Blackboard Ally

Ally is an integrated accessibility tool built right into courses in Blackboard Ultra at Fairmont State. Students, faculty, and administrators all benefit from Ally. It seamlessly provides alternative formats for students, gives instructors detailed feedback about the accessibility of elements in their course, and help institutions collect data to improve institution-wide accessibility standards. 

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Check out the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium for accessibility.  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Useful Digital Accessibility Resources

The American Library Association has accumulated a list of resources related to accessibility and the WCAG. Check out their offerings! ALA Useful Accessibility Resources

Simple Accessibility Checklist

Looking for a simple list of things to check in your work to ensure it is accessible? Check out the list below of some of the ways we can make our work accessible. This isn't a comprehensive list. 

1. Fonts: Use a font size of at least 12 point with at least 1.5 times line spacing.
2. Colors: Use high contrast. So, light text on a dark background or dark text on a light background.
3. Headers: Use the header styling in Word and Ultra. Then, a screen reader can easily identify how the info is organized. 
4. Images: Provide alt text on all images that describe the image. Blackboard lets you add alt text any time you upload an image to your course. 
5. Tables:If you are using a table, be sure that your columns are labeled. 
6. Hyperlinks: Use descriptive text for Hyperlinks instead of just the URL. For example, above there is a hyperlink that is labeled, "Blackboard Ally Toolkit" instead of the URL.