Tag Archives: accessibility

Introducing the Ally Course Accessibility Report

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Blackboard Ally has released a new instructor course accessibility report. This report allows you to see the big picture as well as specific details about the accessibility of your course content.

What is the Ally Course Accessibility Report?

When you create or upload content into your myLesley course, Blackboard Ally automatically checks your content for accessibility. Ally checks to make sure that PDFs are readable and not scanned images, images have alternative text, tables contain headers, headings are used correctly, text has sufficient contrast, and more.

The Ally Course Accessibility Report collects all of this data and presents it in a visual dashboard. The report shows you an overall accessibility score for your course, details the different types of content in your course, and shows you which content needs your attention.

Image of a sample course accessibility report, detailing the overall accessibility,
Sample Ally Course Accessibility Report

When you click on an item in the Course Accessibility Report, Ally will explain the accessibility issue with the content item and walk you through the steps to fix it.

How Do I Get Started?

Ready to check your course’s accessibility and start working on fixing your accessibility issues?

Go to your Course Control Panel, select Course Tools, and select Accessibility Report.

course control panel

Once the Course Accessibility Report loads, you will see an overall accessibility score for your course. Scores range from Low (red icon) to Perfect (green icon). The higher your score, the fewer the issues.

sample Ally course accessibility score: 68%
ally low score indicator

Low (0-33%): Course content is not accessible and needs immediate attention.

Ally medium score indicator

Medium (34-66%): Course content is somewhat accessible and could use improvement.

ally high score indicator

High (67-99%): Course content is accessible but could be improved.

ally perfect score indicator

Perfect (100%): Course content is accessible. No improvement needed.

Not sure where to start fixing content? Ally makes it easy by showing you the content that’s easiest to fix as well as the content with the lowest accessibility scores.

Ally report showing the content easiest to fix and lowest scoring content

Don’t have a lot of time? Start with the easiest issues to fix. These are usually quick fixes, such as images that don’t have alternative text. These little fixes can do a lot to improve the overall accessibility of your course.

More Information

For more information on accessibility:

If you need assistance using the Course Accessibility Report, interpreting your accessibility score, or making your content accessible, reach out to elis@lesley.edu.

August Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series

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The Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series (BITS) is a free webinar series designed to bring faculty, instructional designers, partners, and Blackboard experts to you. Speakers share their tips, best practices, pedagogy, and higher education hot topics so you can stay ahead of the curve on teaching efficiency, course design, and student learning outcomes.

This August theme is “Best Practices to Start the Academic Year.” Review the descriptions below and register today.

Manage Your Blackboard Grade Center
Presenters: Kendall St Hilaire and Steve Ramos, Indiana River State College
Tuesday, August 6th – 10am ET

At Indian River State College, all faculty are expected to use the Blackboard Grade Center, and provide timely feedback to students. This webinar will walk participants through the external and internal drivers that resulted in the required use of the Blackboard Grade Center. Presenters will discuss the Virtual Campus master course model, and the process for setting up all Grade Centers within the master courses. The presentation will also cover the important role of the Grade Center when it comes to analytic reporting. IRSC also utilizes Blackboard Analytics for Learn reports to distribute data to key stakeholders such as Department Chairs, Deans, and Academic Vice Presidents.

Presenters will cover best practices in managing the grade center and share tips and tricks for faculty and those who provide technical support to faculty. IRSC will also share their techniques for offering training on the Grade Center, both through face-to-face trainings and resources that are accessible to the faculty member at the moment they need support when working in the Grade Center.

Register for the webinar

Beginning the Term Blackboard Checklist
Presenter: Helen Keier, Associate Director for Learning Management Systems, John Jay Online
Thursday, August 8th – 11am ET

The beginning of a term is often a hectic, stress-filled time for instructors, filled with a variety of tasks that must be completed all at once. Taking cues from the advice we often give our students (“Use a date planner,” “Write it down,” and “Check the Syllabus”) Beginning the Term checklists can help us make sure we stay on task, we meet our deadlines, ensure that nothing is overlooked, and most importantly, provide our students with a fully-realized experience in our classes. In this session, we will discuss the approach adopted by one college to make sure that Blackboard courses are ready for their students – from the start of the content copying process to making the course available on the first day of class.

Join us in this webinar to learn best practices for using and constructing your own custom Beginning the Term checklists, and discuss how checklists cannot only streamline your pre-semester preparations, but help you improve your online courses.

Register for the webinar

Incorporating Student Feedback Before, During and After Your Course
Presenter: Corrie Bergeron, Instructional Designer, Learning Systems Administrator, Lakeland Community College
Tuesday, August 13th – 10am ET

We all SAY that we want student feedback, but how do we put that into practice?  An answer might lie in our expectations for how we want our students to use the feedback that we give them.

Before the course even begins, we set out our expectations in the syllabus and schedule.  We expect them to read and understand it – but what if they don’t?  We give formative feedback on assignments and discussion posts.  How do we expect them to assimilate it and respond?   We give feedback on summative assessments – what do we want students to do with that after the class ends?   We’ll look at ways to elicit both overt and implicit feedback about our courses.

We’ll discuss situations where things go seriously sideways – when do you try to right the apple cart, and when do you just try to jump clear with minimal injuries? Finally, we’ll look at the process of making adjustments to a course while it is still in progress, in the short break between semesters, and when you have the luxury to step back and take a long overall look at it.

