Ally 1.17 | Release to production 2 August, 2018

New features, Blackboard Learn Integration, Canvas Integration, Updated features, Web Community Manager Integration

Blackboard Learn WYSIWYG content reporting

Ally 1.17 introduces the ability to check content created in the Blackboard Learn WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor for accessibility issues, and includes these results in the institutional report. This allows Ally to review a significantly larger part of the Blackboard Learn content, and is a first step towards providing alternative formats and instructor feedback for this content.

These Blackboard Learn WYSIWYG content types are currently supported.

  • Content Item (Build Content > Create > Item)
  • Blank Page (Build Content > New Page > Blank Page)
  • Web Link (Build Content > Web Link)
  • Content Folder (Build Content > New Page > Content Folder)
  • Learning Module (Build Content > Create > Learning Module)
  • Lesson Plan (Build Content > Create > Lesson plan)
  • Module Page (Build Content > New Page > Module Page)
  • A link to a Forum (Tools > Discussion Board)

This functionality is available for all institutions using SaaS, the Q4 2017 CU4 release (or above) and the Q2 2018 CU1 release (or above). WYSIWYG content reporting will automatically be enabled for institutions on these supported versions, and any courses with new activity should show the WYSIWYG content results in the institutional report.

Going forward, institutions upgrading to a supported release should create a ticket to request that this functionality is enabled.

The ability to check for accessibility issues in Moodle WYSIWYG content will be included in one of our upcoming releases.

Canvas API token

Following changes in the Canvas permission system, it is now possible for the Canvas API token used by Ally to have fewer associated permissions than before.

As the "ACCOUNT PERMISSIONS - Manage account-level settings” permission is no longer required to retrieve the list of available terms, this permission can now be removed from the Ally API token.

These are the permissions required for a Canvas integration.

  • Courses - view list
  • Users - act as
  • Announcements - view
  • Assignments and Quizzes - add / edit / delete
  • Course Content - add / edit / delete
  • Course Content - view
  • Course Files - add / edit / delete
  • Discussions - moderate
  • Discussions - view
  • Pages - add / edit / delete

More on generating an Ally access token

Bug fixes and improvements

  • Fixed a bug that prevented the course report in the institutional report from automatically updating following a course copy.
  • Fixed a bug where paragraph text that spans multiple pages could be missing from the alternative formats.
  • Fixed a bug in the Web Community Manager integration that prevented some dynamically loaded content (through JavaScript) from being incorporated in the accessibility checks for a web page.
  • Fixed a bug in the Learn integration that caused a failure when setting the alternative description for an image embedded in a large Content Item (200KB+)