Accessibility Checker and Power Paste rolling out today in edX Studio!

Owned by Brad Brown
Jan 02, 2024
3 min read

We are excited to announce that we have two new features, Accessibility Checker and Power Paste, rolling out today in Studio. 

TL;DR

The Accessibility Checker offers the following

  • Low effort  intelligible WCAG 2.0 warnings and solutions for content creators

  • Shorter QA reviews and less legal risk due to  missing WCAG 2.0 requirements

  • Check  HTML directly in the Editor for various WCAG and Section 508 accessibility problems. It has an auto-repair feature that lets the user fix identified problems

Value of the Accessibility Checker: The Accessibility Checker has the primary advantage of being very low effort and having intelligible warnings and solutions for content creators, who are most likely not accessibility experts. We have a general goal of minimizing instances of asking content creators to edit the HTML view of course content in order to make it WCAG-conformant, and this helps with that significantly. 

Course content will be more accessible, consistent, and predictable because the accessibility checker reviews for the following content:

  • Heading levels

  • Lists

  • Contrast ratios on text

  • Image alt text

  • Tables

  • Captions

  • Scopes

Accessibility Checker User Instructions

As you enter content into the Editor, the Accessibility Checker will automatically start looking for any potential accessibility issues. When using the Accessibility Checker, begin by looking for the accessibility icon at the end of the toolbar. The Accessibility Checker will open on the right side of the page with details on each issue found. Navigate between the items to learn about each issue and apply the fixes. 

Accessibility Checker Review

  • Adjacent links: Adjacent links with the same URL should be a single link. This rule verifies link errors where the link text may include spaces and break the link into multiple links.

  • Heading paragraphs: Headings should not contain more than 120 characters.

  • Image alt text: Images should include an alt attribute describing the image content.

  • Image alt filename: Image filenames should not be used as the alt attribute describing the image content. Currently, files uploaded directly to Canvas create a redirect that does not properly verify image filenames.

  • Sequential headings: Heading levels should not be skipped (e.g. H2 to H4). However, the tool does not check if the first header starts with H2 or whether the headings are sequential with the rest of the content in the page. Tables do not begin with H1, which is designated for the page title.

  • Small text contrast: Text smaller than 18pt (or bold 14pt) should display a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1.

  • Table captions: Tables should include a caption describing the contents of the table.

  • Table header scope: Table headers should specify scope and the appropriate structure.

  • Table header: Tables should include at least one header.

Power Paste

We are also excited to announce the new Power Paste feature is live in the edX Studio Text and Problem editors. Through this enhancement content can be created more quickly and efficiently.

Many course authoring teams receive content in the form of a Google or Microsoft Word document and then copy/paste that content into the  editor. The content appears to be formatted correctly in the editor, but there are various formatting issues when viewing either in Studio or the LMS. Needing to fix these formatting issues slows authors down. 

The first image below shows how formatting previously appeared in the text editor (everything looks good). The second image shows that the same text has formatting issues when viewing in Studio. The third image shows the same formatting issues in the LMS. These issues are no longer with us, enabling an important authoring efficiency win for course authoring teams.

In the Text Editor

 

In Studio

 

In the LMS