Release Notes 2024

Ally 2.11.0 | Release to production: December 19, 2024

Download Original File is Now Available from the Alternative Formats Window

For students

Students now have the option to download the original version of the file uploaded by their instructor directly from the Alternative Formats download window without having to navigate back to the course. Clicking the download icon next to the file name downloads the file.

This streamlines the student experience and minimizes the amount of back-and-forth required if a student needs to use both the alternative format and the original file.

For administrators

The usage of this feature is tracked within the Usage Report Export, available in the Ally Institutional Report. This is counted in the total downloads and is shown as Original File in the distribution part of overall engagement and can be useful for institutions that want to analyze how alternative formats are being used.

Note: This feature is now available for file content in Blackboard, Canvas, Brightspace, and Moodle LMS integrations, but does not apply to WYSIWYG/Rich Content items.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed an issue in Blackboard where, in some cases, the alternative text entered through the Instructor Feedback quick fix option was not applied to the Document before saving, resulting in the issue still being flagged.
• Fixed an issue in Blackboard where in some cases other Document quick fixes entered through the Instructor Feedback were not applied to the Document before saving, resulting in those issues still being flagged.
• Implemented consistency improvements to the Undo and Cancel workflows for Blackboard Documents when making quick fixes through Ally's Instructor Feedback.
• Implemented accessibility improvements when exiting Instructor Feedback in Blackboard Documents to ensure focus is returned to the score indicator.
• Improved underlying API support for Blackboard Document content blocks.
• Fixed an issue where, in some cases, Ally labels remained visible at the top left corner of the screen while navigating through the course.

Ally 2.10.6 | Release to production: November 14, 2024

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed an issue in Canvas where, in some cases, clicking on Alternative Formats from the additional options menu for a file within the Files area did not allow the user to launch Ally's Alternative Formats.
• Fixed an issue with the date picker in the Usage Report that caused the days of the week to be aligned incorrectly when choosing a date.
• Fixed an issue in the Blackboard Course Accessibility Report where some images in Ultra documents were incorrectly shown as links with missing text instead of an image preview when launching the Instructor Feedback. Instructors now see images in the Instructor Feedback content preview as expected.

Ally 2.10.5 | Release to production: October 18, 2024

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed an issue where in some cases the Ally score gauge incorrectly appeared on embedded files or images while in edit mode for Ultra documents in Blackboard, resulting in an inconsistent Instructor Feedback experience for Instructors depending on which score gauge they clicked.
• Fixed an issue in the Blackboard Course Accessibility Report workflow where Ultra documents were incorrectly identified as missing a language and title when the Instructor launched the Instructor Feedback.
• Improved usage data tracking for fixes originating from the Institutional Report (when admins have configured launching the Instructor Feedback directly from the report).

Ally 2.10.4 | Release to production: October 3, 2024

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed an issue where in some cases the Ally score gauge incorrectly appeared on embedded files or images in the document preview within the Instructor Feedback for Ultra documents in Blackboard.
• Resolved an issue in Moodle where the image preview was incorrectly displayed instead of the Ally instructor feedback when instructors clicked the Ally score gauge.
• Corrected an issue in D2L that was preventing Ally from properly retrieving topic IDs, causing the score gauge to not appear in certain courses.
• Fixed an issue in Canvas where the Ally score gauge was not present, and the alternative format icon was misplaced on Discussions.

Ally 2.10.3 | Release to production: September 19, 2024

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Resolved an issue where the Ally alternative formats tooltip in the Canvas files view for students was disappearing a few seconds after the icon was selected.
• Fixed a bug in the Instructor Feedback that was preventing users from correctly navigating through all issue highlights using the up/down arrow keys.
• Fixed an accessibility issue where the guidance panel in the Instructor Feedback lacked the appropriate role that was preventing screen reader users to correctly access the content.
• Improved focus behavior within the side panel of the Instructor Feedback to ensure a smoother experience for both keyboard and mouse users. 

Ally 2.10.2 | Release to production: September 6, 2024

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed an issue in the Instructor Feedback that caused the loading icon to spin indefinitely when instructors were fixing two identical broken links in the same content item.
• Fixed an issue in the Institutional report where the Ally icon tooltip was not loading correctly, making it difficult to launch directly into the Instructor Feedback.
• Fixed an accessibility issue where the Ally tooltips were not hoverable when navigating with a mouse.
• Improved the names of the checkboxes displayed on the accessibility score trend line graph in the Institutional Report.
• Fixed an accessibility issue where keyboard users were not able to scroll up or down within the side panels in the Ally Instructor Feedback.
• Moodle 4.3 plugin availability and improvements.
• New Power BI template to use with the Ally API for reporting tools. Find it in the Ally Adoption Toolkit.

