To support our commitment to a more inclusive campus, we’re introducing a new tool called Ally into your Blackboard courses to help improve the accessibility of your course content. Ally doesn’t change how anything works in your course, and won’t affect your course files.
You’ll notice in your course red, orange, light green, and dark green gauges next to your course files. These are “Ally Indicators” and they let you know the accessibility of the file. The indicators are only visible to instructors in the course. Simply click the indicator to read detailed feedback about what the accessibility issues are with the file, why they matter, and how to fix them. Learn more about Instructor Feedback.
Improving the accessibility of your course content will not only help ensure students with disabilities can access your materials, it will also improve the learning experience for students who use mobile devices as well as 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 by clicking the dropdown icon next to the file name. The alternative formats don’t affect your original file, and 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. Learn more about Alternative Formats.
We hope you will take some first steps in using Ally to improve the accessibility of your course content, as well as encourage students to take advantage of the alternative formats. If you have questions or need help fixing an accessibility issue with one of your files, you can contact us at 256-7972.
Ways to Use Ally in the Classroom
- Review provided accessibility scores generated for certain content
- Improve accessibility of certain content items by following Ally's step-by-step instructions
- View and download alternative versions of content that are more accessible
- Review course accessibility report to understand overall breakdown of accessibility
Features
- Instructors receive feedback on accessibility of classroom content
- Comprehensive explanations of what features of content are inaccessible
- Recommended directions on how to make specific content more accessible
- Automatically generated alternative versions of content, available to students and instructors
- Course accessibility report showing how the Blackboard course is or is not accessible
Advantages
- Fast and automatic assessments of content accessibility
- Variety of alternative formats for many different types of content
- Providing better experiences for students with all types of learning styles and abilities
- Promoting self-confidence in students with unique learning styles and abilities
- Accessibility resources provided for students to utilize without needing to wait for instructor support
Quick Start Guide
https://help.blackboard.com/Ally/Ally_for_LMS/Instructor/Quick_Start