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Course accessibility service

Content review October 2024

Manitoba Flexible Learning Hub (MB Hub) offers a course accessibility auditing service to help instructors better meet the Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA) Accessible Information and Communication Standard. The service reviews your courses’ digital media and content for accessibility issues. We will fix problems and provide feedback on further changes to your course materials.

Since May 1, 2024, all digitally hosted course content must meet the provincial AMA standard.

Our instructional designer (ID) will use top industry software, YuJa Panorama, with machine learning to review your course. After an initial course review, the ID will use the integrated tools to fix issues (whenever possible). Panorama was built to meet the standards of WCAG 2.1 level AA, which is the web content expectation for the Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA).

Instructors will receive a course accessibility report (with the fixing files and the WCAG-flagged issues with recommendations). Any file the ID could not access or correct will be noted to the instructor.

Have your course reviewed against AMA Accessible Information and Communication Standard 

Both Brightspace and Moodle courses can be assessed. Submit links to courses for review by MB Hub staff starting today for instructors from: 

• Assiniboine College,
• Brandon University,
• Red River College Polytech,  
• The University of Winnipeg, 
• University College of the North,
• University of Manitoba.
• Université de Saint-Boniface. 

Submit your course for review

Note: University of Manitoba instructors have access to YuJa Panorama. For more information, visit the Panaroma technology’s page, from UM’s The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. 

About YuJa Panorama 

YuJa Panorama improves the accessibility of digital media and course content using machine learning with artificial intelligence capabilities. Panorama can ingest, inspect, and convert a variety of file formats. YuJa Panorama helps create digital media and course content that meets WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards, which is the requirement of AMA. 

Panorama can: 

• Creates accessible alternative files 
• Check and suggest font size 
• Resolve colour contrast issues 
• Scan for alternative text on images 
• Check links for descriptions 

Important: YuJa Panorama was vetted by both the University of Manitoba’s Access and Privacy Office and Information Security and Compliance. 

Accessibility for Manitobans Act 

May 1, 2024, was the deadline for post-secondary organizations to meet the Accessible Information and Communication Standard of the Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA). This standard requires: 

• We ensure web content that is required to access our goods and services and all newly published web content meets or exceeds WCAG 2.1 Level AA guidelines (Manitoba Accessibility Office, 2023) 
• We provide comparable educational materials when a specific material cannot be provided, using the identified accessible format or support. (Manitoba Accessibility Office, 2023) 

Submitting your course 

For this service, partners or individual instructors submit a copy of the course (course shell) in HTML or .mbz format, depending on your institution’s Learning Management System. A link is required because a typical course file size exceeds email limits.

Important: The link should have the access permissions to allow MB Hub access to the file either by:
1) Setting the link to “shared access”
2) Grant specific permission to ariful.shanil@umanitoba.ca

Select one option 

Reference 

Manitoba Accessibility Office. (n.d.). Accessibility for Public Sector. Accessibilitymb.ca. https://accessibilitymb.ca/public-sector/accessibility-for-public-sector.html 

Manitoba Accessibility Office. (2023). Checklist for Educational Institutions (public sector): The Accessibility Standard for Information and Communication. https://accessibilitymb.ca/resources/ic_standard_checklist_educational_institutions.pdf