Ally 2.10.1 | Release to production: August 8, 2024 

Support for the new Blackboard Content Designer Enhanced Documents

Ally now supports the new enhanced Documents in Blackboard for both instructors (Instructor Feedback) and students (Alternative Formats) to help encourage accessible and engaging content for all users.  Instructors and students will see the applicable Ally indicators on the new Documents to continue to take advantage of these Ally features.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Improved the Ally guidance for items that do not begin at the highest level by providing consistent wording that applies to all rich text editors where heading options don't always start at level 1.
• Fixed an issue where the wording in the Ally guidance for PDFs identified as lacking a language incorrectly mentioned header fixes (instead of language). 
• Fixed an issue for Canvas pages where the Alternative Formats icon was not correctly positioned on the page title.
• Fixed an issue in Blackboard where images were not displayed in the Ally Instructor Feedback when launched from the Course Accessibility Report.
• Fixed an issue within the Institutional Report where the Other Courses option in the term dropdown of the Courses tab did not correctly filter courses without terms and instead displayed all courses in the institution.
• Fixed an accessibility issue in the Institutional Report where screen readers were not announcing the control label of the dropdown button to select terms.
• Fixed an accessibility issue within the Instructor Feedback where the tooltip for the color selector in Ally's quick fix for text contrast issues was not appearing with keyboard navigation. (The HEX color code is now announced by screen readers).
• Fixed an accessibility issue where the focus indicator incorrectly appeared on the pagination component at the top-left corner of the Instructor Feedback after the guidance panel was closed using keyboard navigation. (The focus now remains on the triggering element).
• Fixed an accessibility issue where the Ally icon tooltips were not disappearing when pressing the ESC key.
• Fixed an accessibility issue where in some cases screen readers could not read buttons within the Instructor Feedback for issues identified in WYSIWYG content.
• Fixed an accessibility issue where in some cases the side panels within the Ally Instructor Feedback could not be scrolled using keyboard arrows.

Ally 2.10.0 | Release to production: July 17, 2024

Ally's new AI Alt Text Assistant

Writing simple but meaningful alternative text for images is not always an easy task.  Many times, an instructor is looking for a simple spark of inspiration or a suggestion of where to start.

Designed to tackle this challenge in a way that seamlessly integrates into the Ally Instructor Feedback experience, we're thrilled to unveil our latest innovation designed to transform how educators manage accessibility: Ally’s AI Alt Text Assistant. This new feature is focused on enhancing and improving the efficiency of instructors by automating the suggestion of alternative text for images to help write better alternative text and ensure that learning materials are inclusive and accessible to every student.

For Instructors

Instructors can harness the convenience and power of the "Auto-Generate Description" button featured in the Ally Instructor Feedback interface and let the AI Alt Text Assistant simplify the process of addressing images that lack descriptions. With just a single click, instructors can now generate suggested alternative descriptions for images embedded in WYSIWYG content or as standalone items.

Image 1: auto-generate description button when fixing an image without description in the Ally Instructor Feedback

This intuitive tool empowers instructors to instantly create simple yet accurate descriptions for images, eliminating the guesswork and time-consuming task of manually crafting descriptions from scratch.  

The AI Alt Text Assistant ensures that the instructor remains in complete control. You can easily edit or remove the AI-generated suggestions to best fit your content’s context and audience. It is important to note that alternative descriptions are not applied automatically—each suggestion requires the instructor’s review and approval - guaranteeing that the final output aligns with the instructor’s original purpose. 

For administrators

Ally administrators can configure this new feature from the Ally Configuration settings.  To use the new Alt text assistant, you must opt-in and turn it on from your admin console (this feature is disabled by default).

Image 2: Ally configuration settings with feature flag opt-in to turn on the AI Alt Text Assistant

Additionally, administrators can track the usage of the new feature from the Ally Usage Report (exported from your Ally Institutional Report dashboard).

Image 3: Ally Usage report with additional data added to track usage of the AI Alt Text Assistant

Within the Instructor Feedback Launches tab of the Usage Report, administrators can see a count of how many times AI was used to generate alternative text on images and how many times the instructor has altered the text generated by AI before saving for a particular course.  

This information is also available in the raw data tab in the Usage Report.

This feature follows our Anthology Trustworthy AI principles, including:

• Humans in control
• Fairness
• Privacy
• Security
• Safety

We recommend reviewing the documents linked below as you consider using Ally’s AI Alt Text Assistant:

• AI Alt Text Assistant Transparency Note
• Terms of Use
• Trustworthy AI Principles

This release is available to Blackboard, Canvas, D2L Brightspace and Moodle LMS integrations.

