Release Notes for Ally - 2019

Ally 1.36 | Release to production 2 December 2019

New features, Updated features

Ally for Websites content feedback

The Ally content feedback component is now available for Ally for Websites. In the Ally for Websites accessibility report, the score indicators for PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint documents and Images can be clicked to launch the feedback component, which contains information about:

  • What accessibility issues have been identified in the content item
  • A preview of the content item and highlights that show where specific issues can be found in the document
  • Documentation on what each issue means
  • Detailed guidance on how to fix an issue
  • A link to where the content can be found on the website

This feedback component will make it much easier for content creators to understand how accessible a content item is, what its issues are and how it can be made more accessible.

More on how to use the feedback to improve your content

D2L Brightspace institutional hierarchy

The D2L Brightspace integration has been expanded to include the institutional hierarchy information for a course under the Department id and Department name columns in the courses.csv CSV export in the institutional report. This institutional hierarchy information is based on the `Department` organizational units that have been configured within Brightspace. This enables the calculation of the Ally score for each department in the institutional hierarchy through a tool like Excel, and serves as part of the foundational work to support native reporting by institutional hierarchy in the institutional report as part of our roadmap.

This feature requires an additional permission for the Ally API user. This can be configured under `Security > Roles and Permissions` by enabling the `Course Management Info` > `See Course Info: Enable for Course Offering` permission for the Ally API user.

Library reference

A Library Reference could already be provided by instructors for scanned documents and untagged PDFs as a way to provide additional metadata for files where the instructor doesn’t have access to an original and has no other means of improving the accessibility of the file. Ally 1.36 introduces the ability for instructors to provide a Library Reference for all other PDFs.

Ally 1.36 bug fixes and improvements

  • Improved the hover and focus styles of the Ally for Websites alternative formats button.
  • Improved the Moodle integration to automatically accept the user policy for the Ally API user.
  • Images embedded in the header or footer of a Word document are now excluded from the alternative description check.
  • Fixed a bug that caused specific instructor feedback guidance fragments to not be translated correctly.
  • Improved the handling of replacing a file with a different file type through the Ally instructor feedback.

Ally 1.35.1 | Release to production 19 September 2019

Updated Features

Canvas Blueprint Courses

The Ally 1.35.1 release introduces support for Canvas Blueprint courses. Alternative descriptions for images and other accessibility metadata set through the Ally instructor feedback in the blueprint course will now be copied over correctly to any courses created from the blueprint.

Ally support for Canvas Blueprint Courses requires the `Courses - add / edit / delete` permission to be assigned to the Ally REST API user.

Ally 1.35.1 bug fixes and improvements

  • Improved support for special characters and diacritics in the OCRd alternative format
  • Improved the display of the “large ribbon” for the Ally for Websites alternative formats to be smaller on a mobile device
  • Fixed a bug in the D2L Brightspace integration that caused the student enrollment count to not synchronize correctly for large courses
  • Added the “language” attribute to the ePub alternative format
  • Fixed a bug in the Canvas integration that occasionally caused the alternative formats modal to freeze the screen
  • Implemented several positioning improvements for the alternative formats icon and the accessibility indicator in the Moodle integration
  • Implemented several accessibility improvements in the alternative formats modal dialog

Ally 1.27 | Release to production 1 March 2019

New Features, Updated Features, Moodle Integration

Additional Moodle content types

Ally 1.27 introduces the ability to check a number of additional Moodle WYSIWYG content types for accessibility issues, and includes these results in the institutional report.

Support for the following Moodle WYSIWYG content types has been added:

  • Book
  • Book chapter
  • Lesson
  • Lesson page
  • Page content
  • Page introduction
  • Syllabus

This functionality is available for all institutions using Blackboard OpenLMS or self-hosted Moodle institutions using Moodle 3.5 or above and the latest version of the Ally Moodle plugins

https://github.com/anthology-ally/moodle-tool_ally

https://github.com/anthology-ally/moodle-filter_ally

https://github.com/anthology-ally/moodle-report_allylti

Configuration UI in Moodle

The Ally Configuration UI can now be accessed directly through the Moodle administrator interface. The Configuration UI is available through Site administration > Plugins > Admin Tools > Ally configuration.

This feature also requires the latest versions of the Ally Moodle plugins.

Ally 1.27 bug fixes and improvements

  • Added a “Url” column to the course CSV export in the Blackboard Learn and Canvas integrations that contains the download/access URL for each content item.
  • Added a “Url” column to the domains CSV export in the Ally for Websites integration that contains the download/access URL for each web page and content item.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the “Send” button to show in the alternative format “Help” screen when the help request feature was disabled.
  • Fixed a bug in the Learn integration that prevented courses containing content items with blank titles from synchronizing correctly.
  • Implemented several improvements to the list recognition algorithm used for the alternative formats.
  • The Ally for Websites crawler has been extended to make the maximum crawl depth configurable at the institutional level.
  • Improved the Canvas integration to show the alternative formats for links containing a “span” tag.

Ally 1.23.5 | Release to production 5 January 2019

Updated Features

Institutional report term ordering

The ordering of terms in the Ally for LMS institutional report has been updated to sort terms that don’t have a configured start date by ascending term id. Terms with a configured start date still sort by that start date.

Bug fixes and improvements

  • Implemented several improvements in the detection of characters with contrast issues in PDFs.
  • Reduced the amount of space taken up by the accessibility indicator for images in the Moodle integration.
  • The default Portuguese accent for the audio alternative format has been set to Brazilian Portuguese for institutions hosted from North America.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the total items with a particular accessibility issue to be slightly off in the institutional report for the WCM integration.