Inside May 11th Ally Office Hours: Highlights and Takeaways
The latest Ally Office Hours on May 11th, 2026, brought together the product team and community to share updates, highlight new resources, and preview upcoming innovations designed to make accessibility easier and more scalable. Here are the key takeaways.
What’s New: Content and Resources
We started with several updates and resources:
- The Ally Product Pulse for May is now out and available on our Community site and the Ally User Group
Celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day
Rather than limiting efforts to a single day, Ally is treating GAAD as a month-long initiative focused on continuous engagement. Here are several of the ways we will be celebrating:
- Books without Barriers: Limited blog series for the month of May that highlights books that explore disability history, accessibility, inclusive and accessible design, inclusive course design, and lived experience.
- Upcoming Power-Up webinar: Blackboard Ally: Accessible Learning for Everyone, featuring Dr. Wendy Velez-Torres of Coppin State University as she shares her experiences using Ally as a student, instructor, and administrator. The webinar will take place on Tuesday, May 19th at 2pm EST. To register, visit the Blackboard Ally: Accessible Learning for Everyone Webinar Registration Page.
- Join us on Thursday, May 21st (Global Accessibility Awareness Day!!!) at 10:00 am EDT for the International Ally User Group Meeting! Representatives from the Marshall University Design Center, recipients of the 2025 Catalyst Award – Leading Change, will share how they promote Ally adoption, support faculty development, and help instructors create more accessible learning experiences for all students. To register, visit https://connect.anthology.com/ally-user-group-1.
Community Transition: Moving to the New Blackboard Community
The Ally user group is transitioning into the new Blackboard Community platform, with content already migrated and discussions following shortly. Please see the following important updates regarding the transition.
- Migration completion is expected by the end of June
- The current user group will be retired after the transition
- Users are encouraged to begin engaging in the new platform now
This move aims to preserve valuable conversations while enhancing collaboration and resource sharing.
Early Adopter Program: PDF Auto‑Tagging
We are thrilled to announce details of our early adopter program for PDF auto-tagging, as part of the next iteration of our PDF quick fixes feature. Beginning June 8th, institutions can sign up for early access live on production. Please see the following important pieces of information:
- Launch begins the week of June 8
- Available in production environments (not test sites)
- Institution-wide rollout for participating organizations
- Participants will receive a detailed FAQ
- Feedback is highly encouraged and there will be multiple opportunities to provide it
Release Updates
Below is a summary of recent release updates contributing to key product and performance improvements:
- Improved Blackboard detection and scoring accuracy, including fixes for UNSAFE_HTML handling and heading level issues
- Fix for a Blackboard bug where heading levels were incorrectly flagged, preventing instructors from achieving accurate 100% scores
- Enhanced AI Alt Text Assistant, reducing timeouts and improving image analysis
- Faster, more reliable processing and document conversion, with fewer false positives and better handling of alt text and images
- Updates to overall performance and stability through processing optimizations
- Accessibility fixes for small screens and improved keyboard navigation in Canvas
Canvas Questions
For those Canvas institutions looking to update your LTI settings, we have 2 recommendations.
Additional Topics from the Q&A
In addition to the early adopter program, questions during the session touched on several key areas, including:
- Heading structure and scoring in Blackboard, particularly how Ally evaluates hierarchy within content editors
- Scanned PDF detection, including how mixed-content files are interpreted and flagged
- Course reporting visibility, and why some courses may not appear until content is added
- Document interpretation and limitations, including how Ally identifies and processes different file types
Our next Ally Office Hours will take place on Monday, June 8th at 11:00 am EST. If you already have questions in mind, please submit them in advance using our Ally Office Hours Questions Form. It helps us prepare more thoughtful responses and make the best use of our time together. We appreciate you all and your continued partnership and engagement. ❤️
