Improve Course Content Accessibility

• Tutorials

  • Quick Start Guide for Instructors
  • Improve Course Accessibility - On Demand Video
  • Use Ally in the Content Editor
  • Improve Content Accessibility Guides
  • Ally Explainer: The Challenges of Accessibility
  • Ally for Students
  • FAQS

Ally generates alternative formats for students to download. These can include audio or electronic braille versions of existing course content.

• Tutorials

  • Ally Alternative Formats
  • Choose Your Alternative Format for Blackboard Learn

Ally provides accessibility scores to instructors to review. Ally also measures each file attached to the course and assigns them a score depending on how accessible the file is. Once you have located the accessibility score for a piece of content, you can begin to explore accessibility issues and improve the content to raise the score.

• Tutorials

  • Ally Accessibility Scores
  • Ally Accessibility Indicators (Micro-Learning Guide)
  • Improve Content Accessibility Guides

Provide instructor feedback on how to improve your accessibility score: Each file that requires improvements is provided a guide which allows course instructors and teaching assistants to make any changes necessary to improve that file.

• Tutorials

  • Course Availability Report
  • View All File Accessibility Issues
  • View File Accessibility

Provide instructor feedback on how to improve your accessibility score: Each file that requires improvements is provided a guide which allows course instructors and teaching assistants to make any changes necessary to improve that file.

• Tutorials

  • Ally Accessibility Scores
  • Improve Content Accessibility Guides
  • Troubleshoot Issues
  • Accessibility Checklist

The following resources aim to provide targeted guidance to fix common accessibility issues found within Blackboard courses by leveraging Ally.

• Document is scanned but not OCRed.

  When a book chapter, article, or document is scanned and created into a PDF, the result is typically a document that is made up of several images of the text. This usually means the document has limited or no textual elements, which can be selected or used to create an alternative format. Screen readers are unable to convert an image into words, even if the image only consists of text, so people with screen readers or other assistive devices will not be able to read those pages. The document may also be difficult to read (on any device), due to visibility or navigation of the image. The ideal solution is to create an OCRed PDF. OCR or optical character recognition, extracts text from images to produce actual text.

  • Options for Scanned PDFs
  • Edit Scanned PDFs Using Adobe Acrobat
  • Scanned PDFs: An enemy to accessibility (PDF)

• Document is malformed or corrupted, and students may not be able to open.

  These documents are malformed and therefore cannot be opened and viewed by many or even most people. While some technologies might be able to deal with some malformed documents, there's no guarantee that everyone will be able to view the document or that the formatting and content will be as intended. You may need to review the supported file types and reupload the file.

  • Review Supported File Types, and Accepted File Sizes
  • Add a Library Reference
  • Add a Library Reference (PDF)

• Document can induce seizures.

  These animated images contain flashing or contrasting lights or patterns that can lead to seizures for people that suffer from photosensitive epilepsy, which is a very serious and potentially life-threatening condition. Animated images (e.g. GIFS) with these characteristics can be generally unpleasant to look at, even for those not prone to seizures.

  • Remove Potentially Harmful Content
  • Remove Potentially Harmful Content (PDF)

• Document is encrypted.

  These documents are either password-protected or have security settings that can prevent access to the document, causing many or even most people to not be able to open and view the document. These protections could also prevent screen readers or other assistive technology from accessing the document. 

  • Add a Library Reference

• Image not marked as decorative/image without a description.

  These images do not have a description or alternative text. People with screen readers or other assistive devices rely on this description to understand the image's contents and purpose. Having a clear description for an image can help everyone better understand the content of the image and how it relates to the context. If your image is only for visual effects, and doesn't contain information relevant to the learning content, select Indicate image is decorative.

  • Add Alternative Descriptions to Image Files
  • Add Image Descriptions

• Document has contrast issues.

  These documents contain text with low contrast between the text and its background. This can cause the text to be difficult to read, especially for those with low vision, poor eyesight, or color blindness. 

  • Fix Text Contrast Issues

• Document is untagged.

  These PDF documents are not tagged. PDF tags are hidden labels that clarify the structure of the document and define what's a heading, paragraph, table, list, etc. Without these tags, PDF documents are essentially just a bag of difficult to distinguish words that can be hard to navigate and understand for people with screen readers or other assistive devices.

  • Tag a PDF
  • Export a Word Document as a Tagged PDF

• Document contains at least one image without a description.

  These documents contain images that don't have a description or alternative text. People with screen readers or other assistive devices rely on these descriptions to understand the image content and purpose. Having a clear description for an image can help everyone better understand the content of the image and how it relates to the context.

  • Add Alternative Descriptions to Image Files
  • Add Image Descriptions
  • Add Alternative Descriptions to PowerPoint Images

• HTML content contains at least one image without a description.

  The HTML content contains images that don't have a description or alternative text. People with screen readers or other assistive devices rely on these descriptions to understand the image content and purpose. Having a clear description for an image can help everyone better understand the content of the image and how it relates to the context.

  • Add Alternative Descriptions to Image Files
  • Add Image Descriptions

Ally is just one tool to use to assess and improve content accessibility and you may need to make improvements to files outside of Blackboard.

• Tutorials

  • Format Format Accessible Text Documents Text Documents (includes how-tos for Word, and Google Docs)
  • Office365 Accessibility checker
  • Add Headings to a Word Document
  • Add Headers to your Data Tables in Word

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