Office Hours

August 11, 2026

Inside Ally Office Hours (August 10th, 2026)

# Accessibility

# Ally

Highlights and Takeaways

Katie Grennell, PhD.

Inside August 10^th Ally Office Hours: Highlights and Takeaways

Want to know what happened in today's Ally Office Hours but don't have time to watch the entire recording? We've got you!

This month's session was packed with updates, including important maintenance reminders, new community resources, recent product enhancements, and a rundown of upcoming Ally events. We also spent time discussing how we talk about accessibility with faculty, staff, and students, which sparked an engaging conversation filled with practical examples and thoughtful perspectives from across the Ally community.

Here's a look at some of the highlights and key takeaways from our August 10 Ally Office Hours.

Ally Maintenance Reminders

Database Upgrades Saturday-August 8^th: Complete! Update was completed successfully over the weekend with no expected impact for users.

Reporting API Token Refresh-Friday, August 14^th 2026: this change only affects institutions using Ally Reporting API connections with external tools such as Power BI or Excel. Standard LMS integrations, including Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, and D2L Brightspace, are not impacted. Updates can be tracked via the status board: https://status.blackboard.com/.

How do I know if this impacts me? If you are using the API in external reporting tools (i.e. Power BI), this will impact you! You will need to regenerate a new token on Friday using the same original setup steps to generate a token. Information can be found at https://help.anthology.com/ally-lms/en/administrators/integrate-ally-s-api-with-an-external-reporting-tool.html.

New Content

Ally Product Pulse-August Edition : latest edition of the Ally Product Pulse is now available!

"That's Not My Job": Navigating Instructor Pushback on Accessibility (Blog Post) : based on Katie’s presentation from Building Blackboard Together, this blog post explores practical ways to respond to common accessibility objections while keeping conversations focused on progress and student success.

Looking Ahead: Highlights from the Ally Roadmap Session at Building Blackboard Together (Blog Post) : recently published a recap of the Ally Roadmap session from Building Blackboard Together, highlighting key themes and future areas of focus for Ally.

Ally for Instructors Microlearning Video Series : the series continues to grow, with additional videos coming soon. We also shared plans to launch a similar series designed specifically for administrators this fall.

Communication and Adoption Toolkit : several new resources are planned for the toolkit, including instructor tips and tricks, back-to-school resources, and guidance on promoting alternative formats to students. As always, we welcome ideas from the community about additional resources that would be helpful.

Looking for non-Blackboard institutions: We're currently looking to speak with institutions using Ally outside of Blackboard, including Canvas, Moodle, D2L Brightspace, and other LMS platforms. If your institution has lessons learned, successful adoption strategies, or experiences you'd be willing to share, we'd love to connect with you.

Ally User Group Meeting Schedule: We're currently updating the Ally User Group meeting calendar. More information and upcoming dates will be shared soon.

Upcoming Events

Ally Roadmap Webinar (August 18th) Registration Link : Missed the roadmap session at Building Blackboard Together? You'll have another opportunity to join us during our upcoming Ally Roadmap webinar on August 18 at 10:00am ET, where we'll revisit key themes and share additional updates on what's ahead.

Ally in Practice Enablement Series : we’re thrilled to launch Ally in Practice, a new enablement series focused on helping instructors, course designers, and administrators get the most from Ally. The first session, scheduled for September 16^th, will focus on: Ally basics for instructors, prioritizing accessibility improvements, Practical strategies for course content remediation. Sessions will be recorded and offered at multiple times to support participants across time zones.

Live Session Option 1: 10:00-11:00 AM ET; Option 1 Registration Link

Live Session Option 2: 2:00-3:00 PM ET; Option 2 Registration Link

Product and Release Updates

As always, these updates represent just a handful of recent Ally release highlights. Be sure to check the release notes for the full list of enhancements, fixes, and improvements.

Ally 2.19.3 Release Notes (August 7, 2026)

Other updates: Moodle 5.2 Plugins available.

Bug Fix Highlights: Moodle HTML content unavailable when the option to Exclude unused files in the Ally plugins selected.

Ally 2.19.2 Release Notes (July 30, 2026)

Features/enhancements: Blackboard HTML content blocks as viewable content in Instructor Feedback Preview.

Bug Fix Highlights: New Ally Usage Report that caused downloads to timeout unexpectedly when selecting a longer date range.

Ally 2.19.1 Release Notes (July 22, 2026)

Bug Fix Highlights: Increased timeout limit for the Ally Reporting API to avoid 500 errors.

Ally 2.19 Release Notes (July 13, 2026

Features/enhancements: New Usage Report, PDF Tagging Quick Fix.

Group Discussion

As the fall term approaches and many of us prepare for back-to-school trainings, workshops, and faculty outreach, we decided to break a bit from our traditional Office Hours structure and turn the conversation over to the community. We asked attendees a simple but powerful question: How do you describe accessible content in a way that resonates with faculty, staff, and students?

The conversation generated a variety of perspectives, but several common themes emerged:

Make accessibility relevant

Universal design benefits everyone

Accessibility is about equity

Don't forget invisible disabilities

Humor can be an effective conversation starter

Personal stories create powerful connections

Additional Q&A Highlights

The session concluded with several audience questions covering topics such as:

PDF Auto-Tagging behavior

OCR-generated PDFs and accessibility scoring

Video caption awareness checks

Heading structure guidance within LMS content editors

Filtering unpublished content in Ally reporting

Future reporting enhancements and roadmap considerations

Thanks for Joining Us!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for August's Ally Office Hours and contributed questions, experiences, and insights. We appreciate the thoughtful discussion and community collaboration that make these sessions so valuable.

We hope to see you at the Ally Roadmap webinar next week. Until then, take care, and we'll see you at the next Ally Office Hours!

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