Check your course materials for accessibility with Ally

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 13:36:32 -0400
accessibility, ally, blackboard

Are your course materials accessible? Where would you go to check? Could you easily remediate your files for your current or future students?

Meet Ally, an accessibility tool that automatically scans your Blackboard course content and performs a series of steps to make that content more accessible. Ally provides you with an overall accessibility report for your entire course as well as tagging individual content items. Use the overall report to quickly identify easy issues to fix or urgent content that needs to be fixed.

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 phones, an ePub version for their tablets, an MP3 version for audio players, and electronic braille for braille readers.

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.

Learn more about Ally by attending an orientation webinar or reviewing the Ally FAQs.

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

Check our extensive FAQ collection

What’s new in Ultra?| Known Issues

Open a ticket via RT

Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups

Request a consult with instructional technology staff

Review your course content with Ally