Pope Tech

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Intro to Pope Tech Instructor Accessibility Guide (Powered by WAVE)

Pope Tech Instructor Accessibility Guide is an accessibility remediation tool available to instructors in Canvas. With the Pope Tech accessibility tool, instructors in Canvas will be able to check and verify their course content to align with Section 508 Standards and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to ensure an equitable and accessible experience for our students at the SDCCD.

Some key features of Pope Tech include:

Accessible, fast, and accurate web accessibility testing for their courses as they edit them.
Accessibility errors in Canvas can be easily edited and fixed—with minor work and in minimal time.
Integrated documentation and examples are provided to help guide instructors in creating more accessible content.
Pope Tech also provides simple feedback!

What is Tested?

Canvas pages
Syllabus
Quiz descriptions
Discussion Topics
Assignments
Announcements

What is scanned?

If headers are present or skipped
Flags suspicious alt text for images (contains “image of”, “image”, etc.)
Color contrast between text and highlighted colored-background (Note: doesn’t check color contrast in images)
If font size is readable
Flags undescriptive links such as “click here”, “link”, “more”, “read more”
Flags redundant links red
Flags tables that lack at least one header and caption.
Flags potential Youtube, Canvas embedded video and Canvas embedded audio to bring awareness media will need to be manually reviewed
Flags potential inaccessible files that need to be manually review

Pope Tech menu includes number of errors, alerts, and identifies elements needed to be addressed to pass accessibility.
Also, but still in beta…

Possible list (refrain from using manually creating lists)
(Note: Unordered List & Ordered List buttons do not work properly at the moment...stay tuned!)

Using Pope Tech is simple and intuitive. Below you can see a short guide on how to launch the Pope Tech interface in Canvas. The rest of the tabs provide more detailed examples and guides.

Step 1: Open Pope Tech

To test a page for accessibility concerns, simply activate Pope Tech by selecting on the icon next to the Cancel and Save buttons on the page while the page is in "Edit" mode. Pope Tech works even when a page is not published.

Pope Tech button is next to “Cancel” and “Save” button.

Step 2: Become Familiar with Pope Tech Interface

Once Pope Tech is activated, the Pope Tech menu will appear on the right-hand side of the screen. At the top of the interface, the number of errors and alerts will need to be addressed.

Errors are accessibility errors and should be remediated.
Alerts are suspicious areas. Alerts may or may not be an accessibility error. Nonetheless, the user should review them and fix as needed.
Rescan can be used once errors and alerts are fixed. This will allow the user to scan the page a second time and verify that all the fixes were applied correctly

Number of errors, alerts, and Rescan button are located at the top of the Pope Tech menu.

Note: Files, videos, and audio will always be listed as alerts, as these require manual review with human eyes!

The Instructor Accessibility Guide flags Documents and Videos to be manually reviewed. In the Pope Tech interface, results are organized by the following categories:

Images and Links
Text and Contrast
Headings
Tables and Lists
Documents and Videos

The number of error and alerts will be displayed accordingly per category.

Each of the areas can be expanded to show the errors or alerts. To expand, simply select the arrow displayed next to the category name.

Expanding a category provides additional description and guidance.

Once you can expand a category, Pope Tech will display details of the issues.

You will also be presented with fields and tools for fixing these issues. To view the error results; and how to fix them, click anywhere between the icon and the plus "+" sign. This is the area within the red frame in the next image.

Note: Selecting any icons inside the Pope Tech interface will highlight the indicated content on the Canvas page.

Step 3: Start Fixing! Then Rescan

Select a category to address. The menu expands to display:
1. Alert or Error Description
2. Number of results
3. Accessibility application field to remediate alerts and errors.

Remediate errors by selecting the desired category.

Watch this quick video demo to learn how to fix accessibility issues.

Users can expand each category to get to details of the issues. Users will be presented with fields and tools for fixing the issues. For instance, the video example below demonstrates how to fix the alternative text in the "Images and Links" area.

Tip: users can select the different icons in Pope Tech interface to view the affected text in the Canvas editor as shown in the video below.

Fixing Alternative Text

Color Contrast errors are listed in the Text and Contrast category of the Pope Tech tool. Users can fix color contrast errors by one of two methods:

Adjust the color in the Canvas rich text editor.

Adjust the contrast by using the sliders in the Pope Tech interface until the interface displays a “Pass” message.

This video demonstrates how to fix such errors:

Fixing Table Captions and Headers

Table errors are listed in the Tables and Lists area of Pope Tech. Using Pope Tech, it is very simple to add a table caption and designate whether the first row or the first column must be the header. This video demonstrates how to fix such errors:

Common Icons and Definitions

Here are some of the most common icons you will see when using the Pope Tech accessibility tool. Feel free to click each icon to read guides providing additional information to what they represent in Pope Tech.