Currently viewing the tag: "Ally"
Last week, we highlighted Fix Your Content Day, where staff were encouraged to take small steps towards improving the accessibility of their module sites. Today, we’re excited to share a success story from Deborah Gardner, a Lecturer in Business Management, who took part in the initiative and saw significant improvements in her module’s accessibility.
When Deborah checked her module site’s accessibility report, she found it at 88%. While this was a decent score, she knew there was room for improvement. “I went through the steps the report suggested,” she explained, starting with adding alternative text to diagrams in her PowerPoint slides and correcting low-visibility text. These changes quickly raised her score to 99%, and with a bit more effort, she soon reached the perfect 100%. “Some of the corrections were a little time-consuming, but the effort paid off when my overall score hit 100%,” she shared.
Key Learnings
Deborah’s experience highlighted a few valuable takeaways:
Custom ALT Text: One of Deborah’s recommendations is to write your own ALT text descriptions for images, rather than relying on automatic suggestions. “When I asked to use the suggested [ALT text], it didn’t really describe the image that well,” she noted. Crafting accurate and meaningful descriptions ensures that students using screen readers fully understand visual content.
Tackling PDFs: For Deborah, the most time-consuming task was correcting PDFs, but the improvements were well worth the time. Ensuring all content is accessible, even documents, can have a huge impact on student inclusion.
A Habit of Accessibility
Deborah encourages her colleagues to get into the habit of reviewing their accessibility reports regularly: “The first step is to check your report. Quite often, it will just involve a few tweaks, so it won’t be too demanding on your time. Get into the habit of checking it once a week to ensure your site remains accessible.”
She also suggests incorporating accessible practices from the very beginning: “It helps to get into the habit of providing descriptions for any images in your content right from the start—they’re less likely to flag up in the report that way.”
Next steps
While Deborah has seen firsthand the benefits of improving her module’s accessibility, she hopes to work with colleagues across the programme to adopt similar practices. By sharing her experience and success, she would like to help others to do the same, creating a more inclusive learning environment for all students.
Accessibility doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and as Deborah’s story shows, even a few small steps can make a big difference. For more tips and support, check out our original blog post here and don’t hesitate to reach out to your Learning Technologist for guidance.
At the University of Northampton, we’re committed to creating an inclusive learning environment for all students. As part of this commitment, we’re happy to celebrate the Anthology Fix Your Content Day on Thursday, October 3rd, 2024. This 24-hour event is designed to create more accessible and inclusive digital learning content using Blackboard Ally. So, why not join us in making NILE more accessible?
How do I get involved?
If you’d like to take part, simply email your Learning Technologist with the code of your NILE module. On the morning of October 3rd, email them a screenshot of your current Ally Accessibility score, then spend the day making improvements to your module content. By 8 PM, submit another screenshot of your final Ally score and you might just get a special mention in Unify, along with the satisfaction of knowing you’ve created a more accessible learning environment for your students.
In previous years, tutors like Jean Edwards and Charlotte Dann embraced this challenge and made fantastic progress using the Ally module accessibility reports to guide their changes. Their work helped create more inclusive NILE modules, making a real difference for their students.
What do I need to do on October 3rd?
Here’s a guide to getting involved in the Anthology Fix Your Content Day 2024:
- Use this guide to find your Module-Level Ally score and identify areas for improvement.
- Use Blackboard Ally to assess the accessibility of your materials. Ally provides feedback and suggests improvements, helping you prioritise changes that will have the greatest impact.
- Review Your Documents: Ensure that your PDFs, Word documents, and presentations use clear headings and tags that can be easily navigated by screen readers.
- Add Alt Text to Images: Include descriptive alt text for any images in your materials. This ensures that students using screen readers can engage with the visual content.
- Check your Captions: Accurate captions support not just students with hearing impairments, but also those studying in noisy environments or those who are non-native English speakers.
We hope you’ll join us on October 3rd and make NILE more accessible. However, even if you can’t engage on the day, consider trying something new this semester – whether that’s adding clearer captions, using shorter filenames, or creating an Ultra document. Even small improvements can significantly transform the learning experience for all students.
Contact your Learning Technologist if you have any questions.
