User Guide Navigation

Introduction What Does UDOIT Look For?

Basic Progress Bar (browser only)

UDOIT scans both your Canvas Content and the Files you've uploaded, looking for accessibility issues that could cause trouble for your students. See what it's looking for in each area:

Canvas Content

UDOIT scans the HTML of the following content items in a course:

Announcements
Assignments
Discussions

Pages
Syllabus
Module URLs

It looks for the following possible accessibility issues and reports them as either errors or suggestions:

Errors

Adjacent Links Found

Adjacent links that have the same URL should be combined into one. Links should be merged in the LMS content editor.

Alt Text For Images Within Links Should Not Be Empty

Alternative Text should not be empty.

Alternative Text (Alt Text) is an alternative (non-visual) way to describe the meaning of an image. Please provide a brief description of the image for a screen reader user.

Note: It should not be the image file name and should be 125 characters or less.

Learn more at WebAIM.org: Alt Text Accessibility

Alternative Text Is More Than the Maximum Allowed Characters

Alternative Text (Alt Text) is an alternative (non-visual) way to describe the meaning of an image. Please provide a brief description of the image for a screen reader user.

Note: It should not be the image file name and should be 125 characters or less.

Learn more at WebAIM.org: Alt Text Accessibility

Alternative Text Should Not Be the Image Filename

Alternative Text (Alt Text) is an alternative (non-visual) way to describe the meaning of an image. Please provide a brief description of the image for a screen reader user.

Note: It should not be the image file name and should be 125 characters or less.

Learn more at WebAIM.org: Alt Text Accessibility

Avoid Using Color Alone for Emphasis

When emphasizing text, you may use color with sufficient contrast as long as you also apply some other form of emphasis, such as bold or italics. This ensures that screen reader users are aware of the text's importance.

Base Font Tag Should Not Be Used

The basefont tag is deprecated and should not be used. Investigate using stylesheets instead.

Blink Tag Should Not Be Used

The blink tag should not be used. Ever.

Captions Unavailable for Private YouTube Video

UDOIT was unable to scan or verify the captions on this Youtube video, possibly because this is not a publicly available video.

Captions Unavailable for Unlisted YouTube Video

UDOIT was unable to scan or verify the captions on this Youtube video, possibly because this is not a publicly available video.

Closed Captions Do Not Match Course Language

While this video has captions, there are no captions available for your course language. While not imperative to fix, if you'd like to you have three options:

Contact the creator of the video and request captions in your course language be added.
Create captions yourself using a service like Amara (http://amara.org/).
Find a different video that has closed captioning for your course language.

Closed Captions Were Auto-Generated

Captions that are machine-generated by a service like YouTube are rarely if ever fully accurate and should not be relied upon for educational use.

Decorative Images Should Have Empty Alternative Text

This image was marked as decorative in the Rich Content Editor, but the ALT attribute contains text. Please remove the alternative text or the decorative marking.

Learn more at WebAIM.org: Alt Text Accessibility

Document Reading Direction

Changes in text direction in inline content should be indicated using any HTML element (for example, span) with a 'dir' attribute indicating left-to-right or right-to-left. For example, a Hebrew phrase within an English paragraph should have its own text direction indicated.

Embedded Videos Must Have Captions

All video elements must have a caption using the track element with caption attribute. The caption should convey all meaningful information in the video element; this includes, but is not limited to, dialogue, musical cues, and sound effects. Good captions not only include dialogue, but also identify who is speaking and include non-speech information conveyed through sound, including meaningful sound effects.

Font Tag Should Not Be Used

The font tag is deprecated and should not be used. Investigate using stylesheets instead.

Heading Levels Should Not Be Skipped

Nest headings by their rank (or level). The most important heading has the rank 1 (h1) in HTML files or rank 2 (h2) in Canvas pages, the least important heading rank 6 (h6). Headings with an equal or higher rank start a new section, headings with a lower rank start new subsections that are part of the higher ranked section. Skipping heading ranks can be confusing and should be avoided.

Headings Should Contain Text

Sighted and screen reader users depend on headings to organize the content on the page. Headings should not be empty and should represent an accurate outline of the content

Image Description Is Too Long

Any image that has an 'alt' attribute that does not fully convey the meaning of the image should have a 'longdesc' attribute.

Image Elements Should Have an "alt" Attribute

Alternative Text (Alt Text) is an alternative (non-visual) way to describe the meaning of an image. Please provide a brief description of the image for a screen reader user.

Note: It should not be the image file name and should be 125 characters or less.

Learn more at WebAIM.org: Alt Text Accessibility

Images Should Not Have a Placeholder as Alternative Text

Any image that is not used decoratively or which is purely for layout purposes cannot have an 'alt' attribute that consists solely of placeholders. Placeholders include: nbsp ,   , spacer , image , img , and photo .

Learn more at WebAIM.org: Alt Text Accessibility

Insufficient Text Color Contrast With the Background

Text color should be easily viewable and should not be the only indicator of meaning or function. Color balance should have at least a 4.5:1 ratio for small text and 3:1 ratio for large text. Warning: using UDOIT to fix one section of text may invalidate the contrast in nested sections of text that are not the same color.

