Overview

The Ally Course Accessibility Report is an integrated tool within Canvas that provides a snapshot of the overall accessibility of a course. Each course receives a summary score (Low, Medium, High, or Perfect) along with a list of specific accessibility issues found in course files, images, and content. The report links directly to actionable solutions, guiding you step-by-step through how to fix common issues such as missing alternative text, scanned PDFs, or low-contrast text.

It’s important to understand that Ally is not a complete solution—no automated accessibility checker is. The report should be used in conjunction with the Canvas Accessibility Checklist and other manual review practices. By combining these tools, faculty can better prioritize fixes and focus on the accessibility barriers that have the greatest impact on students.

Access or Enable the Ally Report

Click here for the Enable Ally Video transcript.

Elijah Dow: This video will show you how to access the Ally Course Accessibility Report, or how to enable it if it's not displayed in your course navigation.

From the homepage of your course, in the left navigation, select "Ally Course Accessibility Report" to generate your report.

If you don't see Ally Course Accessibility Report in your left hand navigation:

Click on settings from the bottom.
Then in the toolbar at the top, select navigation.
In the list of items locate "Ally Course Accessibility" report.
And click on the three dots to the right.
Then choose enable from the pop up.
Once it's enabled, make sure to scroll all the way back down and click the save button.

Now from your homepage you'll see Ally Course Accessibility Report.

Note that this is not going to be visible to students even though it's been enabled.

Using the Ally Accessibility Course Report

Now that we have enabled the Ally Accessibility Course Report let's review what this tool is telling us and how to engage with it to make corrections, understand accessibility errors, and understand some limitations of the tool.

Click here for the Using Ally Video transcript.

Elijah Dow: This video will explain the Ally Course Accessibility Report page and how to use it to improve the accessibility of your course content.

When you click on Ally Course Accessibility Report from your Course Navigation, it will run the report and take you directly to the report page.

Your course accessibility score at the top represents your overall score, including all content that is inside of the course shell. This may include things that do not impact the student experience, such as items under Files which you may have disabled for students.

Below, the overall Course Accessibility score is the Overview. In this overview, you have a breakdown of the type of content inside of your shell, including things like Word documents, images, PDF documents, assignments, presentations like PowerPoint, pages, announcements, and your syllabus.

Beside that, you'll have two options to get started. You can choose to begin fixing content that Ally has identified as being easy issues to fix, or you can begin fixing content that has the lowest scores.

In this example, I'll start with the easiest issues to fix, and I'll click Start next to that option. This page is showing me 109 out of the 304 content items with the issues that are easiest to fix. To begin fixing the issues, I can simply click on any of the items that are listed in the page that opens. There's a tray to the right that displays the accessibility score for the particular item. It will also explain what the issue is that it's identified.

For this image, it is missing a description. I can add the alternative text for the image right here in this view, or I can mark the image as being decorative. Once I've typed in my image description, I can then click Add and it'll apply the fix to my image.

If you have a large file, it may take some time for this to load, but the process will continue to run in the background so you can feel safe in closing this window and continuing on your audit of your course.

Some content may require you to make the changes outside of the Canvas environment. For example, a Word document that has issues with headings may need to be fixed in Word and then re-uploaded back into Canvas.

Ally can be a helpful tool that helps identify potential issues with accessibility in your course content. But like any automated checker, it is not perfect. It may occasionally flag items that are perfectly accessible, or it might miss issues that need human judgment to catch. Think of Ally as an assistant, but not the final authority.

Use the feedback as a starting point, and combine that with your own knowledge of accessibility and the checklists available in the Digital Accessibility Training Hub to ensure that your course is as accessible as possible.

You can always meet with an Instructional Designer to go over specific issues that you're facing. We're happy to help.

Pros and Cons of the Ally Course Report

Ally can provide a great big-picture view of accessibility of a course and highlight patterns of recurring issues. The severity and frequency metrics may assist in prioritizing fixes, and the tool provides guided actions and inline feedback to assist in the direct resolution of errors.

Ally cannot detect all accessibility issues and may flag content that is lower priority or does not cause an accessibility barrier. We know that Ally cannot determine if alternative text is meaningful, if a video has accurate captions, or whether a document is cognitively usable. Ally will also score the accessibility of all documents inside the "Files" even if those files are not used in any published course pages.

Use the Ally Accessibility Report in conjunction with the Canvas Accessibility Checklist and in meeting with your Instructional Designer to develop a holistic approach to course accessibility remediation.

Resources

SBCTC Resource: Ally: Canvas Accessibility Tool
Blackboard Help Center: Instructor FAQs for Ally
Blackboard Help Center: Ally Support Articles to Improve Content Accessibility