Accessibility Bug? Shouldn't "Use Dyslexia Friendly Font" account setting override fonts set in RCE?

Sorry for the MS paint editing but I'm busy working my way through all my course content to remove the font-family from everything, because we have the dyslexics. I had set "Consolas, mono-space, sans-serif" to suit the vibe of my subject matter, but accessibility overrides… just not automatically via account settings.

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RM-BhamTech

I think the quick fix would be to flag "font-family" in the accessibility checker. Not an outstanding solution, but it would be helpful in the short term, at least until the "Use a Dyslexia Friendly Font" feature can be made more robust.

Chris

Hi @RM-BhamTech,

The way html/css are designed, inline styles like you have take the highest priority over anything else, as the CSS Specificity documentation explains. So it's probably working as the general web specs say it should at this point.

With that said, if Instructure used the !important designation for the dyslexic font style, that should override inline styles, but many seem to say that's not a best practice at this point. From an accessibility view, it would probably make the most sense for Instructrue to use the !important option, but it may has undesirable consequences we don't know. I can also imagine some teachers would be upset that their specific font was overridden, even if it was for accessibility. May be a bit of a no-win situation for Instructure here.

Overall my general advice as the Canvas admin for my institution is for teachers to leave the font at default just for the sake of consistency for students who may be taking 5-6 classes at once, but I know not everyone would agree with that advice.

-Chris

RM-BhamTech

All fair points.

The HTML editor in the RCE is already so eager to sanitize away any html/css not explicitly included in the allow list… I don't want it to get worse.

I would prefer if the "Use a Dyslexia Friendly Font" setting ran a script to remove any instances of inline font-family from the content, leaving the open-dyslexic font set on the html element with the highest specificity. That would leave instructors free to use fonts where they'd like, and anyone who prefers the dyslexia-friendly font can have it.

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