August 31, 2020:  Headers on your Homepage

Accessibility Goal of the Week

Your course homepage (or landing page) is the first thing students will encounter in your online course. It invites your students into the community and guides them to important information (adapted from “Becoming an Effective Online Instructor”). 

Today’s goal deals with adding headers to your homepage text.   

Using headers is a way to "tag" elements in your page in order to define whether the text is a Header 2, Header 3, Header 4, or a paragraph. We use these tags in the same way we think of an outline; the title of the page is typically Header 1 (Canvas automatically makes the page title Header 1), while main headings are Header 2, subheadings are Header 3, and so on.  All text that is not a heading can be considered "paragraph" text.  

Who does this help?  While sighted users can visually scan a page for larger, bold text which commonly denotes headings, students who are blind and who use screen-reading software (like JAWS) must rely on auditory cues to distinguish headers from regular text.  JAWS will not alert the listener that text is bold or larger, but it will voice that a header is present. 

** Does your “homepage” just show the course modules or the assignments list? Consider creating an actual homepage in Canvas Pages.  Check out DVC Online Teaching Materials > Designing Your Course > Homepage Templates

Here's how to add Headers to your homepage:

  1. Go to your course homepage in Canvas.  Click Edit to open the Rich Content Editor. 
  2. Identify what text would be Header 2.  Remember, Canvas makes your title Header 1, so we start with Header 2.   
  3. Select the text with your mouse, then click on the drop-down menu to the right of Font Sizes.   
  4. Click Header 2.  Your text may change size, but you can adjust the size and color as desired.  The header designation will remain. 
  5. Assign any other Header 2’s in your page that are the same level of importance.   
  6. Scan your page text and decide if any text should be Header 3 and assign those following the previous steps.   
  7. You can have as many Header 2's and 3's and 4's as you want as long as they follow hierarchical order.  Any regular text can just be left as "Paragraph".  Click Save.

Here's a link to a video demonstrating the steps outlined above.  Need more help?  Email Carrie Million at cmillion@dvc.edu.  

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