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What happens when I copy from Word into Canvas?
Converting Word documents into Canvas pages, assignments, or other content can be really valuable for students navigating Canvas courses. Students using the Canvas mobile app often have trouble accessing Word files from their mobile devices; these issues are less likely to occur when the content is built in the Canvas Rich Content Editor (RCE). It can also make things easier on the instructor by eliminating many of the steps needed to update content or instructions.
Spring 2025 Start Dates
- Sixteen-week & first-half courses will be published and made available for students on Monday, January 13th at 12:01 a.m.
- A resource page on copying your Canvas content is available.
Need Help
COLRS Winter Intersession Support
- No office hours will be held on December 24 through January 1.
- COLRS is closed on December 25 and January 1.
- The COLRS team will be rotating coverage to provide support for faculty teaching Winter Intersession courses on December 24, 26, 27, 30, and 31.
- Please email the COLRS inbox for assistance! We are happy to schedule Zoom meetings with you, as well.
Happy holidays!
The COLRS Team
~Carrie, Emily, Scott, and Taylor
PowerPoint Accessibility
PowerPoint's structure and the ease of adding content to slides prompts special accessibility considerations. The best way to make an accessible PowerPoint is to keep these in mind as you are first creating the document, as it is common to have to recreate slides otherwise. This page details the PowerPoint-specific accessibility concerns. Be sure to review the issues listed on the Microsoft Office page as well.
Accessibility in Microsoft Office
This section details the accessibility elements in Microsoft Office that are shared when working with Word and PowerPoint documents. Their respective pages have further details on the issues that are specific to that filetype, and additional resources can be found on the Creating Accessible Documents and Websites page.
Creating Accessible Documents and Websites
This page is a collection of resources regarding the accessibility of Word, PowerPoint, and PDF documents as well as websites, beginning with our pages on the common issues in each type of document.
The page on Office covers the concepts and issues that are present in both Word and PowerPoint documents, while their respective pages cover topics that are unique to that filetype.
MS Word Accessibility
Beyond what is mentioned in the Accessibility in Microsoft Office page, Word has a few additional accessibility concerns you should be aware of. Also included on this page are some useful formatting tools in Word to deal with these issues as well as how to use the accessibility checker.
Writing Good Alt Text
What is alt text?
Alternative text (alt text) is text that describes the content of an image that can be read by a screen reader. It's important to consider what elements of the image are important to include in context. A portrait photo of a historical figure may just need that figure's name as the alt text, while a piece of art may need its primary features denoted, and a diagram or graph may need its contents fully described.
Accessible Videos
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.0 require four pieces for a video to be considered accessible. In brief, those guidelines are:
Using the Order Panel
The Order Panel is a more visual way to edit the tags in a PDF. It's more intuitive to use than the Tags Panel, but has some limitations. Thus, it should be the first step in checking a document after checking the accessibility and/or tagging it with Make Accessible.
The most straightforward process of correcting tags with the Order Panel is to go through the document twice. The first time, you will check the accuracy of the tags present, and in the second, you will check the reading order.