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Accessible Technology

Grackle at UW

Grackle is a suite of accessibility checker add-ons for Google Workspace, available to all University of Washington students, faculty, and staff. Grackle helps you find and fix accessibility issues in Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets.

Grackle makes it easier to create digital content that is usable by everyone, including individuals with disabilities.

Ensuring your documents are accessible is a key part of the UW’s commitment to compliance with the ADA Title II regulations, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standards, and University policy.

Getting Started with Grackle

To access Grackle at UW:

  • You must be a current or active student, faculty, or staff member.
  • You must be logged into your UW Google account.
  • Your UW Google account must be the default account in the active web browser session; if necessary, log out of all Google accounts and log back in with your UW account.

Adding the Grackle extensions:

The extensions can be added in two ways (each extension needs to be installed separately):

  • Install directly from the Google Workspace Marketplace using the links:
  • Access it from the “Extensions” menu within Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides.
    • Select Extensions
    • Choose Grackle Docs, Sheets or Slides depending on which application you are using
    • Choose Launch
    • Allow Grackle Docs permission to access your Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides

Using Grackle

Once you’ve installed Grackle into your workspace, you are ready to start using it.

Access Grackle Docs

  • Make sure you have already installed Grackle.
  • Open a file within Google Doc, Sheets, or Slides.
  • Select the Extensions
  • Select Grackle Docs, Sheets, or Slides and choose
  • The Grackle accessibility checker will appear as a right-hand sidebar in your web browser.

Upon launching Grackle, a sidebar panel will appear in the browser window. If you are logged into your UW Google account properly, it will automatically begin scanning the current document. Grackle scans and categorizes the content into major categories specific to each application:

  • Docs: Document, Images, Headings, Tables, Landmarks, and Content.
  • Sheets: Sheets, Tables, Charts, Contents, Table Structure
  • Slides: Presentation, Slides, Tables, Elements, Contents

Review the scan results. Each category is marked by a heading, accompanied by an icon indicating the number of errors found within that category.

  • A green circle with a checkmark indicates all items in that category passed the accessibility check. No action is needed.
  • A red circle indicates the number of failures in that category. Follow the prompts to fix each failure.
  • A yellow circle indicates the number of warnings in that category. These may or may not be failures but require closer inspection to be sure. Follow the prompts to investigate each issue and if needed, fix it.

Follow these steps:

  1. For each category that has failures or warnings, correct each issue within that category.
  2. Click the blue “Re-Check” button at the top of the Grackle panel to confirm that you have fixed the issues.
  3. Repeat these steps as needed until all checks have passed.

Export to PDF with Grackle Docs and Slides

Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets can all export to PDF, but historically the PDFs created from Google Workspace have not been tagged PDFs, which is required for accessibility.  Google is gradually rolling out fixes for this problem but it PDFs are not reliably accessible across all Google apps and operating systems. Grackle provides a solution to this problem for Google Docs and Slides. To export to an accessible PDF from either of these apps:

  1. Open a file within Google Docs or Slides.
  2. From the Extensions menu, select Grackle Docs or Grackle Slides, and select Launch.
  3. Important: Fix all accessibility items before exporting the PDF. Select “Re-check” to verify the document is ready.
  4. Select the Export to PDF
  5. If prompted, Allow Grackle Docs access to Google Drive to save the PDF.
  6. If prompted that “Some items did not pass the accessibility check…,” select No (to cancel) and then fix any outstanding issues before continuing.
  7. The Progress Monitor window will appear.
  8. Select Start.
  9. Wait for the process to complete.
  10. When done, select one of the options:
    1. View: Will open the PDF in Google Drive.
    2. Download: Will save the file to your computer.
    3. Close: Will close the Progress Monitor window.
  11. The resulting PDF can be found in the same location as the original Google document, with the same file name, but as a PDF.

NOTE: Grackle does not currently export to an accessible tagged PDF from Google Sheets. However, if you follow the above steps within Google Sheets, you can Export to HTML using Grackle Sheets and the accessibility of the output is likely to be better than if exporting to HTML directly from Google Sheets.

Resources from Grackle

Need Assistance with Grackle?

If you have questions about using Grackle or digital accessibility, contact Accessible Technology Services by submitting a Digital Accessibility Consult Request. A link is available near the top of the Accessible Technology Help page.

Additional information is available on the UWare Grackle page.