Office Hours

November 9, 2026

Inside Ally Office Hours-November 9th

# Accessibility

# Ally

Insights and Takeaways

Katie Grennell, PhD.

Inside November 9th Ally Office Hours: Insights and Takeaways

Thank you to everyone who joined November Office Hours for Blackboard Ally. Chris Aldin, Director of Product, and Dr. Katie Grennell, Product Engagement Manager, shared new content and upcoming events, walked through recent and upcoming releases, prepared everyone for Fix Your Content Day, and answered questions from the community. The slide deck and recording are linked at the end of this post.

A reminder that statements about product development and timelines reflect current intentions and may change.

New content

Ally Product Pulse, November 2026 Edition : our monthly roundup of feature releases, new content, upcoming events and a Did You Know highlight.

Ally in Practice recaps: catch up on both sessions of our new monthly enablement series, which alternates between instructors and administrators. Session 1, Prioritizing Accessibility Improvements for Instructors, is a great starting point for newer faculty. Session 2, An Administrator’s Guide to Institutional Reporting and Remediation Prioritization, shows how to turn institutional report data into goals and a remediation plan. Read the recap blog or watch the Session 2 recording .

On Being Asked : Katie’s blog for National Disability Employment Awareness Month, on moving from awareness to understanding.

Have an idea for a future Ally in Practice topic? Let Katie know.

Upcoming EventsEvent

Event	Date and time	Details	Register
Ally in Practice: Promoting Alternative Formats to Students	Monday, November 16, 10:00–11:00 AM ET or 2:00–3:00 PM ET	For instructors and the admins who support them. Covers common use cases for each alternative format. Registrants receive the recording.	Option 1, 10:00 AM ET or Option 2, 2:00 PM ET
Ally User Group	Wednesday, November 18, 10:00 AM ET	Moved up a day to avoid the symposium.	Register for the Ally User Group
Digital Teaching Symposium 2026	Thursday, November 19	A free, online event open to every role.	Register for the symposium
Accessing Higher Ground, Denver	November 16–20	Visit the Ally table, and join Chris and Katie’s session, When the Skills Gap Closes: A Data Informed Look at Instructor Behavior After PDF Remediation Got Easier, on Thursday, November 19 at 11:30 AM.	Accessing Higher Ground 2026

Release Updates

Now available: AI Alt Text Assistant for Images in PDFs! Released October 12th in Ally 2.20 for all LMS platforms, this feature lets instructors add alt text to images inside PDFs, and Ally updates the file for them. Instructors can write descriptions themselves or, where enabled, get suggestions from the AI Alt Text Assistant, which apply only after review. Admins control this with two feature flags: one for the PDF alt text workflow and the existing AI Alt Text Assistant flag, which controls whether the suggestions button appears. Ally 2.20 and recent releases also include many other improvements and bug fixes, so review the Ally 2026 Release Notes for anything your faculty or admins can use.

Coming soon: Ally Enhanced Reader. The Enhanced Reader is a new alternative format planned for the next release, Ally 2.21, built around focus, comfort and control. Chris demoed it using Anthology’s white paper The Accessibility Gap. Students can:

Switch between light and dark mode and change background colors

Choose accessibility-focused fonts, including Atkinson Hyperlegible and OpenDyslexic, and adjust size and spacing

Turn on word emphasis, which highlights the first characters of each word

Use a reading ruler, as an underline or a lightbox

Preferences are saved in the student’s browser, so their settings carry over to the next item they open in the Enhanced Reader. No personal information is sent to Ally. Settings don’t carry across different browsers and are cleared if the browser cache is cleared.

The Enhanced Reader runs in the browser, so there’s no app to download. Fonts are built in, and admins don’t need to configure anything. It will appear in the alternative formats window by default. Release notes and an updated student help page will accompany the release.

A special thank-you to Paula Kaplan’s student team at St. Mary’s, who tested an early version in August and suggested we treat the release like an album drop.

Coming soon: new PDF quick fix settings for admins: Also planned for Ally 2.21, new on/off settings will give admins control over the Missing Title, Missing Language and OCR Scanned PDF quick fixes, a direct result of community feedback. All three stay on by default. Keep them on for Fix Your Content Day so faculty can count those fixes.

Fix Your Content Day!

Our 7th annual Fix Your Content Day is Tuesday, November 10th, a 24-hour global event where institutions fix course content with Ally and climb a live leaderboard. The community has made more than 550,000 fixes since the first event in 2020. Every fix made in Ally counts, whatever the severity of the issue.

