Highlights from the Western Region Ally User Group Meeting: June 18, 2026
We’re excited to be building up our new Western Region Ally User Group, designed to create more opportunities for connection, collaboration, and shared learning with our friends on the West coast. Our latest session held on June 18th brought members together to explore updates, preview what’s coming next, and help shape the future of this growing community.
Upcoming Events
- Building Blackboard Together 2026: join us July 13–15 in Dallas for Building Blackboard Together. This year’s accessibility and inclusion track features sessions on: Inclusive course design, Accessibility at scale, WCAG-aligned practices, and practical workflows for faculty and instructional designers. The Building Blackboard Together 2026 Program can be filtered to view this year's accessibility and inclusion track.
- Ally roadmap session: in addition to our in-person session at Building Blackboard Together, we’ll also host a virtual Ally roadmap session in August, with full details and registration information coming soon.
- Ally Office Hours: in order to accommodate Building Blackboard Together, our next Ally office hours will be held on Monday, July 20th at 11:00am EST (please note the original date was Monday, July 13th). Visit Ally Office Hours Registration Page to register.
New Content
- On the Road with Ally: in mid-April, my colleagues Dr. Amy Lomellini, Lauren Wrosinghert, Kevin Fort, and I participated in an Ally mini-roadshow with visits to UC Berkeley and the University of Phoenix. Read the blog post to learn more about our visits.
- Books Without Barriers Blog Series: in recognition of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we published a 10-part blog series exploring books on: Disability studies and history, inclusive design, and accessibility in practice. All blog posts are available in the community.
Ally Community Transition Update
We’re excited to share that the Ally User Group has officially transitioned to the Blackboard Community platform. What this means:
- The Hum Hub platform (where the legacy Ally User Group lived) will be retired by the end of June.
- All historical discussions and valued content have been migrated.
- The Blackboard Community is now the central hub for collaboration, discussions, and updates.
- This newly formed Western Region Ally User Group will have a designated space in the Community that will technically be separate than the Ally User Group we are referring to above. To avoid confusion, this group will continue with the western region distinction in its name.
Sneak Peeks
We shared two in-progress features driven directly by your feedback:
- AI Alt Text for Images in PDFs: Building on existing capabilities, we’re extending the AI Alt Text Assistant to images within PDFs. Instructors will be able to generate suggested alt text directly within Ally feedback and edit or refine descriptions before applying.
- File Location in Course Reports: soon, instructors will be able to see where content lives in their course directly within the Ally Course Report. This enhancement:
- Displays a folder-style path for each item
- Reduces time spent searching for content
- Streamlines remediation workflows
Building up this User Group
We're currently in the process of evolving this user group into a more community-led space. As we continue to evolve and grow, our focus will be on:
- Sharing real-world use cases, challenges, and lessons learned
- Exploring practical strategies for implementing and scaling Ally
- Creating opportunities for peer-led discussions, spotlights, and collaboration
We anticipate meeting every 2 months, though the cadence may continue to evolve based on community needs. To support this next phase, we’re looking for members who are interested in getting involved—whether by co-leading the group, helping shape topics, facilitating sessions, or contributing in other ways. If you’re interested, we encourage you to fill out the Western Region Ally User Group Volunteer Form. Discussion Themes
We aim to carve out plenty of time in each session for discussion-whether through questions asked in the moment or those submitted ahead of time (can be shared in the Western Region Ally User Group-Questions & Topics Form). In this session, several discussion themes emerged:
- PDF accessibility remains a major challenge, particularly when working at scale or with complex content types
- AI is opening new possibilities for accessibility, while still requiring thoughtful, human-centered implementation
We’ll be sharing details for our next session soon, and we’d love to see you there! In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions. Thanks again for being part of this growing community, and we hope you all have a wonderful, relaxing summer!
