View and improve file accessibility

Doesn't seem familiar? Jump to the "Ultra" help about improving file accessibility.

Your institution controls which tools are available.

Your class is full of diverse students with unique learning abilities. Providing students with more accessible content means each individual can choose formats that work best for them. If your institution uses Blackboard Ally, you can use the tool to help ensure your course content is accessible to every student.

Ally automatically scans your course content and performs steps to make files more accessible.

Get started with Ally

  1. In your course, find the file you want to improve.
  2. Next to the file name, an icon appears to quickly show the file’s accessibility score. Hover over the icon to view the score. File accessibility icons are always located next to your file, but the specific location will vary throughout different areas in your course. Throughout Blackboard Learn, most accessibility icons will be to the left of the file.
  3. To learn how to improve the file’s accessibility, select the score icon.
  4. Ally opens and shows you steps on how to edit your file for improved accessibility and optimize it for alternative formats.

How to improve accessibility in course content

Students don’t see the file’s accessibility score. Instead, students can choose from the alternative formats Ally generates for the file. You can help Ally create better alternative formats by following best practices for creating accessible files.

View alternative formats

After you attach files to a course, Ally creates alternative formats of the file based on the original. For example, if the original file is a PDF, Ally creates audio, electronic braille, and ePub formats of the same content. These formats are made available with the original file so everything is in one convenient location.

The alternative formats created depend on the original file type. If you don't see an option to download alternative formats, Ally isn’t enabled for that course or the file isn't a supported content type.

Find a file in your course. Select the menu beside it and select Alternative Formats. Choose the version that is best for your needs! Select Download to save the alternative format to your device.

student view of Download alternative formats modal

More on alternative formats for course content

Watch a video about viewing file accessibility in Blackboard Learn

The following narrated video provides a visual and auditory representation of some of the information included on this page. For a detailed description of what is portrayed in the video, open the video on YouTube, navigate to More actions, and select Open transcript.


Video: View file accessibility explains how to view file accessibility for files you upload to your course.