Ally Information for Faculty

Blackboard Ally is a tool to help you enhance the usability and accessibility of your course documents for students. Ally evaluates documents that are uploaded to Blackboard Learn and provides an accessibility score for each file. The document’s score is dictated by a meter next to each file icon. Note: Students will never see the meters or accessibility score. For files that don't comply with accessibility guidelines, Ally leads you through the steps needed to improve the accessibility of the document.

In addition to providing you with insight to your content accessibility, Ally automatically creates alternative versions of your files for the students. This allows them to choose the type of file they want that best suits their needs. The better the files are formatted by the instructor, the better the alternative versions will be. Note that the better the files are formatted by the instructor, the better the alternative versions will be. While you're in the process of improving files, students can still access alternative copies.

If you have any questions or think of something else you'd like to see in the Faculty Resources tab, let us know.  Just e-mail us at merceronline@mccc.edu.

Blackboard Ally Community group

Ally Community site 

Blackboard Ally Support Information

Blackboard Ally for LMS (video)
Quick Start
Accessibility Scores
View File Accessibility
Improve File Accessibility
Frequently Asked Questions

Ally Resources and Video

Ally for Instructors in Blackboard Learn (video)
Ally Adoption Tool Kit (PDF)
Instructor Basic FAQ for Ally

Outside Accessibility Resources

Make your Word documents accessible
Office 365 - Use the Accessibility Checker to find accessibility issues
Adobe PDF accessibility - Make, Check and Fix PDF document 

Ally Errors and Fixes

Blackboard Ally is a tool that seamlessly integrates with our Learning Management System (LMS) to provide insight into MCCC accessibility. With Blackboard Ally, gain an understanding of MCCC's accessibility performance.

The following explains some of the common image errors identified for Ally and a breakdown as to how to fix the issue.

  • These images do not have a description or alternative text (having clear descriptions for images helps to understand the content of the image and the context).

    Action: To add descriptions to images within a document, you need to make the changes within the document and save. In Microsoft Office: Double or right-click on an image to open the Format Picture panel. Select Size & Properties and Alt Text. Add the description text
  • The headings in the HTML content don't begin in the main heading and therefore doesn’t follow a logical order. So having the main heading at the beginning of the document provides for a more logical structure and will makes the document much easier to understand/navigate.

    Action: Fix this issue in the word processing software. Open the document, add headings, and upload the updated file to the course.


  • These documents don't contain any marked-up headings. Headings are important because they provide structure to a document.

    Action: Fix this issue in the word processing software. Open the document, add headings, and upload the updated file to the course.
  • These documents contain text with low contrast between the text and its background. This can cause the text to be difficult to read.

    Action: Use a tool like the color Contrast Analyzer to check the contrast of the text

  • These PDF documents are missing a title. PDF titles are used as the document title for a PDF window or tab, making it easier to navigate to the PDF and understand the purpose of the PDF.

    Action: Fix this issue in your word processing software and upload a new file.