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NOTE: Ally is coming soon to UM System instructors, but is not yet available.
Ally allows instructors to improve the accessibility of their Canvas course content by generating alternative formats of content, providing accessibility scores for courses, and providing feedback to instructors on how to improve their accessibility score.
Course accessibility report
The course accessibility report (see Fig. 1 for a sample) acts as a complement to the existing accessibility indicators. It provides an accessibility summary and overview at the course level.
The report shows instructors this useful information:
- Accessibility score for the course
- Distribution of course content by content type
- List of all issues identified in the course
Instructors access the instructor feedback from the report to fix an issue. The report helps instructors determine priority and gives options for order of fixing. For example, fix the content with the most severe issues first, or start with content that's easiest to fix.
Figure 1: Sample Ally course accessibility report
Accessibility score indicators
Ally measures the accessibility of each file attached to your course and shows you how it scores. Scores range from Low to Perfect (see Figs. 2-4). The higher the score, the fewer the issues. For files with Low to High scores, Ally shows you the issues and gives a step-by-step guide on how to fix them.
Low: File is not accessible and needs immediate attention.
Figure 2: Ally low score indicator in red
Medium: File is somewhat accessible and could use improvement.
Figure 3: Ally medium score indicator in orange
High: File is accessible but could be improved.
Figure 4: Ally high score indicator in green
Accessibility within the Canvas editor
Many areas in Canvas can be edited in real time, such as Canvas pages, assignment descriptions, announcements, discussions, etc. The place where text can be edited in these areas is called the Rich Content Editor. In order to view your Ally score for any Rich Content Editor, you need to be in Edit mode. While you are editing your content, your Ally score for this content will update immediately, using the score indicators above. Please keep in mind that changes you make will not be saved until you close the Ally feedback panel and select Save in the Rich Content Editor.
Instructor feedback
- Select the Accessibility score for the instructor feedback (see Fig. 5).
- Follow the steps given to you.
- Select All issues for an overview of every issue in the file and decide what issues to fix first.
Figure 5: A document in Ally with a low accessibility score due to poor contrast
Alternative Formats
Ally creates alternative formats of your course content based on the original. These formats are made available with the original content so students can find everything in one convenient location. Alternative formats are created automatically, but if you don't want alternative formats, you can turn off this feature for any content item.
Select Download Alternative Formats (see Fig. 6) anywhere it's available to show the different formats available and to turn them off.
Figure 6: Download Alternative Formats button
Watch an overview video about Ally
Need more help with Ally? Contact the Academic Technology team for assistance.