Overview

To meet Title II accessibility requirements and ensure equitable access for all students, we encourage faculty to regularly review course content in Canvas. As you assess your materials, consider the following flexible decision tree to help you determine whether to keep, archive, or delete content.

This guidance encourages flexible decision-making while aligning with accessibility standards and long-term course management goals. This process also helps improve your Ally accessibility score, which offers real-time feedback on how inclusive your materials are.

Why This Matters

Canvas courses often build up content over time—pages, quizzes, files, assignments, discussions—that are no longer used. These materials can lower your Ally accessibility score, create confusion for students, and slow you down as an instructor. A regular cleanup helps keep your course usable, compliant, and easy to maintain.

💡 Note: While Ally currently includes deleted or hidden content in its accessibility score calculations, changes are underway to improve that behavior. Following these practices now will simplify future accessibility updates and minimize remediation efforts.

To streamline your content cleanup and avoid making changes to your live courses, we recommend using a Protoshell—a blank Canvas course shell where you can safely organize, revise, and remediate course materials. You can request one using the Protoshell Request Form.

Decision Tree

Use this flexible decision tree to decide whether to Keep, Archive, or Delete different types of content—Pages, Files, Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions, Modules, and more.

Keep

Keep content when it is actively supporting teaching and learning.

Before you keep something, ask:

Is this visible to students (published or in a module)?
Is it being used now or will it be reused soon?
Is it accessible or easy to fix with Ally?
Is it essential for compliance, assessment, or accreditation?

Keep content such as:

Published pages with current instructions or course materials
Assignments and quizzes that align with your outcomes
Accessible files that students need to view or download
Active discussions being used for participation or reflection
Modules that structure your course and guide student navigation

💡 Tip: If something is useful but inaccessible, fix it or consider temporarily unpublishing it while you work on it. Use Ally's indicators to prioritize.

Archive

Archive content that’s no longer student-facing but still valuable to you.

This includes older content, drafts, or resources you may want to revise or refer to later. Archiving helps you retain important work while reducing clutter and unnecessary remediation in Canvas.

Archive content such as:

Unpublished or outdated pages you might revise
Retired assignments, quizzes, or rubrics you want to reference
Instructor-only notes or planning materials
Files not currently used in a course but worth saving
Supplemental materials not shared with students this quarter

💡 Tip: Create a "Faculty Archive" module or folder inside Canvas and mark it hidden from students. Do not choose these materials when copying your content to your live course. Read the How do I select specific content as part of a course import? guide for instructions on how to do this if needed.

Need help organizing? Make an appointment with an Instructional Designer for personalized archiving support.

Delete

Delete content that is no longer relevant, useful, or necessary.

Removing unused content helps clean up your course and prevents it from negatively affecting your accessibility score or cluttering your workflow. If you don’t need it and wouldn’t use it again—let it go.

Delete content such as:

Old quizzes or pages with outdated information
Duplicate files or renamed versions (e.g., syllabus-final-final.pdf)
Empty discussions or abandoned assignment shells
Low-quality scans or inaccessible files with no plan to fix
Student-facing content you’ll never reuse

Still Have Questions?

Schedule an appointment with an Instructional Designer:

North Seattle College – Instructional Designer Rebecca Brown
Seattle Central College – Instructional Designer Sanja Kadric or Instructional Designer Julius Rodriguez (temporarily out)
South Seattle College – Instructional Designer Eli Dow

Don’t know where to start? For general inquiries or assistance, please contact the eLearning team at elearning@seattlecolleges.edu, and a support ticket will be generated for the Accessibility Team's response.