In September 2020, the "Act on Accessibility of Digital Public Services" came into force, which means that the content on websites must adhere to a certain level of accessibility. In summary, these principles are followed for every website:

Possible to perceive - Information and components of a user interface must present to users in a way that they can perceive.
Manageable - Components of a user interface and navigation must be manageable.
Understandable - Information and the usage of the user interface must be understandable
Robust - Contents must be robust enough to be reliably interpreted by a wide range of different user programs, including helping tools.

This means new tools for you as a student at Lund University. Through Ally being integrated with Canvas, every student will have the opportunity to view course contents (texts, PDFs and files) in different formats. This is a change that will take place gradually in each course and will begin to be implemented from December 2020. Some parts of this process will go faster, for example the text content in Canvas is updated automatically. Linked material and uploaded documents from your teacher will take longer to adapt accessibility and will be a long-term process.

What does Ally mean for me?

Ally means that every student has the possibility to view content in several different formats. The function is not only directed at students who have special needs for this, but is a study aid for everyone. For example, are you a student who learns better from listening rather than reading? Download the contents as an mp3 format and listen instead! Isn't that great? Read more on how you can download course content, its functions and alternative formats on the next pages of the guide.

Limitations in Ally

The process of making all course content accessible is long term and not all documents will be up to date immediately. If you think there are any issues with accessibility in your course, you should contact your teacher. Not all material will be able to made accessible, for example, your teacher has no control over material they have not produced.

You can read more about the accessibility statement by clicking on Help in the Canvas menu (1) and scroll down to Accessibility statement Canvas (2). Here you can also report if anything is not working as it should.

Image of the accessability statement button