Skip to content
Customer Support Portal
  • There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

How does toggling the "Score Unused Content" and "Score Unpublished Content" settings at the Admin level affect overall course scores in UDOIT?

When preparing your Canvas courses for accessibility scanning with UDOIT, it's essential to understand how unused and unpublished content can affect your course score and why you should proactively manage this content as needed.

What Are "Unused" and "Unpublished" Content?

  • Unused Content: These are files, pages, assignments, or materials in your course that are not linked or referenced anywhere students would access them. Examples include files uploaded but never inserted into a module or page.
  • Unpublished Content: These are items present in your course but marked as "Unpublished," making them invisible to students, even if linked somewhere in a course.

How UDOIT Handles Unused and Unpublished Content

UDOIT scans all content in your course by default - including used/unused and published/unpublished items. This means even files or pages that students cannot see or access (because they're unused or unpublished) are still scanned by UDOIT for accessibility issues, and therefore, by default, calculated into a course's overall score.

When unpublished and unused content is not counted towards the course score, the UDOIT scorecard will only reflect issues found in used and published content and files. However, the total issue counts will still display in the Content Summary. If there is a significant difference between the scorecard and the Course Summary, this likely indicates that the course has a large amount of unused or unpublished content.

Reasons to Not Score Unused/Unpublished Content in UDOIT

  • Reflects a Real-Time Score: Not scoring these items focuses the accessibility scan on student-facing content, preventing errors in hidden or irrelevant material from lowering your score.
  • Reduces Remediation Workload: With unused or unpublished content left unscored, fewer issues are flagged, allowing instructors to concentrate their efforts on improving content that actively impacts students.

Please note that turning scoring off for unused and/or unpublished content will not hide those issues from users when they are working in UDOIT and, therefore, can still be remediated.

To only be shown issues that count toward a course's accessibility score, users would also need to filter out unused and/or unpublished content when working in the UFIXIT and Review Course Files areas of UDOIT. 

 

Reasons to Score Unused/Unpublished Content in UDOIT

  • Ensures Long-Term Accessibility: Scoring all content - even unpublished or unused - helps ensure that materials meet accessibility standards before they are published or used in a course.
  • Provides Comprehensive Reporting: Scoring all content gives admins a full view of course accessibility, which is valuable for ensuring users are maintaining accessibility standards within their courses and tracking accessibility progress over time.

Summary

Choosing whether to hide unused and unpublished content during UDOIT scans is about balancing focused remediation on student-facing materials with maintaining long-term accessibility standards. Hiding these items provides a clearer, more actionable accessibility score based on what students actually encounter in a course, while not hiding them provides a fuller picture that supports proactive compliance to accessibility standards within your users' courses. 

 

Additional Resources: