5 Things to Check After Blackboard Ally Gives You the Green Light

You launched the Ally course accessibility report, worked through the flagged issues, and watched your score climb to 85% or higher. Green across the board! It feels like the job is done.

But a few weeks into the semester, a student reaches out and tells you they couldn't get through to the reading you linked from the library database, or the lecture video you just posted had no usable captions. How is that possible if Ally said everything was great?

Ally is a powerful tool, but not a complete accessibility audit. It's built to catch specific, well-defined accessibility issues in specific kinds of content uploaded to your course. Ally is transparent about the fact that a lot falls outside that scope. Knowing where those edges are is just as important as knowing how to use the tool itself. Here's what Ally can't see, can't fix, or doesn't fully resolve, and what you can do about each one.

1. Anything Linked or Stored Outside Blackboard

Ally only scans files that actually live inside the course, content you've uploaded or built directly in Blackboard. If you've linked out to a file in Google Drive, OneDrive, or Box, Ally has no way to see inside it. That means those linked files don’t get a meter, a score, or a fix suggestion no matter how inaccessible it is. 

• For linked or external files, the fix has to happen at the source. Use accessibility checkers built into Microsoft Word or PowerPoint before sharing. 

• Google Docs and Slides do not have an accessibility checker; however, activate Gemini and run this prompt: “Please check this file for accessibility using WCAG 2.1 AA as the guiding standard.” The result should give you some feedback and guidance for improvements.

2. Publisher and Library-Integrated Content

Course materials delivered through a publisher's LTI tool, a textbook platform, or a library database link are similarly invisible to Ally. These integrations pull content into your course from outside systems that Ally doesn't have access to.

• If a student reports a problem with a publisher's homework platform or an e-reserve reading, that's a conversation with the publisher or the library, not something Ally will flag or fix.

• If you need additional information about the accessibility of a specific tool we license, please ask DoIT or Instructional Technology. 

3. Content Outside the Main Course Area

Depending on how your course is structured, Ally's scanning focuses on uploaded files and content created in the course content area, not necessarily everything you build in Blackboard. Announcements, discussion prompts, and assignment instructions may not get the same scrutiny as an uploaded PDF or Word document. Yet they still require a close review to ensure accuracy, accessibility, and readability.

• If you're writing a long, image-heavy announcement or a detailed set of assignment instructions directly in Blackboard's editor, treat it with the same care as an uploaded file. This includes clear headings, real alt text, and no walls of unbroken text (i.e., consider shorter paragraphs, bulleted lists, and white space).

• When in doubt, check whether that piece of content has an Ally indicator next to it at all. If not, it's likely not being scanned.

Image: When editing in YuJa, request auto-captions and ensure the Language Set selected is English. 

4. Video, Audio Content and “Fixed” Captions That Aren’t Really Fixed

With the exception of linked YouTube videos, Ally does not check the accessibility of video or audio content. At UMBC, that responsibility lives with YuJa, our video platform, not with Ally. YuJa provides its own AI-based captioning, typically in the 90 to 95% accuracy range.

• Auto-generated captions are a starting point, not a finish line; they need a human review to catch misheard names, technical terms, and punctuation before they're reliable and usable.

• If embedding a YuJa video into Blackboard, don't assume a good Ally score on the surrounding content means the video is accessible. It's a separate check, in a separate system.

When it comes to captioning and Ally flags an issue, having an available caption (even auto-generated) doesn't mean it’s an accessible caption. 

• Auto-generated captions are not considered valid on their own because they're not reliably accurate enough to meet accessibility standards.

• Budget time to review, correct, or clarify auto-captions, especially for technical vocabulary, names, or acronyms specific to a discipline.

5. Very Short or Unusual Files

Some of Ally's checks only apply above a certain file size or in certain formats. For example, one common PDF accessibility check -- headings -- only applies to PDFs with at least three pages, while the same check in Word documents applies only to files with at least 12 paragraphs. As a result, Ally may not flag missing headings in shorter PDFs or Word documents.

• Don't assume a shorter document is fine simply because Ally didn't flag anything. 

• Give those shorter files and images the same manual glance you'd give longer files.

None of this means Ally isn't worth using. It catches a huge share of the most common issues, automatically, without asking you to become an accessibility expert. But "green meter" and "fully accessible" aren't quite the same thing. The most reliable and accessible courses combine what Ally flags with a critical human review of content, tools, and areas it can't reach.

If you’ve followed the guidance and the issue persists, or if you’re working with a complex document type you’re not sure how to fix, Instructional Technology is here to help. You can reach us via RT to submit a ticket or schedule a 1:1 consultation.

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