Ally and other helpful tools in Moodle

Blackboard Ally

Blackboard Ally is a new technology the University have acquired to help improve the accessibility of content within Moodle, in line with UK legislation.

It helps to make your course content more accessible in two key areas:

1. For students: it uses machine-learning algorithms to automatically provide alternative formats for course content throughout the whole module. This gives students immediate access to more accessible alternatives, such as semantic HTML, MP3 audio, Tagged PDF, ePub for eReaders or Braille reader files , and more without any manual intervention.

2. For content creator: Ally checks and scores content in a module. It provides feedback and detailed guidance on how to fix the identified accessibility issues all within Moodle. This allows you to see which items in your module have accessibility issues and fix them before students start to use the content.

The video below demonstrates how to use Blackboard Ally to detact and fix accessibility issues in your content.

Moodle Screenreader Helper

The Screenreader Helper, again found in the default Atto editor, is used to improve the ability of a screen reader to ‘see’ into an editable box, such as the one you see when adding content to a page or book in Moodle. It is something that is useful for content creators that use assistive technologies rather than the audience for the content themselves. It provides additional information about the text (e.g. is it bold), as well as a listing any images or links in the editable box. The image below show's the Screenreader helper identifying the style, links and images present in the text.