Identification and scoring of broken links on WYSIWYG content for Ultra and Canvas

As part of our commitment to helping instructors enhance the quality and reliability of educational content, the Ally for LMS accessibility checklist has been expanded to include a new check for Broken Links (404 errors) within WYSIWYG content.  Broken links are an important and often frequent accessibility issue that can create frustration, disruption or worse – loss of confidence in the material itself - for all students in the course.

Ally will now report this issue as part of the accessibility report and instructor feedback.  Broken links contribute to the accessibility score for WYSIWYG content, and this contribution is dependent on the number of broken links within the content itself.

As instructors create or modify WYSIWYG content, Ally identifies if a link is broken and highlights this for the instructor in the content preview along with quick, intuitive options to correct the issue directly within the Ally instructor feedback panel. This instant feedback ensures that all content is verified and reliable before students ever encounter it.  Instructors can also use the 'What' and 'Why' guidance to learn more about the impact of Broken Links.  By identifying and resolving these links, instructors can prevent disruption in the learning process and maintain the integrity of their course.

Image 1: Broken Link identification in the Ally Instructor Feedback 

Ally reports, including the Institutional Report, CSV exports, APIs for external reporting tools, and the Course Accessibility Report will reflect this new accessibility check as part of the score and underlying issues list.

This is a go-forward change that only affects the score of newly added or updated WYSIWYG content after this release.  As a result, the overall WYSIWYG accessibility score for many institutions may drop compared to previous months/years because of the introduction of this new accessibility check.  

This release includes Ultra and Canvas LMS integrations.  As part of a future release, we plan to bring this check to the other LMS integrations as well. 

Ally 2.9.8 | Release to production: July 02, 2024 

Bug Fixes and improvements

• Implemented infrastructure improvements and optimizations to the backend scoring processes for HTML and WYSIWYG content to provide Instructors with a faster and more reliable experience.  
• Fixed an accessibility issue where the Ally Instructor Feedback was not properly announced as a dialog to screen readers.
• Fixed an accessibility issue where certain wording within the Instructor Feedback guidance was based on sensory characteristics and was not clear to all users, including those that may use a screen reader.
• Fixed an accessibility issue where the page navigation buttons in the Instructor Feedback Content Preview were not announced by screen readers while retaining focus. 

Ally 2.9.6 | Release to production: June 13, 2024

Bug Fixes and improvements 

• Fixed an accessibility issue in the Instructor Feedback in which the title of the guidance was not exposed correctly to assistive technologies. 
• Fixed an issue for Learn Original users where the Ally Instructor Feedback was displaying an error message (“Oops”) when accessed via the Course Accessibility Report for WYSIWYG documents.  

Ally 2.9.4 | Release to production: May 02, 2024

Bug Fixes and improvements 

• Fixed an issue in the Institutional Report where the number of items with an accessibility issue was incorrectly inflated by including deleted files in the issues count which caused empty additional pages to be added to the report. 
• Fixed an issue for D2L Brightspace users where the quick fixes applied to HTML files through the Instructor Feedback were removing the styles and incorrectly formatting content that was saved back to the LMS.

Ally 2.9.3 | Release to production: April 06, 2024

Bug Fixes and improvements

• Fixed an issue where the Ally Institutional Report was not displaying the full list of issues when a department, a course, or a domain (in Ally for Web) has more than 1000 issues. This prevented administrators from being able to correctly review and identify the priorities for fixing accessibility issues flagged by Ally.

Ally 2.9.2 | Release to production: March 22, 2024

Bug Fixes and improvements

• Improved the descriptive text on the Vimeo configuration tab within the Ally configuration tool.
• Implemented additional performance and stability improvements in Ally’s file processing.

Ally 2.9.0 | Release to production: March 07, 2024

Vimeo and HTML5 video caption checking is now available for HTML and WYSIWYG content

As part of our efforts to expand our support for more types of video content, Ally now can flag Vimeo or embedded HTML5 videos that do not have captions or may have automated captions. This helps instructors quickly identify if video content is accessible and increases the awareness of the importance of accurate captions for student video content.

Ally will identify and highlight videos from Vimeo and videos embedded via HTML5 within the Ally instructor feedback.   Keeping with our current approach to scoring YouTube videos, flagged Vimeo and HTML5 videos will not change the overall accessibility scores and will be shown as 100% in the Instructor Feedback panel.

