Accessibility – EDVICE EXCHANGE

Your Accessibility Helper: All About Yuja’s Panorama

By Dana Dawson

If you’re relatively new to digital accessibility considerations (as many of us at the CAT were at the beginning of this initiative), learning about the many ways in which your digital course materials may be inaccessible can feel overwhelming. The first step towards understanding the core principles of digital accessibility will be engaging with CAT’s training on how to make your digital materials accessible. But even after training, you may not remember everything you need to check before posting documents, PowerPoint slides, videos, etc. Will all the steps to making a PowerPoint or video accessible stay with you until the moment you need to create or remediate that new slidedeck or lecture recording? This is where YuJa’s Panorama comes in!

Panorama is a tool that integrates with Canvas and helps identify and sometimes fix digital materials that are inaccessible so that you can ensure all of your students can readily access your course content. Panorama assesses each item created in, or uploaded to your Canvas course and offers an accessibility report and rating. In CAT’s accessibility training, we will provide an opportunity for you to understand and practice how to use Panorama, but here is an explanation of the basic implementations of this useful tool.

In your course Modules, Panorama will place an icon next to each item that indicates its level of accessibility. Here’s an example from one of the CAT’s Canvas sites:

Accessibility is a spectrum; because every individual has their own particular needs, digital items will be more or less accessible, and Panorama can help us ensure that our materials are the most accessible they can be according to current standards and practices. In the above image, a green smiley face icon signals that the item is most likely to be fully accessible (though PDF’s often have accessibility issues that are not flagged by Panorama and so must be manually checked), a yellow “meh” face icon signals some accessibility issues that require attention, and a red sad face icon signals that the item requires significant remediation. Items outside of Canvas that you provide links to cannot be assessed by Panorama and will not have an accessibility report.

In Modules, clicking the smiley green, “meh” yellow, or sad red icon will allow you to access the Panorama tools for items built in Canvas such as Assignments, Discussions, and Pages. If an item such as a PDF or PowerPoint file is uploaded to Canvas, clicking the icon opens an accessibility report and alternate formats menu. From there, by clicking on the Accessibility Report box, you will be able to review the full accessibility report which identifies specific issues, provides information on how to remediate those issues, and sometimes allows you to fix the identified problems within Panorama’s interface.

Many of our Canvas sites include a large number and wide variety of materials, so remediating our digital artifacts may be daunting. Consider getting started by reviewing what your students will use first and most frequently throughout your course and then move on to the materials flagged as having the most issues. Tackle the items marked by red, unhappy icons first before moving onto other items.

While Panorama will be a helpful tool in identifying and helping to fix inaccessible digital materials in your courses, it is not perfect and cannot replace having a grasp of best practices for creating digital materials that won’t require remediation. Our recommended approach is to join our workshop series to fully understand how to create accessible digital course materials and to learn how to use Panorama as a supplement to your own knowledge and understanding.

Ready to get started? Check out our Accessible Temple web page or sign up for an upcoming workshop. Have questions? Email us. We’re here to help!

What is the POUR Framework?

by Jeff Rients

As we begin the Accessible Temple initiative, it is important to remember that accessibility isn’t just about meeting the legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It’s about honoring the diversity of your students, creating equitable learning environments, and practicing the kind of teaching that anticipates and celebrates differences instead of reacting to them. Rather than seeing accessibility as a set of compliance checkboxes or technical challenges, we invite you to see it for what it really is—an essential part of good teaching.

At the heart of the Accessible Temple push to bring our materials up to ADA standards is a simple, powerful framework known as POUR. POUR stands for Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust—four principles that guide how we can create content that works for everyone, not just students with formal accommodations.

Let’s break this down:

P: Perceivable

Students must be able to perceive the information presented. What we have in the past provided in just one format (e.g. text) needs to be available in others. This includes providing text alternatives for images (a.k.a. alt text), captions for videos, and sufficient color contrast between text and background.

