Responding to Ally Accessibility Scores in Your Courses

The USC Upstate Accessibility Commitment aims to ensure students, faculty, and staff have access to all spaces and materials where learning takes place. Luckily, Blackboard Ultra has made faculty’s role in fulling this commitment easier than ever. The university-adopted quality assurance program holds all courses to a high standard of accessibility, including expectations that all documents use heading style formats, color contrast, and accessible tables; that videos have accurate closed captions; and that audio files or recordings have transcripts to ensure barrier-free learning opportunities for all students. It may sound like a lot of work to manage and create accessible content, but all of our content tools, from Adobe to Word to Blackboard Ultra, have embedded checks and remedies to help us achieve our accessibility goals. Let’s get started!

Briefly, let’s look at two terms that have implications for how we respond to students’ needs. First, a student accommodation is typically requested through the office of Disability Services by students providing documentation of their disability. When the request process is finalized, a letter or notice from Disability Services is sent to faculty giving specific, individualized guidance on what the accommodation(s) is and how to provide it. Examples of accommodations may include the use of an ASL (American Sign Language) interpreter or transcripts for live classes, extended time on tests, or choice seating.

Accessibility, on the other hand, is covered under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and has evolved in recent decades with the emergence of and increased reliance on information technology tools in the presentation of public-facing content and specifically, in the delivery of higher education courses and experiences. Accessibility, under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990), includes and applies to any content faculty link to, create or post in our Blackboard Ultra courses, including materials like videos (our own or others from YouTube or elsewhere), PDFs, documents, diagrams and images. If content is accessible, it means that it can easily be read by screen readers, which are assistive softwares, including those embedded in Blackboard Ultra, that achieve accessibility by converting text into spoken words for the immersive reader function and the mp3 function or by converting text into Braille. If course content has a low accessibility score, it means that the reader can only convert some or maybe none of the content at all, preventing students from using this crucial tool. Review this short screenreader video to explore what happens when a website is accessible and what happens when a website is not accessible.

So how do we know if our course material in Blackboard Ultra is accessible? Great question. For any individual attachment, like a PDF file or a Word document, added to the pages in our courses, Blackboard Ally will generate a dial indicating how accessible the material is. The dials are shown from the lowest score (red) to the highest score (dark green) in the image below. If an attachment has a red score or an orange score, it is not very accessible in its current format and will need to be edited or replaced. If the attachment has a light green or dark green score, then it is mostly or all accessible.

In addition to the individual documents’ scores, Blackboard Ultra also evaluates the entire course and generates an accessibility evaluation like this one indicating how accessible a course is. The score is broken down by types of documents and materials and makes recommendations for how to improve the score and increase its accessibility. To view a course score, begin by clicking on the “Books and Tools” link under the “Details and Actions” section on the left side of a Blackboard Ultra course page. Then, on the right, a pop up menu will appear with all the Books and Tools. Up at the top, click on “Accessibility Report”.

Once you click the Accessibility Report, Blackboard Ultra will generate an interactive page indicating the overall accessibility of the course. From the report, you can access each accessibility concern, update it, and then move on to the next one. Some accessibility errors can be fixed right in the Blackboard page. Others may requires you to update the document, PDF, or PowerPoint to improve accessibility. Let’s look at some reports.

In the above report, the course has an accessibility score of 95% which is high. The report indicates the types of course documents evaluated and generally, all of the materials are in compliance. That means the tables and documents have headings and images have alternative text. There are also some additional suggestions on the right side of the page, indicating improvements are needed. By scrolling down in the report, Blackboard Ultra links to the specific item in the course that needs improvement and offers guidance on how to improve it.

In the above report, the course has an accessibility score of 65%, which could use improvement. Again, the report indicates the types of course documents evaluated and there are recommendations to make improvements. The box on the top right indicates there are 187 items with the easiest issues to fix. Those typically can be adjusted right in the Blackboard Ultra page, increasing the score from a red dial to a green dial. By scrolling down in the report, Blackboard Ultra links to the specific item in the course that needs improvement and offers guidance on how to improve it.

Improving Accessibility Scores. Ideally, when we update or revise a course, we’ll attend to accessibility in the building or creation phase. If we use this approach, we’re likely to see higher overall accessibility scores so that only minimal or small adjustments have to be made at the end. If we’re new to accessibility, we may review the reports associated with already-built courses, and discover adjustments are needed. Below is a short list of where to begin to have the greatest impact on your accessibility report.

1. Ensure images have alt text. Check out this short video on adding alt text. It’s a straightforward process that is similar in most programs and applications.
2. Ensure videos have closed captioning (CC). For instructor generated videos, Yuja and Panapto will create captions. You can check the accuracy yourself or reach out to CAIFS and we’ll work on it for you.
3. Ensure Microsoft documents are accessible. View this short video on making Microsoft documents accessible with guidance.
4. Ensure PowerPoints are accessible. View this short video on making Powerpoints accessible with guidance.
5. Ensure Excel Spreadsheets are accessible. View this short video on making Excel spreadheets accessible with guidance.

Thoughts on PDFs. When I came through school, it was a common practice for course material to include paper copies of chapters and other content and then later, to include scans of those copied chapters. Scanned documents, however, are double trouble. First, if a PDF file is not searchable, for example, that means it is essentially one big image and it can’t be accessed by screen readers and other assistive tools. Additionally, Copyright laws do not have much tolerance for this type of sharing any more. Check out USC Upstate’s informative and interactive page on Copyright. It includes Taylor Swift.)

The good news is that in 2024, there are all kinds of exciting ways to bring accessible content to our courses. For example, USC Upstate has an incredible selection of journals, ebooks, and video content available to the entire campus. Additionally, the quality and availability of OER (open education resources) continues to increase at a minimized or no-cost rate for faculty and students. (Check out USC Upstate’s guidance and resources page for OER). Some older texts, images, sheet music (like OpenScore), video, and audio content have now moved into the public domain and can be accessed online, as well.

As you move into the new semester and find yourself with questions or in need of some support as you make your course material accessible for all students, CAIFS would love to chat with you or work with you (make an appointment at this link) as you move your courses toward inclusive excellence.