What’s New in BSG

Blackboard Ally is one of the most useful tools in your course accessibility toolkit. It scans your content, flags potential barriers, and offers step-by-step guidance for fixing them. However, ...

You just finished uploading a PDF - a syllabus, lecture notes, or a set of slides exported for printing. It looks fine to you, but how does it perform for a student relying on a screen reader?...

PDFs are a staple of academic life, used for everything from syllabi to complex research articles. However, without intentional design, they can create significant barriers for students using...

If you've ever run an Ally course accessibility report and found a long list of untagged PDFs, you know the feeling: the problem is clear, but the path forward is time-consuming. Tagging PDFs for...

Imagine a student learning Spanish who relies on a screen reader to access course materials. They open a PDF of a restaurant menu and instead of hearing the items and prices their classmates are...

As announced last month, UMBC is working toward a campus-wide goal of highly accessible courses by the end of 2026. To help, DoIT recommends that faculty identify accessibility gaps in prior...

UMBC instructors are invited to "enroll" in the self-paced, online Course Roadmap to Equity (CoRE) Foundations training, which provides practical tools to achieve the ‘Strive for 85’ digital...

Blackboard is currently working on improving the Ally Course Accessibility Report. They are collecting feedback from users in a short survey to understand how you use it, what’s working well, and...

Following Provost van Dulmen's November 2025 announcement regarding UMBC's commitment to digital accessibility, the Digital Accessibility Steering Committee (DASC) is launching "Strive for 85."...

UMBC will host three Fix Your Course Content Days, dedicated to improving the accessibility of digital course materials in Blackboard. During these three individual sprints, faculty, staff, and...