Ally 1.19 | Release to production 28 August, 2018

New features, Updated features

Disable alternative formats

It is now possible for an instructor or administrator to disable the alternative formats for an individual content item within a course. This provides full flexibility over which content items should have alternative formats, and can be especially useful for content items that don’t have a license that allows the creation of alternative formats.

Students now also have to agree to the Terms of Use for the alternative formats before being able to download them.

Microsoft Office updates

Microsoft® Office recently introduced new functionality that simplifies how an alternative description for an image can be provided and allows for an image to be marked as decorative. Ally is fully compatible with this new functionality, and now also recognizes images that have been marked as decorative.

Institutional Report improvements

The historical “By Academic Year” and “By Month” views in the institutional report will now show whether an issue detected by Ally has since been fixed.

Bug fixes and improvements

  • Several irrelevant columns have been removed from the Ally for Websites CSV export.
  • Fixed a bug where an ePub alternative format may not load correctly because of special characters in the content.
  • Improved encoding detection for HTML content.
  • Fixed a bug in the Canvas integration where an instructor would not be able to upload an improved version of a content item through the Instructor Feedback because of a change in the Canvas API.
  • Fixed a bug where Ally would incorrectly pick up on invisible artifacts such as EMF, PICT and WMF files in Microsoft Office documents.