About Ally - Accessibility Tool
Ally automatically scans course content in Brightspace for common accessibility issues and provides feedback to help faculty gauge the overall accessibility of their course, along with step-by-step guidance for fixing issues.
While Ally is designed to promote accessibility and student success by improving course content, the Alternative Format function can also help generate accessible versions of your original files for download and distribution.
This document details how to edit the accessibility features of your documents through Ally.
Your first step is to check the Course Accessibility Report and then remedy individual documents.
Accessing the Course Accessibility Report
After opening your course, click on Course Tools and then from the drop-down menu select Ally Course Report.
A new window will now open with your Course accessibility score. On the top left side of the page you'll see a graph with all of the documents in your course. On the right you'll see two Start buttons that direct you to the easy-to-fix documents and the documents with the most issues.
On this page Course Accessibility Report provides an accessibility summary and overview of your content at the course level. Specific areas of the report include:
- Overall accessibility score for the course
- A breakdown of course content by file type
- Two quick links for remediating content: 1. content with the easiest issues to fix and 2. content with the most severe issues
- A list of all files with accessibility issues (grouped by issue type and severity)
Remediating Documents from the Course Accessibility Report - Content with Easiest Issues to Fix
While the Accessibility Course Report is still open, click on Start under Content with easiest issues to fix.
On the new screen that opens you'll see a document that has an issue. Click on the name of that document and a new window will open.
Click on the name of the document and then Ally will provide more information to help you fix the document. The black box, also known as the Ally Feedback Panel shows:
- The accessibility score for your document
- A detailed explanation of the document's accessibility problem
- How to fix the accessibility issue
Repeat the above steps until all of your documents are finished. When all of your easy-to-fix documents have been fixed, you'll see No course content has been identified yet. You can click on Back to overview to resolve your documents with the most errors.
Remediating Documents from the Course Accessibility Report - Fix Medium Scoring Content
You will now return to the Course accessibility score page. Click on Start under Fix medium scoring content to begin.
On the Course accessibility score page a list of all your documents with the most accessibility errors will now appear on the page. Click on the name of the first document to get started. A new window will open your document with accessibility information.
On the right side of the screen a box called the Ally Feedback Panel will open with the following information:
- The accessibility score for your document
- A detailed explanation of the document's accessibility problem
- How to fix the accessibility issue
Repeat the above steps until all of your documents are finished. When all of your easy-to-fix documents have been fixed, you'll see No course content has been identified yet. You can click on Back to overview to resolve your documents with the most errors.
Double Check Ally
Now that your documents have been remediated, let's return to Ally and verify our new course accessibility score.
After opening your course, click on Course Tools and then from the drop-down menu select Ally Course Report.
A new window will now open with your Course accessibility score. At the very top of the page verify that your score is at least 85%. This meets WCAG AA standards.