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Increasing accessibility using Blackboard's text editor
Posted March 8, 2023
by IDLT
This is our final article in the series on Blackboard Ally. We’ve discussed how Blackboard Ally makes your course more inclusive , running the course accessibility report and interpreting it , how to make a PowerPoint presentation accessible , how to increase the accessibility of a PDF, and l etting your students know Ally is their ally .
In this article, we’re going to explain how to make the text in your Blackboard course accessible. When we refer to text in Blackboard, this is any area in which you have the text editor such as an item, assignment description, assignment feedback, or discussion board. Much like Microsoft Word’s Styles feature, Blackboard has pre-built headings that help format text. In the example below, the words Objectives and To Do are used as headings to divide the topics. This can also be done in assignment descriptions. Perhaps you have a section for instructions and a section for how the assignment will be graded.
Why is using headings important? If you simply bold the text and make it larger, this is not detectible by a screen reader. Using the pre-built headings puts special HTML coding so that a screen reader knows that is a new section and announces it as such. It also allows the user to skip in their navigation to sections.
For questions regarding Blackboard Ally and any features related to accessibility, please contact the ITS Instructional Design & Learning Technologies team at 618-650-5500 or help@siue.edu .