Image 1:  Video highlighted within Ally’s Instructor Feedback Preview

Note for Administrators:  Opting In to New Vimeo Configuration Settings

Checking for public and private videos in Vimeo is an opt-in feature that administrators can choose to configure based on your institutional needs.  Ally admins will see a new configuration tab for Vimeo where it is possible to configure and manage the institution’s Vimeo account token to enable Ally’s caption check.  Once configured, Ally video checks count towards your institution's Vimeo account and apply to any associated rate limits that you may have.

If you do not configure your Vimeo settings, Ally will not pick up on any embedded Vimeo videos.

(Please note that HTML5 video checking does not require any admin configuration.)

This is a go-forward change that only affects newly added or updated HTML files or WYSIWYG content after this release.

For additional information on this feature and Vimeo configuration, please see Caption Checks for Videos. 

Bug fixes and improvements

• Fixed an issue that prevented the issue highlighting and issue navigation from showing for issues within the Instructor Feedback Preview in D2L Brightspace integrations.  Fixed an issue where the Ally Instructor Feedback displayed "Oops! Something seems to have gone wrong. Please try again later” when HTML files are flagged as having empty headers in D2L that prevented instructors from seeing the score and guidance.
• Fixed an issue in D2L Brightspace where Ally quick fixes for Empty Headers within the Instructor Feedback were sometimes applying the fix for multiple instances even if the “Apply For All” option was not selected.
• Fixed an issue where the term dropdown and trend chart  were not showing all the terms in the Institutional Report Overview when admins selected the “By Term” view.
• Fixed an issue for Learn integrations where WYSIWYG content for external links was not being picked up correctly within the Course Accessibility Report after a course copy.
• Implemented performance and stability improvements to Ally’s processing for generating alternative formats.

Ally 2.8.2 | Release to production: February 22, 2024

Update on D2L Brightspace HTML file reprocessing

As a follow-up to the release of Ally 2.8.1, the feature enhancement to treat “HTML” content as WYSIWYG content in Brightspace is now active for all regions for new content. File rescoring of older HTML content is also completed for clients in our Canada, Asia, and Europe regions.

Rescoring of older content for US clients is still in progress and will be confirmed once completed.

Important note for administrators

Configuration documentation has also been updated to note that the Instructor Feedback for WYSIWYG content (Rich Text Editor content) feature flag does not disable the new Instructor Feedback or quick fixes on HTML files uploaded or created in D2L Brightspace.

See more information about Ally Feature Flags in the Ally Configuration Help page.

Ally Support for Moodle version 4.2

As part of the Ally team's efforts to improve the development and availability of the Ally plugin for Moodle, we are pleased to announce that we are releasing the plugins for the Moodle 4.2 version.

The plugins for version 4.2 are available on the Moodle pages below:

https://moodle.org/plugins/tool_ally
https://moodle.org/plugins/report_allylti
https://moodle.org/plugins/filter_ally

Documentation for the plugin configuration and supported themes is available in the Ally help documentation.

For managed hosted clients we always recommend you check with your Moodle provider to ensure version compatibility based on your upgrade plans.

Bug fixes and improvements

• Fixed an issue in Learn integrations where in some cases the browser configuration caused an authorization popup requesting credentials that prevented instructors from editing an Ultra document after attaching and previewing a file scored by Ally.
• Fixed an accessibility issue in the Instructor Feedback Preview where screen readers could not identify highlights of videos without captions and prevented users from locating them in WYSIWYG content.

Ally 2.8.1 | Release to production: February 15, 2024

Quick fixes, guidance, and content previews now available for D2L Brightspace “HTML” content 

Ally for D2L Brightspace

Ally 2.8.1 brings a key enhancement to the Instructor Feedback within the Ally Brightspace integration that treats “HTML” content as WYSIWYG content and gives instructors the ability to leverage Ally's capabilities including quick fixes, What and Why guidance and content previews.  

Instead of frequently encountering “Guidance Not Available Yet” in the feedback, instructors will now be able to address issues more quickly and easily within the Ally Instructor Feedback flow and focus on the most impactful changes to content.  

Image 1:  Instructor Feedback with available quick fix for insufficient contrast 

This improvement includes Quick Fix capabilities for the following accessibility issues:

• Text with insufficient contrast
• Tables that are missing headers
• Tables without headers
• Images with redundant text
• Images without descriptions
• Heading order

Issues without quick fixes available will still be shown under “All Issues” and may not have specific guidance available pending future roadmap development. 

After this release, any new HTML file created by an instructor will be treated as WYSIWYG going forward. Older existing HTML content within Brightspace will be rescored and reprocessed by Ally in waves over the next few weeks to migrate this data and provide a consistent instructor experience.

