Tag Basics

How does your formatting in Canvas impact your learners?

Screen readers interpret the yellow highlighted parts when the Canvas' rich content editor tools (like the built-in lists and heading level drop-down menu) are used to format your instructional content.

Manually increasing the text size and bolding your headings are not the same as using the rich content editor tools! 

This is because when you use Canvas' rich content editor tools, in the backend HTML editor, Canvas applies special tags (highlighted in yellow below and brackets "<" and ">") to the formatted text or picture. In the rich content editor view Links to an external site., we can't see these tags. We can only review the tags in the HTML Editor view Links to an external site. of our Canvas page. 

Basically, screen readers will interpret the tags applied from Canvas' rich content editor tools. 

Check out the difference between what screen readers "see" and what we see on our Canvas page below. 

 Here's what a screen reader interprets:

<h2>Here's a heading.</h2>

 

<p>Here's a paragraph.</p>

 

<p>Here's a bulleted list:</p> 

<ul>

<li>Item 1</li>

<li>Item 2</li>

</ul>

 

<img src="$IMS-CC-FILEBASE$/Images/bored.jpg?canvas_download=1&canvas_qs_download_frd=1" alt="Bored." width="120" height="128" />

 Here's what all that would look like if it were rendered by the browser:

Here's a heading.

Here's a paragraph.

Here's a bulleted list:

  • Item 1
  • Item 2

Bored

Adapted Content created by Tom Gibbons of South Seattle College under a Creative Commons Attribution License.