Increasing the Reach of Digital Course Materials with an Extensive Accessibility Solution

Blackboard spreads its accessibility solution to align with all leading Learning Management Systems

FREMONT, CA: The education sector has already caught up with all the other fields in terms of digital transformation. But the technology applied across various media in the industry has yet to showcase a rise in the growth curve. Many tools, like Blackboard Ally, have helped institutions to create awareness and avail access to digital course content by integrating seamlessly into the Learning Management System solutions.

With a fully integrated tool like Blackboard Ally, now available across all platforms including D2L’s Brightspace, the growth curve is set to display a hike. Blackboard’s commitment to encouraging the adoption has materialized with digital content being accessible to users via the Google cloud platform, which supports the creation of a sustainable culture of inclusion.

More than 600 higher education institutions in 21 countries and 20 languages use Blackboard Ally. The solution infuses AI to scan course materials for issues with accessibility and supplies a comprehensive report on the current position of materials’ content at both courses level and institution level. Blackboard Ally has developed more than 22 million courses and over 620 million content sections.

The tool is programmed to automatically generate alternative formats for the instructor’s original content, including mobile-friendly HTML, audio, ePub, electronic Braille, and a translated version, allowing widespread access. In the past year, nearly two million supplement formats have been downloaded by students.

“At Blackboard, we are passionate about education and understand the profound difference it can make in individuals’ lives and society as a whole,” says CEO of BlackBoard, Dr. Bill Ballhaus. “That’s why we are committed to partnering with the global education community to drive student success.”

With the support of Blackboard Ally, even educators avail guidance for improvising the accessibility of course materials.  With almost half a million course materials sold through Blackboard Ally was recognized as one among the Top ten digital solution providers of 2017 by the Education Technology Insights Magazine. Since then, it has showcased that the true development of the sector is yet to occur and to increase users depicting awareness among the various sections of the education sectors are turning to digitalization.