New Album Drop

# Accessibility

# Ally

Ally Enhanced Reader is out Now!

Katie Grennell, PhD.

New album drop: Ally Enhanced Reader is out now!

The wait is over. Enhanced Reader, the newest alternative format from Blackboard Ally, has officially dropped in the Ally 2.21 Release Notes (November 11th, 2026) .

Every student reads differently. Enhanced Reader lets students shape how they read their course content, with features built around three ideas: focus, comfort, and control. Here’s the track list, with the full details in the Enhanced Reader Support Article .

Word Emphasis: highlights the start of each word to guide focus line by line.

Reading Ruler: helps students keep their place as they read, as an underline or a spotlight.

Make It Yours: accessibility-focused fonts, including Atkinson Hyperlegible and OpenDyslexic, plus adjustable size and spacing, dark mode, and background colors.

Settings That Stick: preferences carry over to the next file a student opens in the same browser, so they only set up once.

The idea for this launch came from students at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, one of our lovely Ally institutions. They brought us the wonderfully creative idea of treating a new alternative format’s release like an album drop, and we were all in. We went with an ’80s theme, partly as a nod to an exceptionally fun decade of music, and partly because, well, it’s the decade a few of us grew up in.

Now playing, the official music video: Blackboard Ally Enhanced Reader Music Video !

Listener advisory: may cause sudden bursts of focus, comfort, control, and nostalgia for the ’80s.

How students find it: students select the Ally alternative formats icon next to a course file and choose Enhanced Reader. It opens right in the browser, with nothing to install.

For instructors and admins: your setup is already done. Enhanced Reader is on by default and appears alongside Ally’s other alternative formats for supported course files. All that’s left is to tell your students it’s there.

Collect all the editions: like any good album, this one comes with alternate covers. Alongside the official poster, there’s a cassette edition and a Word Emphasis edition. Download them and share them with your students, faculty, and teaching and learning teams.

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