in your course. Click any of the issues under "Issue Type" to start fixing the listed issue.
If you'd like to review all issues in your course or organize the list in a different way, click the Get Started in the "Need Help?" box on the right side of the page. This button will open a "Ways to Get Started" menu, which organizes your errors and suggestions into a sorted list and allows you to filter them by issue or content type. This is a great way to get a comprehensive view of the results of the UDOIT scan.
Step Two: Fix Listed Issues with UDOIT
Navigate to the "UFIXIT" tab to view a complete list of digital accessibility issues in your course. You may use the "Filter" button to narrow your results by content type, issue type, impact level, or issue severity. Please note that filtering out unpublished or unused content here will not impact your Course Accessibility Score. This score will continue to include all content in your course.
Click the Review button to display a page with a description of the issue, a preview of where it appears in the course, and a text entry box or menu to fix the issue. Follow the prompts on the screen to resolve the issue—usually by entering new text or selecting a choice from a menu.
In the example below, the alternative text provided for an image repeats the filename of the image instead of giving a full description. UDOIT has provided a description of why this is an issue and a preview of the image in question. You can fix the issue directly in the text entry box titled "Edit Alternative Text" by removing the file name, inserting a succinct description of the image, and clicking Save.
For some examples, you may want to navigate to the location of the issue (i.e., page, assignment) to understand the issue's context. In the next example, the instructor has used bold, italicized text to indicate a new topic instead of applying a heading level. You will need to navigate to the page listed under "Found In" to see which headings levels are used on the page, edit the page, choose the correct heading level (e.g., starting from the lowest number, not skipping any levels), and click Save. After fixing the issue on the page itself, you must navigate back to UDOIT and re-scan your course to have the change reflected in your Course Accessibility Score.
Some errors cannot be resolved in UDOIT. In the example below, UDOIT was not able to tell whether or not the video captions provided are accurate, and clicking the Scan Video for Caption Updates did not fix the issue. To resolve this error, first play the media in the page and confirm if it has accurate captions. If it does, open the Mark as Resolved drop-down menu in UDOIT, as shown below and check the box to confirm you have reviewed the issue. The issue will then be marked as resolved.
If the video doesn't have captions, please reach out to the UW-Superior Canvas Team. Captions must be added to embedded media before it be used in your course. If the video was uploaded into Kaltura My Media and embedded into the course, it will have machine-generated captions applied automatically. You can edit the captions in your My Media account to make them 100% accurate if need be.
Step Three: Review Course Files
As of Fall 2025, users can now scan course files with UDOIT with the “Review Course Files” tab. This feature can help you replace a file with an accessible version or an alternate format wherever it appears in your course.
Please note that this tool is inefficient for remediating course files because it does not conduct a full scan of the document and does not allow you to fix errors with the tool itself. Remediation of files must occur in their original software.
Click the Review button on the right to view replacement options for files.
Next, you have the option to either (1) replace the file with an uploaded, accessible one, (2) convert the file into an alternate format (which we have found can take quite some time), or (3) mark the file as reviewed. When replacing a file with an alternate format, please confirm its accessibility using UDOIT.
For more information about making course documents accessible, please view the following guide: How to Make a Canvas Course Accessible
Need Help?
For more in-depth information about general accessibility guidelines and practical instructions for resolving errors join the UW-Superior Digital Accessibility course.
Please reach out to our canvas team by emailing canvas@uwsuper.edu if you have questions.