Table of Contents

Using the Ally Report in a Course

Jason Carroll Updated by Jason Carroll

Overview

Ally is a valuable tool for enhancing accessibility in Canvas LMS. It automatically assesses eCornell course content, offering user-friendly reports with feedback for course designers. By enabling and activating the Ally accessibility report, you can improve the accessibility of your content before it reaches students. This article provides a step-by-step guide on enabling the report and understanding its key components.

Instructions

The process of setting up the Ally report for a single course can be separated into two components: Activating the report and enabling the report in the course navigation menu. Let's begin with the first step.

How to activate the Ally report in a single course

  1. Log into lms.ecornell.com and navigate to the Admin section (represented by a key and shield icon) > eCornell.
  2. Click Ally Config in the left navigation column.
  3. Search for the desired course.
  4. After you find the course, click the "x" button in the Enabled column. It will turn into a green checkmark button.

The Ally report is now activated for the course and ready to be enabled in the course navigation menu!

How to add the Ally report to the navigation bar in a single course

  1. Log into lms.ecornell.com and navigate to the Admin section (represented by a key and shield icon) > eCornell.
  2. Search for, and choose, the desired course.
  3. Click Settings in the left navigation column of Canvas. Then, click Navigation in the horizontal set of tabs on the Settings screen.
  4. In the Navigation tab, from the bottom section of the list of menu items, drag the Accessibility Report menu button up to the first group of items. This group is labeled "Drag and drop items to reorder them in the course navigation."
    The top grouping of menu item buttons are navigation items visibile in student mode. It is very important to remove the Accessibility Report button after you complete any accessibility review in a DEV course, or before the course is published.
  5. Click Save at the bottom of the screen. The

Example of what the Navigation settings tab will look like after the above steps are completed. Note how the Accessibiity Report now appears as an option in the navigation column!

Key components of the Ally report

Ally's course accessibility report provides an Overview tab with the accessibility score, content breakdown, and issue list. The Content tab shows specific items with accessibility issues.

There is no set or linear order to follow when using the Ally report. The following steps serve to explore some of the options available to the report reviewer.

Ally report example: Overview tab

Overview tab

The first thing you'll notice in the Overview tab is the overall score. At the top of the report is an accessibility score for the entire course.

Scores range from Low to Perfect. The higher the score the fewer the issues.

  •  Low (0-33%): Needs help! There are severe accessibility issues.
  •  Medium (34-66%): A little better. The file is somewhat accessible and needs improvement.
  •  High (67-99%): Almost there. The file is accessible but more improvements are possible.
  •  Perfect (100%): Perfect! Ally didn't identify any accessibility issues but further improvements may still be possible.

Ally analyzes pages, announcements, images, discussions, assignment pages, and quizzes. You'll see a total number of content pieces analyzed along with a breakdown for each category.

Remaining issues in the course appear at the bottom of the course as a list, along with the number of content items affected by each issue category.

Click on an issue row to receive a detailed listing of the issue.

Clicking on one of the issues will sometimes display a suggested fix. In some cases Ally will even offer to fix the issue!

Ally cannot fix all issues. Always be sure to check the course and updated report to see what issues remain after attempting to fix any identified issue. The Ally report periodically refreshes, typically the same day after a fix is attempted.
Click the "What this means" button for a detailed explanation of the issue. This is a great tip for learning more about how Ally analyzes accessibility issues!

examples of detailed explanation

Content tab

Click the Content tab to every single item and its accompanying accessibility score.

Ally report example: Content tab

How did we do?

Ally Features Overview Training

Ally Vendor Documentation/Training Links

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