Insert language accent characters into the Canvas editor
Insert a Word/Phrase, Paragraph, or Block of text that is tagged as being written in a specific language for screen readers and other assistive technologies
Make the Language Accents tool available to students in Discussions, Assignment submissions, or Canvas Classic Quizzes
The Language Accents tool currently includes characters for the following languages:
French
Chinese Pinyin
German
Greek (Ancient)
Hawaiian
Hiragana
Italian
Latin
Old English
International Phonetic Alphabet
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Related Tools:
Interface
The following panels will describe what can be accomplished in each section of this tool:
The following controls are available in the Language Accent dialog box when editing content:
1. Language Dropdown
Choose an available language to view accent characters
2. Accent Preview
A larger version of the character will appear here as a character is hovered over or gets keyboard focus
3. Keyboard Shortcuts
When available, you can find keyboard shortcuts for using this character on Mac or PC
4. Let students use selected language in responses
Check this box to make the Language Accents tool available for students to use in responses to the current Assignment, Discussion, or Classic Quiz
5. Insert tagged content
Insert a Word/Phrase, Paragraph, or Block of content that is tagged with the selected language for assistive technologies to reference (NOTE: To see these options, place your cursor into the editor)
6. Available accents
Click any of the available accents to insert them at the cursor position
To let students use the Language Accents tool for responses to a specific Assignment, Discussion, or Classic Quiz
Open the Language Accents tool
Check the box that says "Let students use selected language in responses"
Save the content
Repeat for other content
There is not a way in Canvas for this setting to be applied to an entire course so this needs to be repeated for any Assignments, Discussions, or Classic Quizzes where you want students to have access to this tool.
Not Compatible with New Quizzes
Just like the DesignPLUS Sidebar, we cannot make this tool available for New Quizzes at this time.
When using the Language Accents tool as a content editor, you can insert content that will be tagged for assistive technologies as being written in the desired language.
Word/Phrase
To insert a word or phrase into existing content:
Open the Language Accents tool
Place your cursor where you want the word or phrase
Click the Word/Phrase button
Replace the placeholder text with the desired word or phrase
Paragraph
To insert a single paragraph into existing content:
Open the Language Accents tool
Place your cursor at the beginning or end of an existing paragraph
Click the Paragraph button
Replace the placeholder text with the desired content
Block
To insert a block of content that can contain multiple paragraphs, lists, or other content into existing content:
Open the Language Accents tool
Place your cursor where you want the block of content
Click the Block button
Replace the placeholder text with the desired word or phrase
If there is a language that you would like but it is not in the list, please send an email to support@cidilabs.com and let us know. We are not linguists so it is helpful if you can let us know what is needed for that language or any other information to help us know what is needed.
Please consider the following when choosing to use Language Accent characters:
Tagging content using either the options in this tool or using the lang attribute available through the Attributes tool allows screen readers and other assistive technologies to understand the language in which the content is written.
While the option to utilize language accents was available in the legacy version of the Design Tools sidebar, this version adds the following features:
Student view automatically loads the selected language rather than requiring students to choose it from the dropdown
Ability to insert placeholders that are tagged with the language for assistive technologies