By Dian Schaffhauser
Fix Your Content Day leaderboard
Competitors from 115 universities around the world dedicated May 20, 2021 Global Accessibility Awareness Day to fixing course accessibility and winning public recognition for their efforts. They expanded accessibility on a total of 108,000 course files, nearly doubling the total of 57,000 improved in 2020.
The project was instigated by teaching and learning technology company Blackboard, in its second annual Fix Your Content Day Challenge. Participants used Blackboard Ally, the company s digital accessibility tool, which is learning management system-agnostic. The program works with Blackboard Learn, Moodle, D2L s Brightspace and Instructure Canvas.
According to the company, the use of the tool can make course materials more accessible for all students, not just those with disabilities. Ally uses machine learning algorithms to automatically suggest alternative formats for course content, such as semantic HTML, audio,