Posted on May 8, 2025 by Tim Aguirre

Cidi Labs & TidyUP: Enhanced Accessibility Tools Coming to Canvas

Over the summer CSUN will upgrade from Ally to a new accessibility tool in Canvas from Cidi Labs. Here are a few steps you can take before the next semester to get ready.

Get Ready for Cidi Labs

Cidi Labs has all of the familiar features from Ally, including alternate formats for your students, but some features will move around within Canvas.

The first “get ready” step is to familiarize yourself with our new tool. This short video gives you a brief introduction.

One big difference is that Ally offers little dials next to all of your content plus a Course Accessibility Report. Cidi Labs does not have dials. If you’ve used the dials more, look at the menu for one of your courses, find the Course Accessibility Report, and check it out.

You will access Cidi Labs through the course menu, and it will work more like the Course Accessibility Report you have today.

The second “get ready” step is to update the information for your students about alternate formats in your syllabus or elsewhere. Students access Cidi Labs alternate formats from a small down arrow labeled “Alternate Formats.” Formats include:

Optimized PDF
HTML
MP3
EPUB
Text

Dropdown menu showing alternate format options including Optimized PDF, HTML, MP3, EPUB, and Text

As with Ally, students only see the alternate formats and none of the accessibility information. Learn more about the Student View.

The first time you see Cidi Labs in Canvas, you will be prompted to authorize the new tool. You only have to do this once for your Canvas account. When you authorize Cidi Labs, it will be available in the menu for each of your courses.

Canvas Cidi Labs UDOIT authorization request screen with options to cancel or authorize

The official date for the transition has not yet been finalized, but it will be as close to the start of the Summer 2025 semester as possible.

Bonus: TidyUP by Cidi Labs

The Chancellor’s Office is sponsoring a second tool from Cidi Labs called TidyUp. Once authorized, TidyUP lets you see where a file is published in your course. For Canvas content, like Pages, TidyUP shows you when the page was last updated, whether it contains content, where in your course it’s used, and more.