Ally: Tracking our Accessibility
'Getting Started with Ally' Guide [PDF]
What is Ally?
‘Ally’ is a software created by the makers of Blackboard, a popular university LMS system. This software allows us to scan all our digital content for accessibility errors. This tool is automated, scans every day, and gives us a report on the different accessibility issues it finds. From these reports, we can get a better understanding of our current accessibility issues, make a plan to correct these issues, and learn how we can prevent future errors. Ally is one of the many tools in our accessibility toolkit that help us improve our resources.
Why do I need to use Ally?
Improving the accessibility of your digital content is all about improvement – not perfection.
Ally helps us identify ways we can improve the accessibility of our digital content. By tracking our scores, our errors, and our corrections, we can measure and improve our accessibility over time. Ally is a powerful tool to better understand how we may be falling short in our accessibility journey and how we can make a course correction.
What will Ally tell me?
Once a day, Ally will scan all your content and report any accessibility errors it finds. This is automated software, so it does not necessarily tell us all the accessibility errors present or the best way to correct them. It does, however, give us valuable information about some of the most common accessibility concerns and where we can find them. Ally will report on document accessibility issues that include any untagged PDFs, skipped header levels, missing alt-text, missing titles, color contrast errors, and non- OCRed content. Ally will also report on some website accessibility errors, including broken links, missing header levels, videos without closed captioning, and incorrect form elements.
After these scans, Ally will give all of your content with errors an ‘accessibility score’ and a report on how any accessibility errors can be corrected. These scores can be improved if the accessibility errors are corrected.
How do I log into Ally?
- Go to https://prod.ally.ac/launch/10223
- Select Sign in with Microsoft.
- Sign in with your UADA email and password.
- After you sign in, you are asked to verify your email. Ally sends you an email with a code. Enter the code to verify your email. You only need to verify your email the first time you sign in. Note: If you don't see the email from Ally right away, you may need to check your junk folder.
Still Need Help?
Let us know! We are happy to help you make your content, documents, and webpages more accessible.
Please contact accessibility@uada.edu
