Glassability™
Three steps · a few minutes · no ticket to IT at most colleges

Install Glassability in a course

Glassability is a Canvas app you add to your own course. Once it is in the course navigation, one more press connects it, and the first scan starts.

What you need first

Two short strings your college was given when it joined the pilot: a consumer key and a shared secret. They identify your college to Glass, not you. If nobody at your college has them yet, write to us and we will send them to the person who runs Canvas there.

The three steps

Add the app. In your course open Settings, then the Apps tab, then View App Configurations and + App. Set Configuration Type to By URL. Name: Glassability. Paste the consumer key and shared secret. Config URL: https://accessibility.glass/lti/config.xml. Press Submit.

Find it in the navigation. Reload the course. Glassability appears in the course navigation on the left. If it is hidden, open Settings, the Navigation tab, drag it into the visible list and save. Students never see it; the item is for the instructor's roles only.

Connect and let it scan. Open Glassability. If your college has registered it with Canvas you will see one button, Connect with Canvas; Canvas asks whether Glassability may act for you, and you say yes. Otherwise the page walks you through making an access token in your own Canvas settings and pasting it. The first scan starts on its own, and the page turns into your report when it is ready, usually within minutes.

What you have just allowed, and how to take it back

Glass reads the course's pages, assignments, discussions, quizzes, files and modules as you, and writes to them only when you press a button on your report. It never reads student submissions, grades or the people list. You can withdraw the permission at any time under Account, Settings, Approved Integrations in Canvas; Glass stops the moment you do. Removing the app from the course removes the navigation item; anything Glass changed in the course stays as it is, with a before copy on file.

Where the AI comes in

Glass uses language and vision models to draft what a person would otherwise have to type: the description of an image, the wording of a link, a heading, the check of a caption against its audio. The models are shown course content only. They never see student submissions, grades or the people list, because Glass never holds those. Every draft waits for your press, and every change is logged with a copy of the content before and after.

For Canvas administrators

Install once for everyone, as LTI 1.3. Create an LTI developer key from https://accessibility.glass/lti/1.3/config.json, turn it on, send us its client id, and add Glassability by client id under Admin, Settings, Apps. It appears in every course's navigation at once, and in the account navigation for administrators, where it opens the roll-up of what has been scanned and repaired under that account. The By URL configuration above works at the account level too.
Spare instructors the token. Registering Glassability as a developer key takes a few minutes and lets instructors connect with one press instead of making a personal access token. The one page you need.
What it does not need. No account-level API token, no enrollment of anyone in anyone's course, no access to student records. Every change waits for the instructor's press and is logged with a before and after copy.
AI on the college's terms. No student data reaches any model, because Glass never holds it. Course content is not used to train any model and is not sent to a third-party model service. A person approves every change. The details a technology committee asks for are on the privacy page.

Glassability uses the LTI 1.1 course placement, which any instructor can add to their own course unless the college has locked external apps. Where it is locked, the administrator's install above is the route. What Glass keeps and the free pilot terms.