Register for the webinar

Updating Content to Make Your Courses More Accessible
Presenter: Melissa Hortman, Assistant Professor & Director of Instructional Technology, Medical University of South Carolina
Thursday, August 15th – 11am ET

The landscape of higher education is drastically changing in terms of student profile and the technology to support their learning. Barriers can be removed by creating more usable course content, and it is our responsibility to ensure that digital content is accessible to all. There are various ways to update your content to make your course more accessible by integrating easy principles into your workflow.

Register for the webinar


Ally Update: Preview Documents in Your Browser

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Ally’s latest update will now show in-browser previews for PDF’s, Word documents, and Powerpoint presentations.

What does this mean?

Previously, when you clicked on the Ally gauge to view your document’s accessibility score and list of any accessibility issues, you only saw an icon for the document in the main window. Now, Ally will allow you to view your document right in the browser and highlight where the specific accessibility issues are. No more guessing.

Sample accessibility score with issues highlighted

Highlights are currently provided for:

  • Images without an appropriate alternative description
  • Text fragments with insufficient contrast
  • Tables without table headings

It’s now much easier to identify the issue and then fix it. View the video below to see it in action.
(Note: the video does not have any sound.)

Introducing Kaltura ASR Captions

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Kaltura Media has the ability to automatically add captions to your video content using automatic speech recognition (ASR). When a video is uploaded, the ASR processes begins immediately. Captions are created based on the audio track and the content is assumed to be in English.

Why are captions important?
Accurate captioning of audio and video content ensures that people who are Deaf and hard of hearing can understand the content. Additionally, captions are very useful to non-native English speakers, viewers watching in a sound-sensitive environment such as a library, can help viewers with learning disabilities or attention deficits maintain concentration. and can help all learners improve comprehension.

The following video effectively explains the importance of captioning.

 

How are captions created?
All videos created after August 6, 2018 will be auto-captioned. This means that once you create your video or upload your video to Kaltura, ASR captions will be automatically ordered and applied to your video. The process may take several minutes to several hours, depending on the length of your video.

What about older videos?
You can request ASR captions for any videos created before August 6, 2018. Detailed instructions may be found here: Add Captions to Previously Uploaded Video Content.

How accurate are ASR captions?
ASR captions are only 80% accurate and accuracy may vary depending on the audio quality, clarity of speech, background noise, etc.

While 80% accuracy may seem pretty decent, please keep in mind that this means that, in general:

  • 1 in 5 words will be incorrect
  • An 8-word sentence will be about 17% accurate
  • A 10-word sentence will be about 11% accurate

How do I improve the accuracy of my captions?
While ASR captions are a step forward for accessibility, we recommend editing them for accuracy. You can edit your captions right in your web browser – no additional software is needed! For more information and detailed instructions, see Review and Edit Captions.

 

Make Your myLesley Content More Accessible

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Faculty often ask if Blackboard is accessible. While most web-based tools can always be more accessible and easier to use, the basic answer is “Yes, Blackboard is accessible.” The real problem often comes when we upload files and documents to Blackboard that may not be as accessible as they should be. We may not even be aware that the files we uploaded aren’t accessible to students with impairments. Blackboard Ally wants to fix that.

When an instructor uploads a file to myLesley (Blackboard), using the exact same process they currently use, Ally compares the file to a Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Checklist. It then does three things.

For students, Ally automatically converts that file into alternative, accessible formats. Alternative formats include Tagged PDF, HTML, ePub, electronic braille and audio. If the instructor uploads a scanned chapter or article, Ally will convert it to an OCR PDF which can be read as text by a screen reader.
Ally alternative formats

This a proactive and automatic process that happens without the instructor or Disability Services doing anything. Students do not need to self-identify or request alternative versions. The downside is that the quality of these alternative versions can vary. The more complex the original document, the more difficult it is to create a converted document that is useful and easy to navigate by the students who need them.

Therefore Ally also provides guidance to faculty on how to improve the accessibility of the documents uploaded to Blackboard. Each uploaded document receives an accessibility score and red, orange or green icon. Clicking on the icon presents you with information on what accessibility issues are in the document, information on why it is an issue, and links to tutorials on how to make changes to the document.

Ally has let you, the instructor, know that your documents may not be accessible and how to improve their accessibility without the need to attend a training or to have Disability Services reach out to you. You can slowly educate yourself on accessibility and improve not just the documents that are currently in your course, but also all future documents you will create. Over time, you will simply create accessible documents from the beginning because now you know how and how easy it can be.

Lastly, Ally provides an Institutional Report telling the university which courses have inaccessible content and what kinds of content are problematic. This means that the university can target its outreach and training based on our specific issues. One program may have a lot of courses with images and no alternative descriptions. Another’s biggest issue may be that Word documents require headings and subheadings. Instead of offering generic training and support for everyone, we can now reach out to each program and offer training and assistance for the issues they actually are having. The report also allows us to demonstrate our improvement over time.
Ally institutional report main issues

Ally will be available to all myLesley courses beginning this Fall. Keep an eye out for those accessibility scores on your documents. Ally is also making continuous improvements so don’t be surprised when new features and guidance become available.

If you have questions about Ally or need assistance, email elis@lesley.edu.