Conversations about digital accessibility in higher education are gaining momentum, supported by clearer standards that take effect for public institutions in April 2026 under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
While some instructors may feel unsure about what this means for their courses, equal access in digital spaces has long been part of our shared responsibility; what’s new is more specific guidance to help us put that commitment into practice. Rather than viewing accessibility as a last-minute requirement, we can approach it as an ongoing, meaningful part of inclusive teaching.
If you’re an instructor wondering where to begin or how to proceed for the courses you teach, this blog series offers a step-by-step approach to making your learning materials and assignments in UVACanvas more accessible in an integrated, sustainable way.
Overview

This series will break the process down into three sections:
- Part 1 will walk you through how to take stock of your Canvas materials and help you manage the scope of your work by archiving or deleting materials.
- Part 2 will walk you through how to assess the current state of your Canvas course materials in terms of their accessibility.
- Part 3 will walk you through how to prioritize and then begin improving the accessibility of your Canvas course materials.
Start with an inventory
Everyone has a role to play in ensuring UVA is an accessible, inclusive environment for all students, faculty, staff, and visitors. As an instructor, it’s essential that your digital course content (e.g., readings, videos, websites) and learning materials (e.g., assignments, assessments) are accessible for all students.
For courses you’re teaching now, have taught recently, or are planning to teach in the near future, your first step is to identify where these materials reside, and create an inventory of what they are. You’ll then use this inventory to assess whether these materials need improvement to be more accessible, and to help you plan and prioritize your approach.
Not sure where to start? We’ll share some strategies below for inventorying your materials in Canvas. We’ll also share a template you can use to support your work as you proceed through the three blog posts in this series.

Start high level then iterate
Most of the planning processes we’ll discuss in this blog series can be done iteratively — starting at a high level, then moving to more detailed levels as you go.
Inventorying is no different. Before you start trying to inventory individual files and documents, you may want to first list the “buckets” of things you need to work on at a high level. For example, you could start by listing all the courses you maintain in Canvas. Then you could break down the different types of learning materials in those courses, and once you’re ready to assess and work on them, you can create inventories of individual files or documents so you can track your progress.
How to inventory in Canvas
If your course materials are in Canvas, the following course menu items would include items to include in your inventory:
- Pages
- Files
- Assignments
- Modules
- Quizzes
- Syllabus
- Assignments
- Discussions
If you find it cumbersome to manage an inventory that’s spread out across so many different places, consider collecting your inventory in a single spreadsheet so you can manage it all in one place. We invite you to download this sample Excel workbook to get started; you’ll be able to use it throughout this series of blog posts.
This sample inventory workbook has one worksheet (tab) for each of the blog posts in this series. Start with the worksheet (tab) labeled “Part 1.” For now, just fill in Column A with the name of the item, and Column B with where that item is found in your course (e.g. pages, assignments, resources).
Managing your scope
Once you’ve built an initial inventory of course content and learning materials, it’s a perfect time for some cleanup. The time you invest in document hygiene early in the process can really pay off in reducing your workload in future stages of this process, so it’s a good step to take before moving ahead with assessment and improvement, which we will cover in blog posts 2 and 3.
Deleting items
Review your inventory to identify any materials that are outdated, no longer used, or are duplicated. Delete those extraneous items from your Canvas course site. As you do so, mark them for deletion in Column C in your inventory workbook, or simply remove them from your inventory. As you do this, you will reduce the inventory of items to work on, and streamline your upcoming steps.
If you’re not sure if something is still relevant or used, review your learning objectives. How directly does this item support the learning objectives of the course as you’re currently delivering it? Would those learning objectives be supported as strongly without this item?
If you have reviewed your learning objectives and still hesitate to delete a certain item, just remove it from your Canvas course and store it somewhere accessible to you only, in case you need to bring it back at some future point. For now, you can still remove it from your inventory of items to work on.
Archiving items
Next, review your inventory for documents or materials that you can archive. If an item meets all three of the following criteria, it doesn’t need to meet the Title II accessibility standards until or unless a student specifically requests it:
- The item is available only for historical or reference purposes, and
- The item is kept in a clearly marked archive section, and
- The item is no longer updated.
Any items that meet all three of these criteria can be moved to an archived Canvas course, or you can clearly mark them as archived material where they are – and avoid any further updates. Examples of potentially archivable materials might include:
- Supplemental readings that are optional, not for credit, and not required to understand the material
- Completed assignments from past students of your course, provided only as optional examples
Mark these archived items accordingly on your inventory (Column D of our sample inventory worksheet) so they can go to the bottom of your priority list for subsequent stages of the process.
Next steps
Once you’ve finished deleting and archiving, what’s left is what you’re keeping.

In the next blog post, we’ll discuss tools you can use to assess the accessibility of those remaining materials so you can find out which ones are in good shape, and which ones could use some improvement. The final post will provide guidance on how to prioritize and work on those improvements in a way that is sustainable, manageable, and effective.
Questions about any of this? Please feel free to leave a comment below or contact cte-accessibility@virginia.edu.