For Administrators - Feature activation and file rescoring

Feature activation and file rescoring will be triggered by region with this release beginning with our Canada region (prod-ca-central-1.ally.ac) on 2/15/24. Other regions will follow in the order shown below:  

• Wave 1: Canada (prod-ca-central-1.ally.ac)
• Wave 2: Asia-Pacific (prod-ap-southeast-2.ally.ac)
• Wave 3: Europe (prod-eu-central-1.ally.ac)
• Wave 4: US (prod.ally.ac)

In addition to the instructor improvements noted above, Administrators will see the following differences in the Ally reports:

• All HTML files and existing WYSIWYG content will be referred to as “HTML Fragment” in the Institutional Report. This change will also be reflected in CSV exports and the Ally API for reporting tools.  
• The score for each file may change depending on the accessibility issues flagged by Ally after content is reprocessed. This is because of the different checks Ally applies for WYSIWYG content vs HTML content.  

Image 2:  Ally Institutional Report Total content created chart for administrators 

File rescoring will only affect HTML files. Other file types like Word, PowerPoint, PDF, images, or LibreOffice are not affected and their score will remain the same.

Other Improvements:

With this update, “language not set” and “missing title” will no longer be flagged as issues in the HTML content in Brightspace to help minimize frustration for instructors that cannot edit these attributes in the content interface. 

Ally 2.8.0 | Release to production: February 9, 2024

Course Accessibility Report Instructor Feedback Improvements

Ally 2.8.0 brings several fixes and improvements to the Instructor Feedback launched from the Course Accessibility Report to help instructors that frequently use it as a starting point to address issues within their course. These improvements aim to further streamline instructor workflows as they look to quickly identify low scoring content or content with the easiest issues to fix.

Image 1: Ally Course Accessibility Report

Increased visibility into what is happening behind the scenes for WYSIWYG content

When instructors launch the Ally Instructor Feeback for WYSIWYG content from the Course Accessibility Report, Ally will now briefly display a message alerting users that Ally is updating the score to account for the latest updates. This improvement helps to ensure that the score is always up to date and addresses previous confusion around scores jumping depending on where and when it was viewed.

Image 2: “Updating Ally score” alert in the Instructor Feedback window

Bug Fixes and Other Improvements:

• Fixed an issue in which the Indicate Image is Decorative option was not updating the file or the score in WYSIWYG content when performed from the Course Accessibility Report.
• Fixed an issue in which the Add Image Description option was not correctly updating the alternative text or the score in WYSIWYG content when performed from the Course Accessibility Report.
• Fixed an issue in which the Instructor Feedback within the Course Accessibility Report was not displaying the correct score for files that only contained one issue.  
• Fixed an issue in which Ally was not displaying the correct number of issues after launching into the Instructor Feedback from the Course Accessibility Report.
• Fixed an issue where the highlighting within the Ally Instructor feedback content preview was only pointing to one video despite Ally flagging multiple videos without captions within WYSIWYG content. 

Ally 2.7.14 | Release to production: February 1, 2024

Improved API endpoints for reporting tools

As a follow-up to the initial release in Ally 2.7.7, the Ally API endpoints for reporting tools have been improved to allow for better handling of larger datasets and clearer communication of statuses for administrators looking to integrate Ally data with reporting tools like Power BI, Tableau, Excel or customized web applications.  

These improvements help to further streamline the process for stakeholders building custom reports and dashboards outside of the Ally Institutional Report to enable more data-driven decision making throughout the institution.

Image 1:  Example custom PowerBI dashboard  

Improvements include:

• When Ally needs to prepare larger datasets, the Ally API now responds with the status code 202 (Processing) to inform users that they will need to wait until the data is ready to avoid timeout issues. When the data is ready, the API will respond with the code 200 (Successful).
• The total number of filtered records has also been added to the metadata.  This will help users confirm that the filtering options are working as expected (while keeping in line with the 10,000-records response limit per endpoint).  

Additional information about the API for reporting, including configuration examples, is available in the updated Integrate Ally's API with an External Reporting Tool help page. 

Updated technical documentation around the API endpoints is also available in the Reporting API Endpoints help page.

Ally 2.7.13 | Release to production: January 16, 2024

Bug fixes and improvements

• Fixed an issue where the Ally alternative format button at the top of a Canvas page was incorrectly considered an H1.  
• Fixed an issue where the preview of WYSIWYG documents within the Ally Instructor Feedback disappeared after a few seconds when the feedback was opened through the Course Accessibility Report.  
• Fixed a problem where Ally quick fixes in the Instructor Feedback were sometimes applying the fix for multiple items in the same document and not for the highlighted item only.