Making Canva Designs Accessible

Start Here: What Survives Export

This is the single most important thing to understand about Canva, and it catches almost everyone. Alt text you add in Canva is stored in the design — but most export formats throw it away. A poster you carefully described and then downloaded as a PNG arrives at its destination with no alt text at all.

The practical rule: if the file is a flat image or a video, the accessibility information has to be supplied by whatever system displays it. Canva can only carry it inside document-shaped formats.

Run Design Accessibility

Canva's checker finds the visual problems automatically. Run it before every export.

Alt Text

Every image, graphic, shape, line, and video needs either a description or a decorative mark. Canva supports alt text on library images, uploads, videos, shapes, lines, and graphics.

• Select the element, open the More (…) menu, and choose Alternative text. Type the description and select Save.
• If the element is purely decorative — a divider, a background flourish, a shape behind text — tick Mark as decorative instead. Leaving it blank is not the same thing.
• You have 250 characters. If an image needs more than that to explain, the explanation belongs in the body text, not the alt text.
• Alt text is instance-based: the same image used twice can carry different descriptions. Use that — describe what the image is doing here, in this context.
• Canva can suggest alt text automatically. Always read and rewrite it. Generated descriptions name what is in the frame but routinely miss why the image is on the page, which is the part a screen reader user actually needs.
• Alt text carried in a PDF or PPTX you imported into Canva is preserved and included when you export again.

For how to write a good description — and when to write none at all — see the Images & Alt Text guide.

Color Contrast

Canva's templates are built to look striking, not to pass contrast checks. Pale text over a photograph is the most common failure in CMC-branded designs.

• Body text needs 4.5:1 against its background. Large text — 18pt, or 14pt bold and above — needs 3:1.
• The checker flags low-contrast text and offers replacement colors on the issue card. If none of the suggestions work, change the background rather than accepting the flagged combination.
• Text over a photograph almost always needs help: a solid color block, a scrim, or a shadow behind the text. Contrast has to hold over the lightest part of the image the text crosses.
• CMC maroon #74001c from the Brand Kit gives strong contrast on white and cream. It fails against dark backgrounds — use white or cream type there instead.
• Never let color be the only signal. A red bar and a green bar are identical to a viewer with color blindness unless they are also labelled, or differ in shape or pattern.

Type Size and Layout

• Canva flags text under 12pt. Treat that as an absolute floor, not a target — 12pt is small for a printed handout and far too small projected on a screen.
• Practical minimums: 18pt body text on slides and posters, 12–14pt for print documents read in the hand.
• Keep a real size gap between headings and body text. Screen reader users get structure from tags, but sighted readers get it from hierarchy.
• Avoid setting long passages in decorative or script fonts, in all caps, or over a busy background. Justified text and very tight line spacing both hurt readability.
• Do not put essential information in an image of text. Text baked into a graphic cannot be resized, translated, searched, or read aloud. If it matters, it belongs in a real text element — or repeated in the body copy.

Reading Order and Headings

These two are invisible in the editor and invisible to the checker, but they decide whether an exported PDF makes sense to a screen reader. They are the difference between a document that passes a visual check and one that actually works.

Reading order

• Screen readers follow the order elements sit in your design, which Canva calculates on export. It gets this right for simple, linear layouts and wrong for anything with overlapping or floating elements.
• To set it yourself, open Position to see all layers. Arrange them in the order you want them read — the bottom layer is read first.
• When you download, choose Match reading order to layers so your arrangement is the one that ships.

Heading structure

• Canva guesses heading levels from visual hierarchy — font size and placement. A large decorative line can be tagged as a heading; a real section heading set small can be missed.
• Correct it under File → Accessibility → Edit text semantics: select a text element and set its heading level.
• Headings must descend in order without skipping — H1, then H2, then H3. One H1 per document.

Language

• Set the document language under File → Language. It is embedded in the exported PDF so screen readers use the right pronunciation rules.

Exporting a Tagged PDF

PDF is the best export Canva offers for accessibility — provided you do not flatten it.

For remediating a PDF once it has left Canva, see the Making PDFs Accessible guide.

Video and Motion

• Turn on captions for any spoken-word video or audio. Canva can generate them automatically — always review and correct them. Auto-captions mishandle names, acronyms, and technical terms, and CMC content is full of all three. Uncorrected captions do not meet the standard.
• Exporting to MP4 discards alt text. Captions, transcripts, and descriptions have to be supplied wherever the video is hosted — Canvas, YouTube, or the web page.
• Avoid content that flashes more than three times per second; it can trigger seizures.
• Keep animation and transitions restrained. Canva offers a Reduce motion setting for viewing and presenting — but design so that motion is never the only way information is conveyed.
• Never auto-play audio. Let the viewer start it.

Full captioning requirements are in the Video & Captions guide.

Social Graphics

Most Canva output at CMC ends up on social media as a flat image — the worst case for accessibility, because nothing you set in Canva travels with it.

• Alt text is not included in posts scheduled through Canva's Content Planner. Either publish manually and add the description in the platform, or add it after the post is live.
• Keep text in the graphic short, and repeat every essential word in the post copy. Event date, time, location, and how to register must exist as real text somewhere — never only inside the image.
• A flyer image needs its full text content described, not summarised. "Poster for the spring lecture series" tells a screen reader user nothing they can act on.

Platform-specific guidance — hashtags, emoji, and where each network hides its alt text field — is in the Social Media guide.

Checklist

• Export format chosen with alt text survival in mind
• Design Accessibility run — typography, contrast, and alt text issues cleared
• Every image, graphic, and shape has alt text or is marked decorative
• Auto-suggested alt text reviewed and rewritten for context
• Body text contrast at least 4.5:1; large text at least 3:1
• Color is never the only way information is conveyed
• No essential information locked inside an image of text
• Reading order set in the layers panel; Match reading order to layers selected
• Heading levels corrected under Edit text semantics; no skipped levels
• Document language set
• PDF exported as PDF Standard with Flatten PDF unchecked
• Exported PDF verified in Adobe Acrobat, not Preview or Safari
• Video captions generated and corrected by hand
• Alt text re-added in Drupal, Outlook, Canvas, or the social platform after any PNG, JPG, or MP4 export