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Ally Course Accessibility Report

A great feature offered by Blackboard Ally is the course accessibility report. This report allows faculty to easily view all content for a course in Cougar Courses. This report includes and overall accessibility score for a course, a section containing content with easy issues to fix, a section containing content that is the lowest scoring, and content organized into categories based on their accessibility issues. The report provides the best way for faculty to identify inaccessible content and for faculty to replace that content.

How to access this report:

The course accessibility report can be found at the bottom left on each course in canvas.

clip showing how to access ally accessibility report

If you do not see a link to the report, you will need to go to the course settings to enable it on the Navigation page.

clip showing how to enable the ally course accessibility report in Canvas

Course Accessibility Score

In the top left-hand corner of the accessibility report is an overall accessibility score for a course. This is an average score based on the course content’s accessibility scores.

  • Ally logo for low accessibility score Low (0-33%): Needs help! There are severe accessibility issues.
  • Ally logo for medium accessibility scoreMedium (34-66%): A little better. Course is somewhat accessible overall, but needs improvement.
  • Ally logo for high accessibility score High (67-99%): Almost there. Course is accessible but additional improvements are possible.
  • Ally logo for perfect accessibility scorePerfect (100%): Perfect! Ally did not detect any issues with the course’s content.

All Course Content

Under the course accessibility score you will see a chart that shows all the different content in the course. By clicking the View button, can see all documents in the course and choose to view by document name, number of issues, and overall score (all by ascending or descending order). From this list you can click on a document and replace it with a more accessible one if necessary.

Choose What to Fix First

The Ally accessibility report categorizes content into 2 different categories to help instructors decide which content they would like to fix first.

The first is content with the easiest issues to fix, which contain documents that have easy to fix issues such as adding headings and adding image descriptions.

The second is content low a low accessibility score. Simply click the “Start” button and begin remediating any course content.

How to Add an Image Description with in Canvas

If there is an image in a course without an image description, it is recommended to find which page that image is located. Once locating the page the image resides click anywhere on the image, select Image Options, and insert an alt text description in the box provided.

clip showing how to insert and alt text description in canvas

How to upload a document from the accessibility report

  1. Select a file from the report
  2. Select Browse to find a file to upload
  3. Locate your new file to upload
  4. Select the Open button to save the new file

clip showing how to upload a document with ally in canvas

Remaining Issues

At the bottom the accessibility report, course content is categorized based on the accessibility issues they have. You can organize this content based on the severity of the issue, the type of issue, or the number of documents containing an issue. Click on any of the categories to see all of the listed content and begin remediating.

Severity levels are shown by the following icons:

  • Ally logo for severe issue Severe. These issues are the greatest risk to accessibility and require the most attention.
  • Ally logo for major issue Major. These issues impact accessibility, and while not severe, require attention.
  • Ally logo for minor issue Minor. These issues should be considered for a better accessibility score.