Accessibility@Smeal

The U.S. Department of Justice has ruled that all higher education institutions must comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 at the AA level by April 24, 2026. This applies to:

  • Canvas Content: pages, videos, files, images, assignments, discussions, quizzes
  • Instructor Content: slides, readings, documents, posted online materials
  • Publisher and Digital Content: e-books, case studies, test banks, interactive tools

Nov 5: Delete unused Canvas files. Nov 19: Fix issues via Ally. Dec 3: Alt text. Dec 17: Word docs. Jan 14: PowerPoints. Jan 28: Excel files. Feb 12: PDFs. Feb 19: Video captions. Mar 5: Audio descriptions. Mar 19: Descriptive links. Apr 2: Formulas. Apr 16: Scanned documents.

eLDIG has created a timeline of the steps that faculty must take toward meeting this legal requirement. As each milestone approaches, the accordion below will be updated with detailed instructions for the current step. Click on the bars below to open.

Nov 5: Delete unused Canvas files & pages

  • Go through the “Files” area in Canvas and delete any files that are not currently being used in your course. You can use other, non-Canvas platforms like OneDrive, Sharepoint, or Google Drive to store old/unused content.
  • Go through your course and delete any Canvas pages that will no longer be used.

Nov 19: Fix Canvas issues via Anthology Ally

Most accessibility issues are not ‘fixable’ directly in Anthology Ally, but a few are. The short video below will walk you through what you can do now, using the Ally tool.

Video transcript

The direct link to the alt-text generator mentioned in the video is: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-OeMRwWONc-image-description-specialist.

As always, please contact eLDIG with any questions.