At the University of Northampton, we are committed to fostering an inclusive learning environment. That’s why we’ve introduced the AI-powered tool in Blackboard Ultra that automatically generates alternative text (alt text) for images. This feature offers instructors the support they need to generate meaningful alternative text (alt text) for images quickly and efficiently.
The Challenge of Creating Alt Text
Writing descriptive and meaningful alt text isn’t always straightforward. Many times, instructors need a bit of inspiration to find the right words. Enter Ally’s AI Alt Text Assistant—a tool designed to take the guesswork out of writing alt text by automatically generating suggestions. This not only saves time but also enhances the accessibility of learning materials for visually impaired students.
How Does the AI Alt Text Assistant Work?
Integrated directly into the Ally Instructor Feedback interface, the AI tool empowers instructors to address images without alt text more efficiently:
- Auto-Generate Description Button: When an image lacks a description, instructors can simply click the “Auto-Generate Description” button. The AI Alt Text Assistant will provide a concise and accurate suggestion based on the image’s content.
- Instructor Review and Control: Importantly, the AI does not automatically apply these suggestions. Each description requires instructor review, ensuring that the final text aligns with the course content and the image’s educational purpose. You can easily edit, refine, or remove the suggestions to suit your needs.
This combination of automation and instructor control guarantees that the alt text meets both accessibility standards and the specific context of your course materials.
Key Features and Benefits
- Time-Saving Automation: With just one click, you can generate accurate alt text suggestions, saving time while ensuring your materials are accessible.
- Instructor-Centred: The AI Alt Text Assistant empowers instructors by providing helpful suggestions, but leaves the final decision in your hands, giving you full control over the descriptions.
- Seamless Integration: This feature works within the existing Ally Instructor Feedback workflow, making it easy to fix accessibility issues as you work through your content.
Why Is This Important?
Creating accessible content isn’t just about meeting legal standards—it’s about ensuring that every student can engage with your materials. By incorporating alt text for images, you’re helping students who use screen readers to fully participate in the learning experience. Ally’s AI tool simplifies this process, helping you make your course content more inclusive with minimal effort.
Start Using the AI Alt Text Assistant Today
The new AI Alt Text Assistant is available now in Blackboard Ultra. Whether you’re updating old materials or creating new ones, this tool will help you maintain accessibility standards while saving valuable time.
For more information or guidance on using this new feature, check out our Ally guidance and get in touch with your Learning Technologist if you have any questions.
By leveraging this tool, you contribute to making learning at the University of Northampton a more inclusive experience for all.
Congratulations and well done to our three brilliant and amazing digital accessibility champions who took part in our challenge on the recent Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Simon Sneddon, Alison Power and returning competitor Jean Edwards join Charlotte Dann from last year in making their NILE sites more accessible for their students. This past year has placed huge demands on our time and our energy so it’s immensely wonderful these three were able to take part in the 2021 challenge alongside many other commitments. The 2021 trio contributed to Northampton’s final score of being 42nd in the World rankings and 4th in Europe.
The challenge was to see how much more accessible they could make their content within a short window of time. A prize for the most accessible NILE site, the most increasing in accessibility and the runner up prize for the greatest increase in accessibility. The results are in, and we are very pleased to announce the winners are:
- Simon Sneddon gets the highest overall score with a score of 97% on modules LAW2006 and LAW2007
- Jean Edwards gets the prize for the greatest increase with a whopping increase of 29% on PDT1068
- Alison Power gets the runner up prize for greatest increase – with a fantastic increase of 18% on MID3026
Alison, Simon and Jean can feel extremely proud of the effort they made, but if pride is not a significant enough reward for them, we have dug deep into the coffers to award them prizes of chocolate and sweets which we will be presenting to them in a modest online celebration. Formal wear is not obligatory, though neither are jogging bottoms.
Alison Power said, “engaging with this competition was a great opportunity to review my NILE site to ensure it is as accessible as possible. Ally is a fantastic tool to support Module Leaders in checking and revising content – I found it really user-friendly and wonder whether it could be included in the NILE Minimum Standards.”
