Blackboard ALLY for Faculty

Multiple areas of campus have been working on a project centered on creating and remediation accessible content. Chico State has long had a commitment to the improvement of content used on our websites and classrooms. This project takes that commitment to the next level. Thank you for electing to turn ALLY on to benefit your students.

We are making sure to speak about this tool in a way that shows our commitment to all students and not just those with disabilities. Graduation Initiative 2025 is something we have all heard about a lot these days and this tool can help. With this tool, we can help those ESL learners struggling to keep up. We can help those commuting to campus. We can also help those with undiagnosed disabilities who have yet to identify or do not want too. Lastly, you are helping to make our campus more accessible.

Above is a demo video of what ALLY looks like from the faculty view. Please remember that only you see your accessibility score and not your students. It may also be helpful for you to see how your student will be downloading other version of the content and that can be viewed on the ALLY for students video(opens in new window).

Help

We are absolutely committed to helping you. Once you see the icons appear in Blackboard we can start to help. The Office of Accessible Technology and Services has tier 1 and tier 2 support for every department on campus. Your tier 1 support is the main point of contact for you. They will coordinate with tier 2 support, the cleanup and remediation of any documents that need it. We will create a support ticket to track remediation of files and also to communicate with you.

Our recommendation is to add the student assistant as a “course builder” in Blackboard. They will then inventory all content items that need work and present them to you. When they do this they will identify the things they feel you could do in a relatively short amount of time. They will come to you and show you how to complete the tasks.

For content items that will take more time, we will be cleaning those up for you in the OATS office. Once items are completed you will be able to retrieve them from a box folder that we grant you access to. We at no time will access your Blackboard to overwrite or adjust any items.

OATS will also serve as the primary trainers for the ALLY tool. Should you want to learn about accessible PDF’s, powerpoints, word documents, video captioning etc. we will gladly come to you and provide training.

We are very excited to have this tool up and running. We did not want to do this until we had the support model built. By doing this we feel ready to make this a model workflow nationwide. We have already garnered national attention in this area and want to keep the momentum going.

For any question please contact your Tier 1 support in OATS or enter a ALLY support ticket(opens in new window).