Using Canva at UConn? What to know before renewing
UConn now provides Venngage at no cost to departments, colleges, schools, and units. Venngage is available to UConn and UConn Health employees and student workers for creating infographics, flyers, reports, presentations, social media graphics, data visualizations, and other visual content.
If your department currently pays for Canva and the subscription is approaching renewal, we encourage you to evaluate Venngage before submitting a renewal request. Regardless of which design platform is used, digital content distributed by the university must be accessible. Canva designs exported to PDF may require additional accessibility testing and remediation in Acrobat Pro, Equidox, or another PDF remediation application.
Why UConn selected Venngage
UConn selected Venngage because of its emphasis on accessibility and its ability to support a university-wide license at a substantially lower cost than comparable Canva licensing. Venngage includes tools for checking color contrast, adding alternative text, organizing heading structure and reading order, and exporting properly prepared designs as accessible PDFs.
Although Venngage and Canva have many overlapping features, the platforms are not identical. Canva may offer functionality that is important to certain specialized workflows, particularly video and animation. Individuals and departments should consider their specific business needs as part of the evaluation.
If you already have content in Canva
You do not necessarily need to recreate every design from scratch. Canva pages can be exported as PNG files and imported into Venngage using its image-conversion feature. The converted design becomes editable, although some images, fonts, icons, or layout elements may need to be adjusted after conversion.
If your current Canva subscription has already renewed, use the remaining subscription period to:
- Evaluate Venngage for your department’s work.
- Train employees and student workers who create visual content.
- Identify frequently used Canva templates and designs.
- Migrate priority templates and recurring materials to Venngage.
- Review the accessibility of materials that will continue to be created in Canva.
- Document any essential business requirements that Venngage does not meet.
Upcoming Venngage workshops
Two upcoming workshops will introduce Venngage and demonstrate how to create accessible visual content:
Topics include starting a design, using templates and UConn brand assets, importing Canva content, adding alternative text, checking color contrast, reviewing heading structure and reading order, and exporting an accessible PDF.
We encourage current Canva users to attend a workshop before their next renewal. Departments with significant collections of Canva templates or specialized design needs may also request assistance evaluating their transition.