Ally Implementation for Accessibility

Process

Ally is a product for accessibility to ensure content is accessible to all people, regardless of disability. A pilot was implemented in fall 2019 at the University of Illinois Chicago which included instructional designers, faculty, and students to test it out. Ally uses machine learning algorithms to check uploaded documents and makes suggestions for how to improve them.

Here is an example of what instructors and other stakeholders would see when they used Ally to check their documents. The icons that look like an odometer to the left of the documents uploaded to the learning management system indicate the level of accessibility. The green icon with the odometer pointing towards the right indicate a high level of agreement with accessibility guidelines. The orange icon with the odometer pointing towards the top incidates a medium level of agreement with accessibility guidelines. The red icon with the odometer pointing toward the left indicates a low level of agreement with accessibility guidelines.

In this example, Ally tells us that the PowerPoint slide deck that was uploaded is missing descriptions for many images in the deck. The red box around the image helps the instructor or instructional designer to take action and provide a description.

Results and Takeaways

After the lengthy pilot period in 2019, the university decided to not implement it though they have implemented a related tool (Ally File Transformer). Here is some information about the Ally File Transformer: https://it.uic.edu/ally-file-transformer/.