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Canvas - How to Use the UDOIT Digital Accessibility Tool

This guide explains how to use the UDOIT Cloud Accessibility Tool to scan your Canvas course for digital accessibility errors. This guide also explains how to interpret the results of the scan and use UDOIT to correct any listed errors.

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 Cidilabs 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?

The UDOIT Cloud Accessibility Tool 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
  • 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  • Scans published and unpublished HTML content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).

Screenshot of a Canvas course navigation menu with the UDOIT item highlighted
Access UDOIT within your Canvas course. If you do not see this item, check your navigation menu settings.

You may see a prompt indicating "Cidi Labs UDOIT Cloud is requesting access to your account." Click Authorize.

Screenshot of the UDOIT app authorization page in Canvas
You should only have to complete this step the first time you access UDOIT in Canvas.

UDOIT will automatically scan your course (which may take a minute or two) and lists both "Errors" and "Suggestions". You may have to skip past a "Welcome" page and navigate to the UDOIT Home tab to see your report.

Screenshot of UDOIT Welcome Message
You can choose to "Skip this page in the future" using the checkbox at the bottom of the page.
Screenshot of the UDOIT home page
The UDOIT "Home" tab shows your Accessibility score report and the most frequent errors identified by the scan.

Scroll down and click any of the links beneath the "Most Common Errors" section to start fixing the listed issues. The number to the left of the listed error indicates how many instances of that error were located in your content during the last scan.

Screenshot of the Most Common Error heading with common errors listed beneath it on the UDOIT home page
Click the listed errors beneath these headings to start fixing them!
Errors versus Suggestions
Errors are issues which must be fixed to ensure equal access and legal compliance. Suggestions are issues which should be fixed to improve the accessibility and usability of your course.

If you'd like to review all issues in your course, or organize the list in a different way, click Need Help Getting Started? 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.

Screenshot of the Need Help Getting Started? button Screenshot of the Ways to get started menu with the following listed options: Easiest to fix, errors only, all open issues, by issue type, by content type, by issue type
Resolve errors that have the most immediate impact on your students first.

Step Two: Fix Listed Issues with UDOIT

Navigate to the "UFIXIT" tab to view a complete list of digital accessibility issues 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. UDOIT provides a text entry box titled "New Alt Text" to allow you to directly fix the issue.

Screenshot of an UDOIT Alternative Text should not be file name error screen. There is a picture of a cityscape with the file name image.png
Alternate texts should give enough detail to make information conveyed by the image clear to those who cannot access the visual version.

In the next example, the instructor has used bold text to indicate a new topic instead of applying a heading level. Select a heading level to resolve the issue.

Screenshot of the Avoid using styles for structure error page. The error shows a styled text acting as a heading that is not indicated as a heading in html
Screen readers use the headings to navigate the page.

Some errors cannot be resolved in UDOIT. In the example below, UDOIT was not able to tell if the Kaltura media embedded in the page has captions included. To resolve this error, first play the media in the page and confirm if it has captions. If it does, click the Mark as Resolved checkbox in UDOIT.

If the media doesn't have captions, please reach out to the UW-Superior Canvas Team. Captions will need to be added to embedded media before it be used in your course. (Most Kaltura items will have machine-generated captions applied automatically.)

Screenshot of UDOIT Connection to the Kaltura service failed error page.
Kaltura can automatically generate machine captions for your videos.

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.

Screenshot of UDOIT's Review Course Files tab.
Click the Review button 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.

Screenshot of UDOIT's course file review feature.
UDOIT provides options for replacing files with accessibility issues but does not allow remediating in the tool itself.

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.


Keywords:
Accessibility Errors Checker overview 
Doc ID:
149822
Owned by:
Kasey S. in UW Superior
Created:
2025-04-11
Updated:
2025-09-26
Sites:
UW Superior
Clean URL:
https://kb.uwsuper.edu/uwsuper/udoit-overview