Skip to ContentSkip to Navigation

Accessibility in the LMS

  1. Creating an Accessible Class
  2. Accessibility in the LMS
  3. Fundamental Alterations
  4. Need-to-Know for Faculty

Brightspace Accessibility

Accessibility ensures that everyone, regardless of ability, can access and engage with digital content. By making content more accessible, Harford Community College supports inclusive experiences, meets legal and ethical standards, and improves outcomes for all learners. 

What is Ally?

Ally is an accessibility tool that helps improve the usability and inclusiveness of digital content. It automatically checks files and pages for accessibility issues and provides alternative formats to support a wide range of user needs and preferences.

Learners benefit from alternative formats that suit their learning preferences, while instructors receive guidance on how to improve the accessibility of their course materials. 

Ally offers several key benefits:

  • Supports inclusive access to content
  • Provides alternative formats automatically
  • Offers guidance to improve accessibility
  • Helps meet accessibility standards and regulations
  • Delivers insights through institutional reporting

Alternative Formats

Ally automatically generates alternative formats of Brightspace course content based on the original. Once you upload an item into your course or create a content item, Ally automatically generates alternative formats of the original version for Learners (without altering the original). Alternative formats are available to any Learner, regardless of ability status or accommodations. They are also available to you. Some examples of available alternative formats include:

  • audio file
  • HTML file
  • Braille-ready file format
  • Tagged PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

Course Accessibility Report

The course accessibility report provides an accessibility summary and overview of an entire course and includes:

  • Overall accessibility score for the entire course (0-100%)
  • Content breakdown by type (e.g. PDFs, Word documents, pages, etc.)
  • Three guided remediation approaches:
    1. Tackle the easiest issues to fix
    2. Address the content with the lowest scores
    3. Guided remediation that allows you to select an approach that suits your skillset, knowledge base, and time available

Ally detects accessibility issues and provide guidance but needs you, the subject matter experts, to do the actual remediating.  The intention behind this is twofold:

  • Emphasize the subject matter expertise and context you possess
  • Ensure that the actual remediating is done by a human

 What content does Ally check?

Currently, Ally checks files in these formats:

  • PDF 
  • Microsoft® Word 
  • Microsoft® PowerPoint®
  • OpenOffice/LibreOffice 
  • Uploaded HTML 
  • JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIFF images
  • WYSIWYG/VTBE content
  • YouTube videos embedded in WYSIWYG content

Ally Accessibility Score Icons

Scores range from Low to Perfect. The higher the score, the fewer the issues.

  • Low (0-33%): Needs help! There are severe accessibility issues.
  • Medium (34-66%): A little better. The file is somewhat accessible and needs improvement.
  • High (67-99%): Almost there. The file is accessible, but more improvements are possible.
  • Perfect (100%): Perfect! Ally didn't identify any accessibility issues, but further improvements may still be possible.

Using Ally to Guide Remediation

Knowing where to begin is often the most difficult step when it comes to remediating content. Ally is a great tool to not only support your overall remediation efforts but also help you pinpoint where to start. Two of Ally’s features for instructors that support content remediation efforts are Instructor Feedback and the Course Accessibility Report.

  • Instructor feedback evaluates the accessibility of an individual content item, such as an uploaded Word document or a page built directly in Brightspace, provides a list of all detected accessibility issues, and offers context and guidance on how and why these issues should be addressed.
  • The Course Accessibility Report provides an accessibility summary and overview of an entire course, including an overall accessibility score, content breakdown, and three guided remediation approaches. Each of these features can be used to support your remediation efforts in different ways.

Individual Content Items
(things you've uploaded)

To begin addressing accessibility issues in individual content items, consider the following suggested workflow:

  1. Upload or create content in Brightspace.
  2. Open the Instructor Feedback panel for an individual content item and explore the issues detected and guidance on how to fix them.
  3. Open your file in its originating software/tool or enter edit mode in your “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) content and begin remediating.

To address the accessibility of your course content using your Course Accessibility Report, consider the following suggested workflow:

  1. Open your Course Accessibility Report.
  2. Determine which guided remediation approach to use based on time, skillset, and knowledge of accessibility.
  3. Access Instructor Feedback for original content items directly from your Course Accessibility Report.
  4. Open your file in its originating software/tool or enter into edit mode in your WYSIWYG content and begin remediating based on the approach selected.

WYSIWYG Content
(things you created in Brightspace)

Get real-time feedback from Ally in your course content editor. Open your course WYSIWYG content editor to see the Ally score indicator. As you create content, the Ally score updates in real-time. Select the score to learn more about the issues and follow step-by-step guidance on how to fix them.

Create or edit WYSIWYG content to see the Ally score.

  1. Go to a supported WYSIWYG content.
  2. Select the content to edit it. The Ally score appears on the right below the editor.

Ally supports these WYSIWYG content:

  1. Web Links (application/x-link-web)
  2. Module (application/x-module)