New digital accessibility requirements now take effect on April 26, 2027
You now have additional time to ensure the accessibility of your Canvas course sites and other digital content for all users. Due to a one-year extension issued by the federal government, the digital accessibility regulatory requirements now take effect on April 26, 2027. Use this additional time to ensure that your digital content meets accessibility standards.
Since December 2024, accessibility errors have been reduced by 60 percent in Canvas courses and 90 percent on websites. Continue this excellent work, maintaining your focus on accessibility until all errors are fully resolved.
The University has a wealth of resources to help you grow and practice your accessibility skills:
- Academic Digital Accessibility Liaisons and Web and Email Digital Accessibility Coordinators are available within each academic and support unit to provide local support.
- This Digital Accessibility Resource Guide provides step-by-step guidance on how to create accessible digital content.
- The University’s Office for Digital Accessibility (ODA) provides education, support, guidance, and accessibility checking software.
Visit the Office for Digital Accessibility for more information.
AI Community of Practice (AI CoP) May session to cover AI, access, and neurodiversity
Matthew Belsky, an Access Consultant from the Disability Resource Center, will present on AI, access, and neurodiversity at the May AI CoP monthly discussion. He’ll share practical ways generative AI can reduce common areas of friction for students (clarifying tasks, getting started, and communicating with instructors), with a focus on ADHD, autism, and learning disabilities. No registration is required; join the Zoom discussion on May 20, 2026, at 1 p.m. The AI CoP is an informal community of UMN staff, faculty, and students that shares resources regarding the impact of generative AI on research, administration, teaching and learning, and culture.
Spotlight
Canvas Hall of Fame award recipients champion course site design excellence
The Canvas Hall of Fame Awards recognize instructors who create course sites that strongly support student learning. Based on student nominations and confirmed by the academic technology community across the University, the awards highlight examples of site designs that support student success and celebrate the care instructors put into building their digital learning environments. The program also helps showcase practical ideas and approaches that other instructors can adapt in their own Canvas sites.
Top design trends of 2025-2026 winning course sites
Effective Canvas site design is about more than just aesthetics; it is about building a course site where students connect with peers and engage with course content in meaningful ways. Last year’s inaugural course sites showed three main trends:
- Organizing a course site that makes the initial path to learning clear and easy to follow. This organization commonly comes through in these three ways:
- Using a well-designed, curated homepage with the current and most important work just one click away.
- Creating a weekly learning loop for students that helps students manage their time and understand how daily tasks connect to course goals by building a predictable weekly cycle.
- Designing the course site with clear navigation and consistent naming conventions to ensure students can find content and activities easily.
- Engaging in student growth through learning activities, peer collaboration, and consistent feedback. This includes a few key principles:
- Turning passive reading into a group conversation for students to learn together.
- Checking in early and often with students via knowledge checks, practice quizzes, and surveys so that students have a safe space to practice what they are learning.
- Communicating clear learning expectations with thorough activity descriptions and through the use of rubrics so that students know exactly what learning looks like before they begin their work.
- Connecting students with one another and sharing important resources upfront creates a foundation of mutual support. This design principle shows up in a couple of different ways in course sites:
- Building a “Getting Started” or “Welcome” module complete with links to tech resources, a syllabus quiz, and other important resources for your area of study.
- Messaging or delivering a short video from you, the instructor, welcoming them to your course and inspiring them with the “why” behind their course work.
- Creating a space where all student identities are valued and seen as an asset to the class’s learning community.
Read more details about these course design concepts and view screenshots of Canvas course sites exemplifying these concepts from the 2024-2025 award recipients’ course sites. Additionally, last year’s award winners hosted a panel discussion earlier this semester to share about their design strategies. You can view the video recording from that session by enrolling in the Canvas Hall of Fame instructors’ recorded session in TrainingHub.
A look ahead to this year’s nomination cycle
In late March, the UMN academic technologist community invited students to participate in the second year of the Canvas Hall of Fame Awards program. Within less than a week, 485 students from all five campuses submitted nominations of course sites demonstrating a deep appreciation for the Canvas environments faculty have built.
Over 200 instructors were nominated two or more times, signaling that their site design isn't just a fluke—it’s a consistent, core part of their teaching strategy that students recognize as highly impactful on their learning. The academic technology community is currently reviewing these nominated sites and will announce the 2025-2026 course site design winners next fall.