Accessibility is everyone's responsibility and a fundamental part of your course.

Accessibility is about access to information. Students need to be able to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with our learning environments and materials. Accessibility is not an annual accreditation or a tick box, accessibility is about how useful we make our learning resources. Students should not be excluded to information on the basis of disability. To do so would breach the Equality Act, Public Sector Accessibility Regulations, and the trust of our students.

The University of Hull are working towards making all of our online resources compliant with the internationally recognised Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2).

Accessible content in Canvas.

The majority of content on Canvas has been uploaded or curated by University staff. There are numerous modules containing various types of content and files. As such, the accessibility level may vary between them, although we have tried to make all content accessible including documents. For most documents you should be able to do the following, in the software that opens the files:

change colours, contrast levels and fonts on documents
zoom in without the text spilling off the screen
navigate the content using just a keyboard
navigate the content using speech recognition software
listen to the content using a screen reader

Whenever internally produced videos are made and uploaded to Canvas, we aim to always do this with captions in place.

You can also use the self-service facility, Sensus Access, which is provided by the Library to allow you to create alternative formats. If you need specific academic support and adjustments, do seek advice from our disabilities advisers.

Known issues.

We are aware of the following current issues which may impact accessibility and are seeking solutions to them:

A very small minority of content may not be navigable with a keyboard (this issue is almost fully resolved at the time of writing)
Some resources are only available in PDF format
PDFs may not have headers to facilitate navigation, and the formatting of the alternative text may be inconsistent
Padlet is used in some modules and there are some known accessibility issues with this at the time of writing (e.g. textual alternatives cannot be added to visuals, users cannot change contrast settings, keyboard navigation may be difficult)
Canvas LMS strives for WCAG 2.1 Level A/AA and Section 508 conformance. View the success criteria.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility.

We are constantly working to improve the accessibility of these resources. Accessibility is considered throughout the process of designing our materials and making them available to you on Canvas. We always aim to work in line with the latest guidance on digital accessibility and use the affordances of technology in order to increase the accessibility of our resources.

The Teaching Excellence Academy has developed a framework for promoting predictable, intuitive and accessible experiences within Canvas. All published courses should meet the essential course criteria.
All professional service staff and academics are encouraged to complete our online self-paced training course Accessibility Fundamentals, and apply the key principles to all courses they produce or oversee.
The Teaching Excellence Academy will schedule regular accessibility workshops to support academics in making their courses more accessible.
The Universal Design Online Inspection Tool (UDOIT) has been made available in all modules and helps faculty discover and repair accessibility issues in their Canvas courses.
Course accessibility is considered part of the Continual Monitoring, Evaluation and Enhancement (CMEE) process.

How to report accessibility issues.

If you have problems using Canvas or its content, your module instructors are the first people to talk to. Your department will typically have a dedicated member of staff for handling accessibility queries - your module instructor should be able to give their contact details as needed. You can further escalate any issues using this form - the University aims to get back to you within 3 working days.

Our virtual learning environment consists of several thousand modules, which act as discrete content areas and are created and edited by many hundreds of individuals at the University of Hull, often to provide content to our students in a “just in time” manner. It would be impractical and a disproportionate burden for the University to audit and quality assure all content before it gets published. We think it’s very likely that instances of the following issues exist within Canvas at Hull and haven’t yet been identified and resolved.

Enforcement procedure.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations. If you are not happy with how the University has responded to your notification or request, you can contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

This statement was prepared on 15 October 2019. It was last updated on 12th February 2024.