Ally 1.37 | Release to production 25 December 2019

New features, Updated features

Usage Reports

Ally 1.37 introduces the ability to download an Ally Usage report directly from the institutional report. An additional Usage tab is now available in the institutional report, allowing for a date range to be selected and the usage report for that date range to be downloaded as an Excel file.

A usage report contains the following usage data about the alternative formats:

  • How often has the alternative formats modal been triggered?
  • How many alternative formats have been triggered?
  • How often has triggering the alternative formats model led to an alternative format download?
  • How often has each alternative format type been downloaded?
  • In how many courses have alternative formats been downloaded?
  • In which courses have alternative formats been downloaded (and how many per course)?
  • What is the evolution of the alternative format modal triggers and alternative format downloads over time (by week)?

Usage reports also contain the following usage data about the instructor feedback:

  • How often has the instructor feedback been triggered?
  • How many content improvements have been made directly through the instructor feedback?
  • How often has triggering the instructor feedback led to an immediate improvement of the content item through the instructor feedback?
  • In how many courses have improvements been made through the instructor feedback?
  • In which courses have improvements been made through the instructor feedback (and how many per course)?
  • What is the evolution of the instructor feedback triggers and instructor feedback improvements over time (by week)?

Lastly, usage reports also include a Data tab that contains the full list of raw usage events that have been captured, and can be used to create additional custom visualizations.

More on the Usage report 

Note that making the usage data graphs available directly in the institutional report UI is part of a future roadmap item.

 

Feature Flags

Blackboard Ally is increasingly moving to feature flags as part of its development approach, allowing institutions to decide when to opt in or out of a particular feature. To help support this, a new Features tab is now available in the Ally Configuration UI. This Features tab lists all of the optional features that are available for your integration.

Examples of available optional features are the Translated Version alternative format, the ability to launch the instructor feedback from the institutional report, and so on. They can easily be enabled or disabled at any point in time, and more optional features will be added over time.

More on how to customize Ally features

Ally for Websites Alternative Formats

The Ally for Websites integration now allows for specific HTML elements to be excluded from the alternative formats. Excluding an element can be achieved by adding the `data-ally-exclude` attribute to the element.

Next to Ally already limiting the content of the alternative formats to the `<main>` element or the element containing the `role=”main”` attribute, this new attribute provides some additional control on which page elements should be included or excluded from the generated alternative formats.

Ally 1.37 bug fixes and improvements

  • The accessibility check for the presence of headings in Tagged PDFs has been expanded to also recognize `H` tags as a valid heading.
  • Implemented several usability improvements in the Configuration UI based on the feedback from usability testing sessions.
  • Improved the Print View in the instructor feedback to not include icons that are not relevant when printing the instructor feedback guidance.
  • Fixed several bugs in the content preview component of the instructor feedback that occurred when closing and re-opening the instructor feedback for the same content item without refreshing the page.
  • Fixed a bug that occasionally caused updates to image descriptions through the instructor feedback to fail.
  • Fixed a bug in the Blackboard Learn integration that occasionally caused the alternative formats for content in a Learning Module to not be available.
  • Fixed a bug in the Blackboard Learn integration that would occasionally cause the Ally accessibility indicator to overlap with the file name.
  • Added support for courses with non-standard URLs because of their institutional hierarchy association in the Blackboard Learn integration.