Ally to the Rescue–Ally and Accessibility

Sometimes a name says it all. For example, an “ally” is a friend, an assistant, and a partner. Pair “ally” with “accessibility” and what you have is a software solution that helps individuals with disabilities access online files, photos, and documents with ease. “cies they need to excel. faculty, and staff.

Ally is an accessibility tool,” says Paula Thorsland, senior instructional designer and interim manager of eLearning and Instructional Support (eLIS). “It’s an add-on to Blackboard, the university’s learning management system, which is an artificial intelligence software developed in Denmark. The software automatically checks course documents placed in Blackboard and looks for common accessibility issues.”

Not only does the software check for accessibility standards, it scores what it finds and offers guidance on how to make repairs to bring the document up to an acceptable level.

“The biggest problem we have is people think that because they can see the text, everyone can see the text,” says Thorsland. However, if someone has posted a photo of text, for example, rather than a text document, assistive technology equipment cannot help. The post is blank. No chance someone will read it; no opportunity to search it; no ability to copy and paste desired information. The post is just blank.

If, on the other hand, a document is accessible to begin with, students have options that allow them to choose alternative formats. Nice.

Once Ally was fully deployed in Blackboard in fall 2018, it reviewed and scored more than 110,000 documents, of which 7,514 were scans. The eLIS team was overwhelmed by the very thought of managing such a volume of work, but with a little creativity, even the most daunting challenge can be overcome.

In this case, the solution came in the form of student collaborations. Thorsland created a SWOT (Strengths. Weaknesses. Opportunities. Threats) team composed of students funded by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Rather than ask faculty to review their online documents, they asked the students—who, after all, are the end users—to conduct the research from a student accessibility perspective. Their task? Assess what was not working and repair it.

As members of the four-person SWOT team, Rachel Liang ’20 and her colleagues first received training in how to think out a problem and what to do when a problem was found. Team members then reviewed documents, identified problems, and resolved them whenever possible. “Format was often the problem,” says Liang. “When we found an issue, we fixed it,” she says, promising more improvements to come.

Collaboration with individual faculty members went smoothly. “Faculty were very appreciative of our work,” says Liang, and, by the same token, we can safely assume that SWOT team members were appreciative of the opportunity not only to assist faculty but also to learn skills.

The SWOT team repaired more than 370 documents and helped to improve 15 online courses from among those with the lowest accessibility scores.

Thorsland says that using the SWOT team approach was a useful learning experience for her team. “We gained great insight by having students find and improve documents that professors were using in an inaccessible way.” Indeed, Ally is proving quite successful. Says Thorsland: “After the deployment of Ally, the accessibility rating in online courses increased from 49 percent to 73 percent.