Implement Student Accommodations in Canvas

by | Jul 2, 2024 | Accessibility, Canvas, Canvas Features/Functions, Digital Accessibility, How-tos

Introduction

The academic accommodations students can receive from Student Disability Services include course flexibility, exam accommodations, note-taking assistance, alternative format conversions, and interpreting and captioning services. Thankfully, Canvas offers multiple features to help incorporate these accommodations in your course and to ensure that your course is accessible.

It is also important to keep accessibility in mind and provide alternative formats whenever possible–this practice aligns with Universal Design for Learning principles which benefits all students with or without accessibility needs, and saves time for instructors by minimizing the need to retrofit course content for accessibility requirements after the course is launched. A few strategies covered in this post include:

  • Extending quiz times for individual students
  • Changing due dates of quizzes and assignments for individual students
  • Allowing multiple attempts for quizzes
  • Using accessibility functions in Canvas
  • Converting document type with Sensus Access

Extra Attempts and Extended Time

Quizzes

Timed quizzes on Canvas can be moderated so that a subset of students can have extra attempts or extra time. 

If you are using New Quizzes, review How do I add accommodations for a student in New Quizzes? from Canvas. If you are using Classic Quizzes, review the steps below.

In Classic Quizzes, you can change the setting after publishing a quiz:

  1. Open Canvas > Quizzes.
  2. Click the name of an existing quiz. If you’re building a new quiz, you’ll need to publish it first to continue.
  3. Select Moderate this quiz. You will see the class roster.
  4. For individual students, click the pencil icon (A) on the right. For multiple students with the same extension, select the checkboxes (B) next to their names and click Change Extensions for [#] Selected Students (C).Screen capture of the Canvas page after clicking on Quizzes, the name of a published quiz, and Moderate Quiz. Showing the roster of the class in the middle, with checkboxes on the left of the names and pencil icons on the right of the page. Box A highlights the pencil icon which can be used to moderate the quiz for the corresponding individual student; Box B highlights the checkboxes to the left of each student’s name, which can be used to select multiple students who need the same accommodations; Box C highlights a line reading “Change Extensions for X selected students”, which appears after selecting multiple students using the checkboxes highlighted by Box B and can be used to add the same accommodations to multiple students.
  5. To add extra attempts, enter the number of extra attempts in the field Extra attempts (D). 
  6. Enter the time extension in the field Extra time on every attempt (E).

    Screen capture showing the Canvas modal window after clicking either the pencil icon for one individual student or the “Change Extensions for X Selected Students” link for multiple students highlighted in the previous screen capture. Box D highlights the field to change the number of Extra Attempts for selected students; Box E highlights the field to add Extra time on every attempt for selected students. The bottom of the pop-up window also shows a check box for “Manually unlock the quiz for the next attempt”, and “Cancel” or “Save” at the bottom right corner.

Assignments

For Assignments, you can set the number of submission attempts for everyone in your course from unlimited to a specific number of attempts. See “Select Submission Attempts” in How do I add or edit details in an assignment? 

Alternative Due Dates

Deadline flexibility is another common academic accommodation, in which students receive more time to turn in an assignment (including quizzes). You can assign alternative due dates for individual students both for quizzes and for assignments.

Quizzes

To change the due date of a quiz for individual students, 

  1. Open your Canvas course and navigate to the Quizzes section.
  2. Click the quiz you want to assign.
  3. In the Assign to box, assign the quiz to specific students needing alternative times by entering their names. Remove the Everyone Else tag to ensure the quiz is only assigned to those students (F).
  4. If the quiz will still be assigned to everyone else, click +Add at the bottom of the box to enter assignment details for both groups of students (G).
  5. Click +Add to add more students who need different extensions (H). This field can also be used to reopen a closed quiz.
    Screen capture showing the “Assign” section of the Canvas page after selecting a quiz to edit. Box F highlights the “Assign to” field with drop-down options to select individual students or course sections or groups. Box G highlights a new “Assign to” field after clicking + Add. The default is “Everyone Else”. Box H highlights the + Add button for creating more due dates and expiration dates. The bottom left corner shows a check box for “Notify users this quiz has changed”.

Assignments

To change the due date of an assignment for individual students, 

  1. Click the name of the assignment.
  2. Click Edit Assignment Settings.
  3. Scroll to the Assign field at the bottom.
  4. Click +Add.
  5. Select students in the Assign to dropdown menu.
  6. Change the Due, Available from and until dates. 

For a guide containing screenshots of this process, see How do I assign an assignment to an individual student?

Content Accessibility

Canvas is built with a range of functions to improve accessibility. Here are some steps you can take to make full use of these functions. 

  1. When creating content with the Rich Content Editor, take advantage of the Accessibility Checker. You can (and should) also add alt text to embedded images. Use Sensus Access supported by ATS to automatically convert document types such as Word Document, tagged PDF, MP3, and others. For more guidelines in composing accessible text with neurodivergence in mind, see Thomas Keith’s blogpost Digital Tools and Critical Pedagogy: Design Your Course Materials with Neurodivergence in Mind.
  2. For videos, you can add captions using Panopto’s built-in caption services as well as generating a transcript for Zoom recordings. For more information on supported tools for enhancing accessibility in instructional video contents, see Thomas Keith’s blogpost Create Accessible Instructional Videos.
  3. The Center for Digital Accessibility (CDA) also offers resources to assist content accessibility, including best practices and tips to creating digital contents and for Courses and Course Materials, as well as a tool to report a Digital Accessibility Barrier. CDA is actively adding more powerful and updated accessibility tools, stay updated by subscribing to the ATS Newsletter.

Conclusion

Canvas features various functions which align with the various student accommodations provided by Student Disability Services. Keeping accessibility in mind while designing the course and familiarizing yourself with these Canvas functions can help reduce the time and effort it takes to retrofit the content to meet accessibility requirements. 

Further Resources

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