Simons commented that “the main thing I think is to let people know that it is really straightforward to make documents and NILE sites accessible, and if you do it as you go along, it doesn’t take any additional time, so it is a win win activity. The Ally tool is really helpful, and the process also makes me think more about formatting and contrast and so on, and focusing way more on content than all the fancy things that PowerPoint can do. Substance not style.”
Jean, Simon, Alison and Charlotte now form our exciting celebrity digital accessibility tutors but of course we know there are many other tutors who couldn’t take part in the challenge but who are equally doing their bit to support and promote digital accessibility. We are immensely proud of the efforts made on a daily basis to make content and teaching more accessible.
If you would like training on making your content more accessible to students, please get in touch with your Learning Technologist and we will be happy to point you to resources or offer online one-to-one training. Making our content accessible to our audience does take time but as Simon observed if you can make the small changes early on in the process then what flows from that is infinitely improved.
Thursday May the 20th is Global Accessibility Awareness Day and to celebrate, the University is launching a competition to see who can make their NILE site the most accessible over the course of the day.
If you’d like to be involved, click the link below to register your NILE module and we’ll send you simple instructions on how to check your modules Accessibility score as well as some useful tips on how to use Ally to easily improve your site.
Enter using the Eventbrite form.
On the morning of the 20th of May you just need to email us a screenshot of your Accessibility score then send another screenshot by 8pm of your finishing Ally score. The module with the largest increase in score will win a small prize, a special mention in Unify and the satisfaction of creating an accessible site in line with the regulations for online materials.
Last year, Charlotte Dann and Jean Edwards took up the challenge to improve the accessibility of their NILE sites using the Ally tool. The challenge involved using the Ally module accessibility reports to incrementally make changes to their course which would make their course more accessible to students. The intrepid tutors worked during the day to make the necessary changes and by the end of the day, Northampton finished 28th in the World (3rd in Europe) for the greatest improvement!
Jean said, “I took part last year and in the process of checking and improving my accessibility scores on the day I learned a lot that I have been able to apply when I make new resources. I feel I can make my resources accessible as I devise them instead of retrospectively. This is time saving for me and supportive for students.”
Charlotte also got a lot out of the challenge. “Accessibility is an important issue for me, personally as well as within my teaching. When I saw the NILE site challenge relating to accessibility last year, I wanted to use it as an opportunity to test myself against how accessible I thought I was. And I really learned a lot! Some of the changes that were needed were relatively simple for me, but make a big difference to others – things like ensuring pictures have alternate text for screen readers, and referring to Word documents throughout my site rather than PDFs which some accessibility software find difficult to navigate. This has now translated into being aware of accessibility issues outside of the NILE module site (such as in social media use for hashtags and images), and the tool itself is something I refer back to for my modules since.”
We thank Jean and Charlotte for their involvement in the challenge and for sharing their experience. This has been a busy year for teaching staff and accessibility is unlikely to be a priority with so many other demands. However, as Charlotte says, a simple change of habit can have a massive impact for students.
If you don’t have the headspace for the challenge, please consider trying something new for September to make your content more accessible. It could be clearer captions for your videos, a shorter or more concise name for your next uploaded file or using less PDFs in your course.
Every NILE user deserves a first-rate digital experience so making your content accessible is really important. We hope this is a fun way to help you improve your sites. If you need help on the day then remember to contact your Learning Technologist who will happy to give you some training or tips to win.
For guidance on how to use the Ally tools in NILE, paste the following link into your browser:
https://askus.northampton.ac.uk/Learntech/faq/189667
For more assistance on using Ally then contact your Learning Technologist:
https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist
On the 21st May as part of Global Accessibility Day, Charlotte Dann and Jean Edwards took up the challenge to improve the accessibility of their NILE sites using the Ally tool.
The challenge involved using the Ally module accessibility reports (https://askus.northampton.ac.uk/Learntech/faq/189667) to incrementally make changes to their course which would make their course more accessible and ultimately make their courses more accessible to students. The intrepid tutors worked during the day to make the necessary changes and improve Northampton’s score on the global league table:
By the end of the day, Northampton finished 28th in the World (3rd in Europe) for the greatest improvement.
Congratulations to Charlotte and Jean.
For more assistance on using Ally then contact your Learning Technologist – https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist
