Ally: Digital Accessibility in Moodle

Digital accessibility is an essential component for an inclusive approach to teaching online. As Moodle is a website it must align with WCAG 2.1 Level AA guidelines. Our learning material must be digitally accessible so that it can be used by everyone, especially disabled and neurodiverse students, approximately 25% of UAL students.

The average Ally Score for LCC was 80.8% but Digital Learning would like to see that average 90% in 2023-24.

Ally Features

Students and staff will be able to download the converted material as a variety of documents to  customize for reading on all sorts of devices.  Supported files can even be transformed into speech-based audio files, so you can hear, instead of read the materials.

Blackboard Ally gives staff contextual feedback on the accessibility of the original documents. This feedback appears as tiny ‘dials’: click these to reveal a panel of instructions on how to make files more accessible.

Whenever you upload a supported document to Moodle, Ally works behind the scenes to convert this file into several accessible alternatives. Ally integrates automatically into Moodle, and does not require any set-up by staff.

Ally Reports

Staff can view an overall report for their Moodle sites by selecting reports in the course menu and then going to “accessibility report”. This report will invite you to start applying fixes. Only five-to-ten minutes of amendments can dramatically improve the overall Ally score for your Moodle site.

Improving your Ally Score

The digital learning team provide training for individuals, course and Programme teams on making your documents more accessible. We have also produce a range of guides to help you make accessibility a habit.

• Make Accessibility a Habit: PDF
• Make Accessibility a Habit: Word
• Make Accessibility a Habit: Power Point

Contact the Digital Learning Team for training on Ally and making your documents more accessibility- LCCDigitalLearning@lcc.arts.ac.uk