Courses and Learning Platforms

Within a teaching and learning context, all course materials, media, learning platforms, course site content, educational technologies, and electronic communications must be accessible to students with disabilities. This includes all course materials in learning management systems such as Blackboard.

Be sure to understand the fundamentals of digital accessibility and how to remediate inaccessible documents (such as PDFs or PowerPoint presentations). 

Blackboard Ally is an accessibility tool integrated into the Blackboard Ultra that is designed to improve the usability and accessibility of course content. When Ally is enabled in a course, it automatically scans course materials for common accessibility issues, provides guidance to instructors on how to address these issues, and generates alternative formats for students. 

For instructors 

• Accessibility indicators: Provides feedback on the accessibility of course content by assigning scores to items within the course based on the issues it finds and the severity of impact. 
• Guidance: Provides guidance on how to fix accessibility issues that were identified. Some fixes can be applied directly from the Ally interface. 
• Instructor course report: Provides an overall course score and recommendations on how to approach remediation at scale. 

For students 

Alternative formats that Ally can provide to students include: 

• Audio 
• EPub 
• Electronic braille 
• HTML 
• Translated version 
• Beeline reader 
• Immersive reader 

Note: Ally also offers students the option to download an OCRed PDF, and while that can be helpful in improving access to an inaccessible PDF, it will not make the PDF fully compliant.  

Limitations of Ally 

Ally is a useful tool to help identify potential accessibility issues, but there are limitations to what it can check. A score of 100% only indicates that Ally didn't detect any issues among the elements it is able to check. Likewise, a score below 100% doesn't necessarily mean your course is not accessible. Ally can sometimes flag items that are not true accessibility barriers, and system limitations sometimes prevent a course from reaching a perfect score. 

We encourage instructors to focus on accessibility rather than a number, and to remember that accessibility is an ongoing process rather than a one-time task. Using Ally to address high- or medium-impact issues is an excellent starting point, as long as it is accompanied by a manual review of course content to cover areas that Ally cannot assess.  The manual review is essential to ensure all course content aligns with WCAG 2.1 AA standards. 

Resources 

• Ally guide for instructors 
• Ally guide for students 
• What content does Ally check?