Use Design Accessibility
Canva believes in providing accessibility tools to ensure your designs are as inclusive as possible. With Design Accessibility, you can find out what accessibility issues are present in your design so that you can fix them without needing to be an accessibility expert.
Design Accessibility isn't a guarantee of accessibility compliance, but it'll help get you there. It's another step toward making Canva the world's most accessible design tool.
Use Design Accessibility
- Open the design that you'd like to check the Accessibility.
- From the Editor, select File from the menu, then select Accessibility.
- Select Check Design Accessibility to open the Design Accessibility window on your editor.
You’ll see a summary of accessibility issues detected that are grouped by category, and include typography, color contrast, and alternative text:
Typography
Text with font sizes smaller than 12pt can be difficult to read, especially for people with visual impairments. If small text is detected, you can manually adjust your font size to be 12pt or larger in the editor or by clicking on the Increase font size to 12pt button within the issue card.
For some design types (presentations, social media, print, website, and video) you also have the option to select and fix multiple typography issues in a single instance.
Color contrast
Low-contrast text is hard to read for people with visual impairments or color blindness. Low contrast is when the color of text is too similar to its background, such as yellow text on a white background.
To fix low-contrast issues, click on one of the color options to apply a suggested text color on the issue card. If no suitable colors are found, you can change your font or background color by following the instructions in this article.
Alternative Text
Alt text helps people with low vision or blindness understand the content and context of images.
To add alt text or mark an image as decorative, follow these steps:
- Locate the issue card for the image without alt text.
- Click the Add alternative text button.
- Enter the appropriate text in the text box or check the Mark as decorative checkbox.
- Click Save to save your changes.
To learn how to write good alternative text, please read our tips for writing good alternative text in this article.
For some design types (presentations, social media, print, website, and video) you also have the option to select and fix multiple typography issues in a single instance.
Our team will be adding more types of automatically detected issues soon. If you have a particular issue type you'd like to request, please get in touch with our team and mention the Design Accessibility tool.
Can I use the design accessibility multi-select function for Canva Docs?
No. The Design Accessibility multi-select function isn’t currently available in Canva Docs.
There’s an issue that I don’t think is a real issue.
We've worked hard to ensure no "false positives" regarding our automatically detected issue, but we know some may still slip through. Please get in touch with our support team if you feel like you've found an issue that's not really a problem.
Will this tool make my design WCAG A, AA, or AAA compliant?
Design Accessibility isn't a compliance tool. No automated accessibility checker can guarantee accessibility compliance as it requires manual testing to ensure it works with all assistive technologies, such as screen readers.
How accessible is Canva?
Accessibility is a top priority at Canva, and we're working with accessibility specialists and disability consultants to improve the usability and accessibility of Canva.
Please visit our landing page at https://www.canva.com/accessibility/ to learn more about Canva’s accessibility features, or review our latest VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) to understand the current accessibility issues within Canva. If you or a Canva user finds accessibility issues, they can contact us via our support page.
