Blackboard Ally
Blackboard Ally assesses course materials’ accessibility in Moodle and provides
- alternative formats for your files
- recommendations on how to improve them.
Accessibility of your course(s)
Blackboard Ally assesses your course content for accessibility and provides you with suggestions for how to improve accessibility.
It does not assess the quality of your content.
Blackboard Ally checks the following content in Moodle:
- Book
- Book chapter
- Lesson
- Lesson page
- Page content
- Page introduction
- Syllabus
It also checks the following file types uploaded to Moodle:
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- OpenOffice/LibreOffice
- Uploaded HTML files
- Image files (JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BPM, TIFF)
- WYSIWYG content
Accessibility scores
Blackboard Ally will score your content with one of the following:
- Low (0-33%)
- Medium (34-66%)
- High (67%-99%)
- Perfect (100%)
A low score means there are multiple accessibility issues with your file. A high score means there are minor or no accessibility issues with your file.
For more on what these scores mean, see Accessibility scores on the Blackboard Ally website.
Improve your content’s accessibility
Click on the accessibility score icon (to the right of your file’s title) to see the feedback panel.
Select All issues for step by step guidance on where the accessibility issues with your file are and how to fix them.
For more on how to improve your content’s accessibility, see the Blackboard Ally website:
Alternative formats
Blackboard Ally provides various alternative formats. You can tell if alternative formats are available as there will be an A and a down arrow icon (and an Alternative formats tag for screen readers) to the right of the file.
Blackboard Ally provides alternative formats for these file types:
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Open Office
- Libre Office
- Uploaded HTML
Blackboard Ally creates the following alternative formats:
- Tagged PDF (currently for Word, PowerPoint and OpenOffice/LibreOffice files)
- Mobile-friendly HTML
- Audio
- ePub
- Electronic Braille
- BeeLine Reader
- OCR’d version (for scanned documents)
You don’t need to do anything to create alternative formats for your files. Any new files added will be checked for accessibility by Blackboard Ally and alternative formats will be made available with the file.
Password-protected content will not be given an alternative format by Blackboard Ally as it will not be able to access the file.
You can turn alternative formats on and off for a file.
Full guide for course administrators
- Quick Start for Instructors (Blackboard Ally website)