Links Should Contain Text

Because many users of screen readers use links to navigate the page, providing links with no text (or with images that have empty 'alt' attributes and no other readable text) hinders these users.

Marquee Tag Should Not Be Used

The marquee element is difficult for users to read and is not a standard HTML element. Try to find another way to convey the importance of this text.

Multimedia Objects Should Have Text Equivalents

Multimedia objects should be accompanied by a link to a transcript of the content.

No Closed Captions Found

Captions should be included in the video to provide dialogue to users who are hearing impaired. (Please note that videos that have been removed, deleted, or are Unlisted will also cause this error, and will need to be manually verified.)

No Row or Column Scope Declarations Found in Table Headers

Scope declarations in headers organize and define table data by row/column for sighted and screen reader users.

No Table Headers Found

Table headers provide a description of the table structure for sighted and screen reader users.

Table Without Content Detected

Tables should have content.

YouTube Captions Scanning Unavailable

UDOIT was unable to scan or verify the captions on this Youtube video because YouTube allows only limited API calls in a given time frame. Please try to scan this video again at a different time.

Suggestions

Avoid Using Styles for Document Structure

Bold and Italics are used to emphasize text, whereas headings are used to define the structure of the document. Headings like h1-h6 are extremely useful for non-sighted users to navigate the structure of the page, and formatting a paragraph to just be big or bold, while it might visually look like a heading, does not make it one.

Closed Captions Cannot Be Checked

Videos used on online courses are required to have closed captioning. Unfortunately, some video services do not provide an API for checking captions and will need to be manually verified.

Connection to the Kaltura Service Failed

UDOIT was unable to connect to the Kaltura API to verify the captions for this video.

Connection to the Vimeo Service Failed

UDOIT was unable to connect to the Vimeo API to verify the captions for this video.

Connection to the YouTube Service Failed

UDOIT was unable to connect to the YouTube API to verify the captions for this video.

Content Length Should Not Exceed 3000 Words

For content longer than 3000 words, consider splitting it up into multiple documents. This makes it easier for students to process and retain the information.

Embedded Content May Be Inaccessible on Mobile Devices

Embedded content may not be properly viewable on mobile devices. Consider mobile users when relying on objects for multimedia content.

External Content May Be Inaccessible

Embedded content is not evaluated automatically by UDOIT. Please manually evaluate this content for accessibility issues and compatibility with mobile devices.

Headings Should Be Used in Content

If appropriate, add headings to the page to organize the content for sighted and screen reader users. The headings should represent an accurate outline of the content.

Input Images Should Have an "alt" Attribute

Every form image button which has text within the image (say, a picture of the word 'Search' in a special font), should have the same text within the 'alt' attribute.

Link Has Nondescript Text

Links should be descriptive of the content they're linking to, such as 'Class Schedule' rather than 'schedule.html' or 'click here'.

Links To Multimedia Require Transcripts

Multimedia objects should be accompanied by a link to a transcript of the content.

Links To Sound Files Need Transcripts

Links to a sound file should be followed by a link to a transcript of the file.

Object Tag Detected

Multimedia embedded using the 'Object' tag may require the user to install a plugin for their web browser. This can create support and access issues for some users. Additionally, users on mobile devices may not be able to view the multimedia content at all. Consider using an alternative format that the user's browser can display natively.

"Pre" Elements Should Not Be Used for Tabular Data

If a pre element is used for tabular data, change the data to use a well-formed table.

Files

UDOIT Advantage scans files in your course, looking for issues that make it difficult for students to use assistive technologies to navigate your files.

Currently, we scan for issues in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents, and PDFs.

Document Scanning

Documents (DOC)

Issues UDOIT Looks for in Microsoft Word Documents:

Missing Alt Text: The DOCX file has at least one image without alternative text.
Missing Headings: The DOCX file does not have headings, which help screenreader users navigate a large document.
Missing Table Header: The DOCX file has at least one table without a table header.
Missing Title: The DOCX file is missing a title property.
Older File Format: Older file formats (.doc) do not have all the modern considerations of a .docx file. For the best compatibility and usability, consider opening this file in Microsoft Word and saving it as a .docx file.
Scanned File: Many scanners create only a visual copy of the data they scan, similar to an image. If the source of the scan contains text, that text in visual format cannot be read by screen readers.

Portable Document Format (PDF)

Issues UDOIT Looks for in PDFs:

Missing Title: The PDF file is missing a title.
Password Protected File: The PDF is password protected and cannot be accessed.
Processing Error: There was an issue during the scanning of this PDF file.
Scanned File: Many scanners create only a visual copy of the data they scan, similar to an image. If the source of the scan contains text, that text in visual format cannot be read by screen readers.
Untagged File: PDF is lacking tags, which provide a logical structure that governs how the content of the PDF is presented through assistive technology.

PowerPoint (PPT)

Issues UDOIT Looks for in PowerPoint Files:

Older File Format: PPTX files should be used instead of PPT files. For the best compatibility and usability, consider opening this file in Microsoft PowerPoint and saving it as a .pptx file.
Scanned File: Many scanners create only a visual copy of the data they scan, similar to an image. If the source of the scan contains text, that text in visual format cannot be read by screen readers.