Blackboard Ally Accessibility Tool Expands to D2L Brightspace

With Blackboard’s expansion of its accessibility solution, it covers all major ed-LMS vendors including Canvas, Moodle, and now D2L Brightspace. This underscores Blackboard’s commitment to ensuring all students and users have access to digital content and that administrators can create an inclusive environment.

Blackboard Ally uses artificial intelligence to process course materials to find accessibility issues and offers reporting on the current state of accessibility at the course and institution level. It auto-generates other formats from the original content, including mobile friendly HTML, audio, ePub, electronic Braille, and translations.

Since launching in 2017, Blackboard Ally has grown quickly and is now in 600 post-secondary institutions in 21 countries and in 20 languages.

Source: Blackboard at SoftwareReviews, Date Accessed: August 13, 2019

Our Take

Blackboard made a smart move when it launched Ally. It created a product that required a lot of development hours that other competitors haven’t invested in, and that meets customer need for creating accessible material easily. This product is a secondary revenue stream since it integrates with other platforms. With over 22 million courses and over 620 million content items, the appetite in the market for Blackboard Ally is ravenous and expected to grow.