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Language in Canvas

Identifying the language of a web page, as well as the language of its individual parts, helps to ensure that screen readers will correctly pronounce the content.

For an overview of this issue, see Language in our IT Accessibility Checklist.

Techniques

The default language of a Canvas course

In Canvas, language can be defined at the course level, within the course Settings.  This affects all of the built-in content in Canvas for that course, including the course menu items, button labels, and other text.  The underlying HTML is properly coded so screen readers, if they support the language of the course, will pronounce all content correctly.

Defining language of parts in Canvas

Currently, the rich text editor in Canvas does not provide a means for identifying the language of selected text that differs from the language of the page. Therefore, if content changes from the default language, the only way to identify the language of the content is to do so in the HTML Editor using HTML code as explained on our  Language on websites page.