Newsletter

Reminder, the spring 2026 CATL Mini-Conference will be Thursday, February 19. Block off your calendar now so you can attend sessions around your classes. The full schedule and registration is ready for you to review. Find sessions that work around your classes/meetings and register today! When you register, you get a calendar invitation making sure your time for professional development and connecting with colleagues from across campus is held for you. 

12 Weeks to Digital Accessibility
Week 3 - UDOIT > UFIXIT 

Hopefully you ran TidyUp and starting to explore the UDOIT tool within Canvas. This week, you're encouraged to learning more about how to fix various things within your Canvas courses. Within the UDOIT tool, the UFIXIT area outlines high, medium, and low impact issues within the ........ do something! Do all the things that are easist. 

Action for this week:

1. If you're following allow with these action steps you likely ran a UDOIT scan last week. 
2. Decide how you will talk with your students about your ongoing efforts to improve accessible content and how you will invite feedback. Draft your “day-one” slides or talking points.
3. New course prep: As you build your course in Canvas, use the available tools—UDOIT, Canvas checker, Microsoft accessibility checkers—to review your content before publishing it for students.
4. Copying a course from a previous term: You may copy the course directly into your spring course, but first consider running a UDOIT scan on the prior-term version to understand the volume of existing issues. Depending on the number of errors, you might prefer to create a sandbox course and copy the full course there. Many instructors find it helpful to use a sandbox for remediation and bring content into the live course gradually as they update it. Regardless of your approach:
   1. Run TidyUp to identify and remove unused files.
   2. Use UDOIT’s built-in remediation workflow to begin fixing issues in your Week 1 content and files.
   3. Continue working through future weeks as time allows.

The goal is to make steady progress. You may learn new skills along the way that you’ll apply to earlier content later. For now, focus on completing as many straightforward fixes as you can and moving forward consistently.

Have you visited CATL's Little Free Library (new as of Fall 2025)? Well you should! We release specific books to the library with a set number of complimentary copies. Each book released to the Little Free Library is accompanied by a CATL-sponsored chance to discuss the book with others from across campus. The Fall 2025 books were Small Teaching and The New College Classroom (a few copies of each are still available). The Spring 2026 books are Engaging Ideas, Design for All Learnings, and Teaching Effectively with ChatGPT. You are welcome to join us to discuss these books starting at the CATL mini-conference and then 2-3 more book club meetings during spring semester. 

Kick off your class with activities that encourage conversation and community. Try playing music as students arrive and posting a "question of the day" to spark brief discussions. CATL offers ready-to-use conversation starters and slides to make this even easier—just copy and paste into your presentation! Setting this tone early fosters a classroom culture of discussion and connection. Learn more about creating a learning environment ready for peer interactions. This can also help create a climate of belonging! 

• Hypothesis is a social annotation tool you can use to increase student engagement in an online, hybrid and/or flipped classroom. UWL has a subscription and it embeds into Canvas. Students can annotate text (pdf, word etc.), websites, videos, or images you share with them to aid in their understanding. Want to know more? Hypothesis hosts a series of free workshops to help you integrate this resource into your canvas courses. Reach out to CATL for additional information and help.
• We've updated Akindi to 1.3. What this means for you? The Akindi launch page has a new look,  but same functionality you expect.   
• Please review the important Spring 2026 updates from the Disability Resource Center, including new deadlines for student accommodation requests and strictly enforced exam‑scheduling cutoffs. Additionally, ensure your final exam date and time are accurately posted in your syllabus and Canvas, and encourage DRC students to schedule their finals early.