In response to institutional and educator priorities for making education accessible for all learners, the Quality Matters peer community created the Accessibility and Usability Resource Site (AURS).  (If you would like to access the original content from Instructional Technology, to add these tools to your instructional toolbelt, click the website link below)

Free and open to everyone, AURS provides the online community with important information on addressing key accessibility and usability concerns, including:

Join our campus partner, Instructional Technology for Five (5) Things You Didn't Know that Blackboard Ally Can Do and learn about Ally, a tool available in Blackboard Original and Ultra courses, that improves the accessibility of your course content. Attend this session to see Ally’s remediation capabilities and powerful file conversion tools that generate alternative formats for you and students.

Click here to see their full post and sign up!  Want more detail? Read on:

This 30 minute workshop will offer ideas for developing a strategy to improve your course usability and accessibility and how to get started with Blackboard Ally. Available in both Original and Ultra courses, Ally scans content in Blackboard and provides feedback and tools to identify and fix accessibility issues. 

Leverage Ally's powerful alternative format options yourself, and let students know they can download content in multiple formats that give them choices in how they watch, read, or listen. 

Upon completing this online session, participants should be able to:

• Run the Ally Accessibility Report for your course (Original or Ultra) to identify accessibility issues  

• Use Ally's Instructor Feedback Panel to preview content and prioritize remediation

• Follow Ally's step-by-step guidance to fix accessibility issues

• Deploy Ally's alternative formats to support diverse learning preferences

Have you met Ally?  Sign up for a proper introduction with Instructional Technology's training here:  https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/instructional-technology/events/79747

When:  February 12th at noon

Where: Online - from the comfort of where you access Blackboard!

From Instructional Technology on the what-to-do:

Come to this webinar and learn about Ally and what it can do to help you remediate course materials to improve accessibility for all. This orientation will showcase Ally’s powerful file conversion tools that provide alternative formats and expand students' options about how they want to engage with content.

This session will also help you move beyond content remediation into a more proactive approach, one where you find or create more accessible course materials from day one.

Finally, we will review strategies on how to create accessible content, including tools to help with Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoint, lecture videos, and images.

Workshop Objectives

Upon completion of the workshop, participants should be able to:

• Review key barriers that hinder the accessibility of content.
• Interpret Ally indicators and reports to effectively remediate course materials. 
• Review Ally's alternative formats available to students.
• Identify accessibility tools that help you create accessible content. 
• Create a basic strategy to address content accessibility in your course, including which tools you plan to use.

The webinar will take place in a Blackboard Collaborate virtual conference room. Use the link below to enter the webinar up to 15 minutes before the start time:

For more information about Ally at UMBC, please see this announcement and the FAQ collection.

WEBINAR IS ONLINE, SEPTEMBER 16, NOON TO 1 PM

Learn to make your course materials accessible in Blackboard.

During the SP2019 semester, Ally was deployed to courses using Ultra. Ally is available in all courses regardless of course interface starting in SU2019.

Learn about Ally, a new tool to help improve the accessibility of course content in Blackboard. Attend this orientation and demonstration session to see Ally’s powerful file conversion tools for alternative formats. Review the accessibility of your own course materials using the Ally indicator.

Workshop Objectives

Upon completion of the workshop, participants should be able to:

• Review accessibility guidelines.

• Create alternative, more accessible versions of course content.

• Review key barriers that hinder the accessibility of content.

• Apply changes to content based on recommendations from the Ally accessibility plan.

• Understand and interpret results based on recommended remediation approaches.

• Identify and utilize accessibility tools to create more accessible content.

For more information about Ally at UMBC, please see this announcement and the FAQ collection.