In the UK, The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations (PSBAR 2018) came into full force in September 2020. The regulations mandate that all public sector body websites must be accessible, in line with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 Level AA (WCAG 2.1 Level AA).

Given the move to online learning and teaching during the pandemic, the Glasgow School of Art experienced a huge increase in use of the VLE by both staff and students, making the prospect of auditing our VLE for accessibility quite daunting. In response to the increased use of Canvas, we developed a new homepage template for all courses on Canvas, which presented the perfect opportunity to begin auditing Canvas and ensuring that our VLE is accessible.

In this presentation, I’ll cover how we audited our Canvas homepage template using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM), used the Canvas Voluntary Product Assessment (VPAT) and tools such as WAVE and ANDI to assist with accessibility testing, and present some of the problems we discovered as well as some of the solutions we deployed.