How timing works: Fix Your Content Day is a single global 24-hour competition window, not a rolling window by local time zone. Fixes made anywhere during the official window count, so activity in the US while November 10th is already underway in Asia Pacific counts too. See the official rules for details.

Finding your institution on the leaderboard: institutions appear on the global leaderboard after completing 10 or more fixes. Every fix is tracked before then.

Tips for the day and after

When	Suggestions
Before	Send a final reminder using the countdown messages in the communications pack . Set one realistic target for fixes. Use your institutional report with the Admin Prioritization Toolkit to point faculty to a priority issue, such as scanned PDFs. Share where faculty can get help.
During	Host an in-person or virtual Fix-a-Thon. Offer drop-in help. Spark friendly competition between departments with the usage report. Post leaderboard updates with #FixYourContentDay.
After	Thank participants and share totals. Use the Directory tab to see progress by department and set the event dates in the Usage tab to find the courses with the most fixes. Turn what you learn into training.

Tip: view usage data in the new usage report interface on November 10^th or export it as a CSV starting November 11.

Results will be tallied about a week after the event and announced on Blackboard social channels and the Community. Awards go to the top three institutions for the most fixes per full-time equivalent (FTE) student and for the most fixes overall.

Additional FYCD Resources

Fix Your Content Day page

FYCD promo video

Fix Your Content Day: How a 24-hour Challenge Sparked a Global Accessibility Movement

Amplifying Access: FYCD playlist

The University of Law FYCD community story

FYCD 2026: The Greatest Hits , song parody posters you can share or print

Q&A Highlights

Is something wrong with Microsoft authentication in Ally for Websites? An issue prevented some users from logging in to the Ally for Websites report with Microsoft credentials. A fix was released on Friday, November 6th. Affected users should clear their browser cache, log in again and repeat the verification code process described in Microsoft Authentication and Access . If problems continue, submit a support ticket.

Will Ally work with the new alt text field for course outline images in Blackboard LMS? Yes. Blackboard is adding a dedicated alt text field for images on the course outline, and Ally will follow with a release that lets instructors add that alt text through Ally’s instructor feedback. The field may appear on test and stage environments before the Ally release, so expect some inconsistencies until then.

When will Ally filter out unpublished content in Canvas? There’s no update yet. The team is still working around Canvas API limitations, and the filter remains a roadmap priority, including for the new course report. Work on the Blackboard LMS side continues.

What’s the difference between unused and unpublished content? It depends on the LMS. In Blackboard LMS, the planned unpublished filter is based on the visible to students setting. Unused has other meanings that this feature won’t use. Share use cases for unused content on the Community.

Why does a file lower a Blackboard course score when it isn’t in the course? This can happen after repeated course copies. Ally still has a valid record of the content in the course, sometimes in a hidden or different folder. For now, the fix is to find the item and delete it permanently.

Why don’t deletions in Canvas show up right away? Ally relies on events Canvas sends when content changes. Some deletions, such as removing a file embedded in a Canvas page, don’t send an event, so the change appears at the next course sync. Making any change in the course, including a fix through Ally, can prompt a sync. Blueprint courses can behave differently. If a change still hasn’t appeared after 24 to 48 hours, submit a support ticket.

Why does Ally flag contrast in a PowerPoint that passes Microsoft’s checker? Ally uses a different checklist than Microsoft. Screenshots are a common cause, because low resolution and borders can fall below WCAG contrast thresholds. Capture screenshots on the highest-resolution screen available. Send recent examples through a support ticket.

Why does Ally report an image without a description on a slide with no image? Check PowerPoint’s Selection Pane, which lists every object on a slide, including hidden ones. Thanks to Letitia for this tip. Copied and publisher slides often contain hidden objects. If nothing turns up, submit a support ticket with the file.

Why do the year and term CSVs in the institutional data show different results? Term data comes directly from your LMS. Year is a calculation Ally makes, because LMSs don’t have a concept of a year. The two can differ depending on how courses are set up.

Is there an update on the decorative image filter idea? It’s still under consideration on the Idea Exchange, with no time frame yet.

Stay Connected

Ally User Group : join the International Ally User Group meetings and the community discussion.

Idea Exchange : share your product ideas.

Office Hours questions: submit questions ahead of the next session using the Office Hours form, and we’ll cover them live. Form to Submit Questions Ahead of time

If we didn’t get to your question, reach out to Chris or Katie, or post on the Community and tag us. Thank you for everything you do to make course content more accessible for every student. Go forth and fix!!

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