Accessibility feedback with Ally

Ally is a tool integrated with Blackboard Ultra, that can generate accessible versions of your learning and teaching materials to suit diverse learning needs. In addition to providing alternative content formats, Ally also scans your course content and provides you with accessibility feedback.

Accessibly feedback is displayed as an Ally Indicator next to a file or content item. Ally’s accessibility checklist is based on WCAG 2.1 AA (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), with Ally performing additional accessibility checks.

Note: The Ally indicators are never visible to students.

The Ally indicators look like this:

 

The Ally indicators appear next to the content items like this:

For content with Low to High scores, Ally displays the accessibility issues and provides step-by-step guidance on how to improve them (see the notes on the instructor feedback panel below for more information).

For content that has been identified as having accessibility issues, Ally will explain the issue(s) and give advice on how to fix them. To do this:

 

1. Select the Ally indicator next to the content item e.g. . This will open the Instructor Feedback Panel.
   
   

2. The Instructor Feedback Panel's will contain an Accessibility Report for the document (see example below):

   Open

   

   
   
   

3. The right-hand panel of the Accessibility Report display’s the documents accessibility score:
   

and a description of the document’s main accessibility issue (in the example below, the issue has been identified as the images in the document do not having descriptions):

4. Select the All Issues button to see a list of all the document issues

5. For an explanation of the accessibility issue, select the What this means button:

The explanation will look something like this:

 

6. For instructions on how to fix the issue, select the How to… button:

You will then be shown step-by-step instruction for fixing the issue. For example:

7. To make the necessary changes to the document, download the original file using the Download button (highlighted in red in the image below) then edit it (using the instructions from Ally as a guide to fixing the issue):
   
   

   
   
   

Note: Most file types can be edited using Microsoft Office. However, for some files (e.g. PDFs) you may need specialist software.

 

8. When you have completed the edits, save the file and either drag and drop it onto the Upload area (drag and drop is not supported in all browsers), or select the Browse button to locate the file and upload it:

https://www.ulster.ac.uk/accessibility-standards/what

https://www.ulster.ac.uk/accessibility-standards

https://www.ulster.ac.uk/wellbeing/disability/accessability/what-is-assistive-technology

https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Student/Ultra/Accessibility

Using Blackboard Ally to support accessible design