Ally for Canvas Course Accessibility
What Is Ally?
Ally is a groundbreaking digital accessibility solution. It is seamlessly integrated into Canvas, automatically evaluating the content you upload and providing insights into its accessibility. What sets Ally apart is its proactive approach: it identifies issues and suggests enhancements to make your course materials more inclusive.
Key Features
- Accessibility Score: Immediately upon uploading content, Ally provides you with an accessibility score, showing how well your material meets accessibility standards.
- Guided Feedback: Ally offers clear feedback on potential accessibility issues within your content and gives step-by-step guidance on how to address them. This empowers you to refine and optimize your materials for all learners.
- Alternative Formats: Recognizing that students have diverse learning preferences and needs, Ally automatically generates multiple formats of your content, from audio versions to semantic HTML. This ensures every student can engage with your materials in a way that suits them best.
We believe Ally can revolutionize the way we think about and approach digital content accessibility. By integrating Ally into our academic journey, we're taking a significant step toward a more inclusive and equitable learning environment for all our students.
We encourage you to explore Anthology's Ally, embrace its potential, and join us in creating a world where every student has the tools and opportunities to succeed. Please read and bookmark our resource sheet, Ally for Canvas Course Accessibility.
Alternative Formats
Your students will not see the colored Ally indicators. They will see the clickable Ally Alternate Format symbol throughout your course. When clicked, your students will be able to choose a downloadable alternate format for your Canvas content.
The ability to create and download alternate file formats of content and documents in Canvas allows the student to customize their learning to their own needs. Anthology has a web tool available to anyone needing to create an alternative format. Find the tool here and submit documents to generate a downloadable alternative format for use on different devices or situations.
How to Use Ally
= Low: File is not accessible and needs immediate attention.
= Medium: File is somewhat accessible and could use improvement.
= High: File is accessible but could be improved.
= Perfect: File is accessible. No improvement needed.
Fixing Accessibility Issues
The most common accessibility issue at UIW is the absence of alternative text that should accompany an image. Include "alt text" with your image to make it accessible.
Follow principle 2 for alt text. You will be able to make the alt text repair right in the Ally window.
*An important fact to remember, when fixing missing alt text, you must open the image in the Rich Content Editor on the page where the image is located, not from your Accessibility Report. Ally is not able to save alt text information, unless it is added to the image in the RCE.
A malformed document may be an Office file or .pdf file. Word, Excel and PowerPoint contain a tool in the Review menu called "Check Accessibility." The tool will identify accessibility issues as you compose your document, and you will receive instructions to correct the issues. Always review an Office document for accessibility issues before uploading to Canvas.
If you create a .pdf document in an Office app, make sure to save it with the Best for electronic distribution and accessibility radio button selected.
Other .pdf errors will be identified by Ally. You will receive repair instructions when you select the documents Ally indicator. There are many errors that can occur with .pdf files. Some may not be repairable if you did not create the document. In that case you should not use it.
Contrast plays a critical role in both online images and text for a variety of reasons, primarily pertaining to readability, aesthetics, accessibility, and comprehension.
Contrast between text and its background significantly affects readability. For example, black text on a white background is much easier to read than light gray text on a white background. The same applies to images - high contrast ensures the viewer can easily distinguish between different elements in the image.
Good contrast is important for accessibility. Users with vision impairments, including conditions like color blindness, need sufficient contrast to interact with online content. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have specific criteria for contrast ratios to ensure content is accessible to as many users as possible. Black letters on a white background are best.
When your Ally indicator signals a contrast error, you may have to eliminate background color or change fonts. Contrast issues with images may require that you abandon an image, or contact software@uiwtx.edu to edit an important image to improve contrast.