Ally for Course Accessibility
Ally is a tool offered at Cornell to help you make your online course materials more accessible. Directly integrated into Canvas, Ally checks your course content. It then provides you with a report rating the accessibility of the various components of your course. Moreover, Ally can suggest ways to make content more accessible. Without any effort by the faculty, Ally also allows students to automatically generate alternative formats for many course materials.
When viewing your Canvas course, you will see an accessibility score indicator (next to the “published” checkmark) for most course materials (including unpublished materials). This indicator gives you a score for each item; clicking on the indicator will display any issues identified with the item and provide some guidance to improve the accessibility of that item. It is not uncommon to see a large number of items in the “red zone”.
You can also add an “Accessibility Report” link to your course navigation. The report will provide an overall analysis of your course and a prioritized list of issues to address.
NOTE: Students do not see the accessibility reports or indicators in your course.
The best way to learn more about how to use Ally is to access their help materials online. We recommend starting with Getting Started with Ally and the Ally Quick Start for Instructors (NOTE: Ally is a Blackboard product, but it is integrated into Canvas).
Please contact us with any questions or for further information.
Ally Training Workshops
Description
Learn to use Ally, a new tool in Canvas, to help improve course accessibility. The workshop will cover the basic features of Ally, including reports, available material remediation, and alternative file formats.
Note: there are currently no additional workshops scheduled at this time, please feel free to review the recording or contact the CTI with any questions or for further information.
Recordings
Watch a recording of the Ally Training Workshop.
You can also watch recordings of individual sessions:
- Introduction (length: 4:59)
- Canvas Accessibility Checker (length: 9:55)
- Uses & Limitations of Ally (length: 3:43)
- Ally Accessibility Report (length: 3:40)
- PDF Example and Ally Accessibility Indicators (length: 3:02)
- Adding Alternative Text in Canvas (length: 1:44)
- Ally Accessibility Indicator in Canvas (length: 0:58)
- Ally Alternative Formats (length: 6:46)