Ally

Take a look at the video below to learn more about Ally and how you can use it to assist you with making your course and course materials more accessible.

Watch: Introduction to Ally (3.06min)

Note: Ally is now automatically turned on in all Moodle courses. You do not need to do anything to activate it.

What does the Ally Checker look like in your courses? Look at the images below to see a closeup of the Ally results (gauge). Students do not see the gauge. They only see the original document link and the Download options arrow. If you were a teacher in this course, you would see a little gear icon to the right and you would also see the Alternative format icon. Check your course to see how Ally has assessed your materials.

Note: Only materials uploaded to Moodle will be assessed by Ally. Ally cannot assess materials linked outside of Moodle. This includes Google documents, slideshows, videos, etc.

The gauges

• Red (or gauge pointing to the left) = Not accessible
• Orange (or gauge pointing to the middle) = There are a few accessibility issues
• Green (or gauge pointing to the right) = Close to or fully accessible

Example

The download function

Clicking on the down arrow icon will give you a variety of options for document formatting. The download function does not make an inaccessible document accessible.

Example

Prep

Open one of your courses that contain several electronic documents directly uploaded to Moodle, such as PowerPoint, Word or a PDF. Ally cannot run tests on documents or images that are linking to an outside source or webpage. This includes documents linked from Google Drive. 

Explore

Ally is automatically turned on in all of our Moodle courses

1. Scan the course to locate documents that show the Ally gauge next to them.
   
2. Check to see where the gauges are set.
   • Red or gauge to the left = Not accessible
   • Orange or gauge to the middle = There are a few accessibility issues
   • Green or gauge to the right = Fully accessible
3. Choose a file and select the Accessibility score. Follow the steps provided to go step-by-step through the improvement process. Select All issues to see every issue in the file and decide what issues to fix first. In some cases, you can fix the issue within Ally. In other cases, you may need to find the original document to make the changes. PDFs can be tricky! You usually need to go back to your source file to fix any issues.
   
4. Try this with 2-3 documents and images.

Need more help? Try the Ally for LMS - Help for Instructors tutorial or contact ID Services at idservices@lanecc.edu.

The Bigger Picture

The course accessibility report acts as a complement to the existing accessibility indicators. It provides an accessibility summary and overview at the course level. This report is provided by Blackboard Ally. It can only check documents, it does not check accessibility for Moodle pages, books, etc. It's a great tool but it’s only a part of the process.

Course Accessibility Report The course accessibility report acts as a complement to the existing accessibility indicators. It provides an accessibility summary and overview at the course level. (Blackboard documentation)