Ally Instructor Feedback and Course Accessibility Reports in FREDLearn

Owned by Laura Shrader
Last updated: Jan 19, 2024
3 min read

Ally provides instructors detailed feedback and support to help instructors remediate course content to make it accessible. Think of Ally as your partner to help you learn about accessibility issues, why they matter and how to fix them.  Green is the goal!

Instructor Feedback

There are two places to access accessibility reports in your course to get started. The first is the Ally dial sitting to the right of your course file.

  1. Click on the dial icon. A new window opens which displays your file on the left and the file’s accessibility score on the right.

    arrow pointing to Ally dial to the right of the content item
    Ally dials next to a content item in FREDLearn

  2.  In this example, the score for the file is 5% and the reason is that the PDF is untagged.

    arrow pointing to the accessibility score
    Accessibility score

  3. If you click on the What this means button, you’ll find out what a tagged PDF is. In essence, tags in a PDF are hidden labels that clarify the document structure for a screen reader. Without the tags, a screen reader cannot read a PDF document.

  4. By clicking on the All issues button, you’ll find out what additional accessibility issues were found for the file. In this example, the PDF does not have tags, the PDF does not have a language set, and the PDF does not have a title.



Note: Students do not see the dial icons. Only instructors can see the dials.

Accessibility report

 

The second way to check the overall accessibility score of your course, and to access the list of issues that need remediation is to access the Accessibility report.

Note: Students do not see a link for Accessibility report. Only instructors have access to the Accessibility report.

  1. Begin by navigating to the Help menu on the blue toolbar at the top of your course page in FREDLearn. Click on the drop down arrow and select Ally Course Report.



  2. A new window opens which displays your Course accessibility score. In this example, the course accessibility score is 99%.  The dial is green. Remember, green is the goal!

     

  3. On the right side of the screen, you have two options. We recommend beginning with Fix High Scoring Content. Click on the Start button. A new window opens and you see your files on the left side. On the right side you see the Issues and the Score columns.





  4. Choose a file to begin with on the left side of the screen. In this example, the Checking for Accessibility file has a score of 98%. The message tells us that the HTML file has empty headings.






Ally Quick Start for Instructors on the Blackboard Ally website

Course Accessibility Report on the Blackboard Ally website

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