Introduction Ally Accessibility in Moodle

Ally is Moodle plugin for accessibility that scans and evaluates Moodle content for accessibility issues, suggests and makes improvements, and provides students alternative formats for uploaded files. In addition to icons that show the Ally 'grade' for each activity or resource (that only instructors see), Ally provides access to an overview dashboard that lists all issues, in order from most serious to least, with helpful suggestions of how to resolve those issues. Students see only the Ally icon next to any resource for which Ally provides alternative formats.

Ally icons that link the instructor to individual resource reports and that make alternative formats available to students are visible when the Ally filter in your course is turned on, which it is by default. We encourage teachers to leave this turned on, but it may be turned off at the course level when necessary in certain situations.

Ally functions in Moodle courses

Ally will scan the text and files in your Moodle course and look for:

  • Improperly applied headers in text and tables that interfere with screen readers
  • Color contrast issues for those with color blindness
  • Scanned text documents that appear as images (ie, text is not selectable or able to be read by a screen reader)
  • Missing image descriptions
  • Videos without subtitles
  • Links with missing text
  • Linked Google documents are NOT scanned

Additionally, Ally will examine uploads to the site, pointing out potential issues, and providing the option for students to download alternative formats to the file, including:

  • HTML
  • ePub
  • Tagged PDF
  • Electronic braille
  • Audio
  • OCR’ed PDF (screen readable)
  • Immersive reader
  • Translations*

*Note: translations can only be disabled at the site level, so there may be instances, particularly in language courses, where you may wish to disable alternative formats completely for an upload in order to prevent students from accessing an Ally-created translation.

Interactive Ally Introductions

Helpful Knowledge Base articles:

These articles detail how to use and navigate Ally in your course:

Improving Accessibility of PDF files with Acrobat Pro (available in the DiSCO):

Instructions for students on using Alternative formats:

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