What is Ally?
Ally is an external tool integrated into Canvas that automatically checks course materials against WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards and provides feedback on their accessibility. It’s important to note that Ally doesn’t evaluate the quality of your course content; it simply assesses how well the content meets accessibility standards.
This video provides an overview of Ally in Canvas and how it works within our Virtual Learning Environment:
Alternative Formats
A beneficial feature is that it also enables students to download accessible alternative formats of published module materials, without the need to create and upload these ourselves. These formats are made available with the original file, so students can find everything in one convenient location.
While the alternative formats are created for you, you can, if you want, disable alternative formats for any individual content item for whatever reason (a good example being translated versions of texts on foreign language courses).
Alternative formats made available by Ally are:
- Tagged PDF;
- HTML;
- e-Pub;
- Electronic braille;
- Audio (text-to-speech conversion);
- BeeLine Reader;
Course Accessibility Report
Accessibility Summary
The course accessibility report acts as a complement to the existing accessibility indicators. It provides an accessibility summary and overview at the course level.
The report gives an overall accessibility score for the course, which is an average of the accessibility scores of all course materials. Scores range from Low (0-33%), Medium (34-66%), High (67-99%), to Perfect (100%).
Detailed Feedback
It identifies specific files that need remediation, categorizing them by accessibility score and issue type. This helps instructors prioritize which content to fix first 1.
Guidance and Corrective Actions
The report provides detailed explanations of why certain issues are problems and offers step-by-step instructions on how to fix them.
Instructors can even upload corrected versions of files directly within Canvas.