Why it matters for all learners: Good contrast helps students working in bright light or on old monitors. Captions help English language learners, students studying in noisy environments, or anyone reviewing material on mute.

O: Operable

Students must be able to interact with your materials beyond a traditional keyboard and mouse/trackpad setup. We all too often assume that students will navigate our courses with the exact same tools and methods that we use to build them, and that is not always the case. That means your course should be navigable by keyboard, links should be clearly labeled, and nothing should rely solely on hover or click effects.

Why it matters for all learners: Students with motor disabilities or repetitive stress injuries aren’t the only ones who benefit. Keyboard navigation helps mobile users and even power users who prefer keyboard shortcuts.

U: Understandable

Content must be presented in ways that are clear and predictable. All too often the structure of our course and the purpose of our assignments is clear to us but not fully articulated to students. This includes using consistent layouts (such as Canvas modules), plain language, and providing instructions that are easy to follow.

Why it matters for all learners: Students are balancing a lot. If your syllabus is confusing or your assignment instructions are vague, you’ll lose time answering repeat questions—and students may lose confidence or motivation.

R: Robust

Materials must be compatible with current and future technologies. We can’t predict the tools our students will use to interact with our course content. This means using formats that work across browsers and screen readers and avoiding broken links or outdated plugins.

Why it matters for all learners: Everyone benefits when course materials just work—especially students accessing materials from older devices, slower connections, or assistive technologies.

What This Means for You

Here’s the good news: many of the things that make your course accessible are the same things that make your teaching more effective, your students more confident, and your time better spent. And you don’t have to overhaul everything at once. Small, intentional changes—like using built-in heading styles in Word or uploading videos in Panopto to allow for auto-captioning—can make a huge difference.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be rolling out tools, workshops, and one-on-one support to help you align your course materials with the POUR Framework. Whether you teach online, hybrid, or face-to-face, these practices apply.

We’re not asking for perfection—we’re building a culture of care and continuous improvement. When we design with POUR in mind, we’re not just complying with a set of guidelines—we’re investing in pedagogy that works for everyone.

Ready to get started? Check out our Accessible Temple web page or sign up for an upcoming workshop. Have questions? Email us. We’re here to help!

Jeff Rients, Ph.D, serves as Associate Director of Teaching and Learning Innovation at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Accessible Temple: What Faculty Need to Know

What is Accessible Temple and what does it mean for faculty at Temple? I’m sure these questions are on your mind if you read the recent announcement about this university-wide initiative, which will ensure that all digital materials and websites at Temple meet new requirements for accessibility under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). We at the CAT are here to answer your questions!

We want to emphasize that, first and foremost, committing to accessibility is the right thing to do! Designing our courses with accessibility in mind lowers barriers for our students with disabilities, ensuring that they can access their educational experience fully. And, importantly, the benefits of accessible course design extend further, improving all students’ ability to navigate their learning journey more productively. Put simply, accessibility is not an ‘added bonus’ but a fundamental best practice for teaching. Think for a minute about captions on video content. While students with hearing impairments rely on captions to understand what they are watching, captions may also support focus in distracting environments, assist with vocabulary acquisition, help overcome poor audio quality, and improve comprehension for those who speak English as a second language. As an institution, designing intentionally for accessibility will be an important step in providing a more inclusive learning experience that benefits all students.

In the coming weeks and months, we at the CAT will be clarifying what it means to make the materials you use for teaching and learning accessible and what actions you must take to ensure their accessibility. You’re not alone in this — we will provide the training, resources, and information you need to support you in realizing the goal of an accessible campus.

Get started today by reviewing the information on our Accessible Temple webpage. There you’ll find information about the new guidelines and about the training the CAT will be providing. You’ll also find information about the Digital Accessibility Micro-Credential you will earn by completing the training CAT is offering.

Remember, Access is the Key. Learning is the Destination.