Make your communication materials accessible with Panorama

It’s here, it’s smart and it’s easy to use – the new Panorama portal to help you create accessible materials for a variety of users.

If you are looking to ensure your content is accessible – for PDFs, websites, guidebooks, reports, reference materials, posters, invitations or any other material others will read – Panorama is your new best friend. You can also use Panorama to create materials that meet your own accessibility needs. 

Panorama is an accessibility tool that has been available on UM Learn for instructors since 2022. Now staff can use it, too – because it’s being relaunched in a password-protected portal. You just log in to Panorama using your UM password and use it to check and improve any materials you produce. We are also offering a workshop called Panorama – Improving Digital Accessibility on June 13 for those interested in learning how to improve the accessibility of digital media and course content.

It’s the law

Beginning May 1, the University of Manitoba must abide by the Accessible Information and Communication Standard Regulation—part of the Accessibility for Manitobans Act. The regulation states that educational institutions and other bodies must, among other things, make educational materials accessible.

How Panorama helps you

Panorama checks how accessible your materials are and provides suggestions for improvement. It can also create accessible alternative formats for your users who have disabilities and different abilities.

Panorama scans your content and creates an accessibility report that flags issues and provides suggestions for how to resolve each of them. This allows you to ensure the accessibility of your content before it is distributed or published.

Using Panorama’s  Alternative Formats Menu, you can make various changes to text to improve readability. For example, you can change the text size, increase line spacing, select a readable font, and change themes. You can also highlight parts of speech and use Line Focus to facilitate focused reading. Panorama can also create accessible PDF, high contrast, text to speech, braille and audio files.

You are the only person who can access your accessibility reports – no one else will see or evaluate you on them. The product has been vetted by UM’s Access and Privacy Office and Information Security and Compliance.

To access Panorama, log in to the Panorama portal with your UMnetID and password.

Learn more from The Centre

The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning is your campus resource for accessibility. Visit Panorama on The Centre’s website for more information about this tool.

You can also book an appointment with the media team at The Centre for help to make your materials more accessible. Please email us at TheCentre [at] umanitoba [dot] ca.

Training

We have an upcoming workshop called Panorama – Improving Digital Accessibility that is being offered on June 13, 2024. This workshop will go over how to create pages in UM Learn from HTML templates, discover best practices in managing files, and understand your legal responsibility in creating accessible content

Support

Panorama is a YuJa Inc. product. If you have questions about Panorama, visit the Panorama Digital Accessibility Platform Overview on the YuJa Help Center website. You’ll find video tutorials, quick start guides and general documentation.

You can also contact YuJa Inc. directly between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. CST:

By phone: 1-888-257-2278
By email: support [at] yuja [dot] com
Through Twitter: @yujanow

The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning