To support UMBC’s ongoing commitment to a more inclusive campus, DoIT is pleased to introduce a new tool called Ally into Ultra courses to help improve the accessibility of course content in Blackboard.

Ally automatically scans course content and performs a series of steps to make that content more accessible. Faculty who use Ultra courses will notice color gauges next to course files. Click on the Ally indicator to read detailed feedback about what the accessibility issues are with the file, why they matter, and how to fix them. Ally will not change how anything works in an existing course, and it won’t affect any course files. These Ally indicators are not visible to students.

Improving the accessibility of your course content will not only help ensure students with different abilities can access your materials, but it will also improve the learning experience for students who use mobile devices as well as those who want to engage with the material in a different way. Ally automatically generates alternative formats of your course files, and makes them available to you and your students. The alternative formats do not affect your original file, but they do allow students to access an HTML version for their phone, an ePub version for their tablet, an MP3 version for audio, and electronic braille for braille readers.

Both Instructional Technology staff and the Office of Accessibility & Disability Services (ADS) staff have been trained to support Ally questions. ADS is also available to assist in document remediation and other accessibility questions. Finally, the Ally FAQ collection is available for reference.

As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:

• Check our extensive FAQ collection

• New Features | Known Issues | Updates & Fixes

• About the Ultra Experience | What’s new in Ultra?

• Open a ticket via RT

• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups

• Request a consult with instructional technology staff

On Friday, March 1, 2019, DoIT's Instructional Technology Team held its 4th annual TechFest.  As part of TechFest, participants were asked to complete evaluation surveys for each of the three presentation sessions and the escape room and a final survey evaluating the event as a whole. For each completed survey, participants were automatically entered into a raffle. We are pleased to announce the winners of the TechFest raffles:

1. Session A Winner: Deborah P. Webb, Assistant Director of Supplemental Instruction, Learning Resources Center - Amazon Echo Dot

2. Session B Winner: Stephanie Lazarus, Accessibility Manager & ADA Coordinator - Amazon Echo Dot

3. Session C Winner: Jessica McMurtrie, Program Management Specialist, Human Resources - Amazon Echo Dot

4. Escape Room Winner: Aieda Solomon, Senior - Amazon Echo Dot

5. Deep Dive Evaluation Winner: Cassie Hoddinott, LRC Director, Learning Resources Center - Amazon Echo Dot

Blackboard Ultra Early Adopter Raffle

Since the beginning of the Fall 2018 term, faculty have had the option to adopt the Blackboard Ultra Experience for their courses. All faculty who opted into the Ultra course interface in the Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 terms were automatically entered into a raffle for an Amazon Fire HD Tablet. The winner of the Early Adopter raffle is Mariajose Castellanos, Lecturer and Undergraduate Program Director in Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering!

Congratulations to all of our winners!

At 7pm we completed the emergency repairs on the phonemail system while maintaining all data stored on the node. Since that time all phonemail services are fully operational. We will continue to monitor the status of the system for the next few days to ensure a full resolution to this problem.

Please let us know if you have any concerns.

Thank you for your patience,

Ray Soellner

Associate Director of Communications

DoIT

Beginning over the weekend and continuing into today some users may have experienced intermittent phonemail service including both voicemail and call processing boxes. We are experiencing hardware failures in one of the campus phonemail nodes and have been working with our vendor to diagnose the problem. We are trying to conduct a repair as quickly as possible before a more severe failure occurs.

During the repair window the campus should expect some system voicemail outages as we will need to take some systems offline to install new hardware. DoIT will communicate details of the repair window when that information becomes available. In the meantime we will be working to maintain services as best we can given current circumstances.

Should you have any further questions or concerns please let me know.

We apologize for any inconveniences this may cause,

Ray Soellner

Associate Director of Communications

DoIT