Product News

October 24, 2025

Ally Product Pulse

# Accessibility

# Ally

# Learning Disabilities

October Edition

Katie Grennell

Welcome to the Ally Product Pulse!

Issue #1 🎃

We’re excited to launch the Ally Product Pulse- a monthly roundup to keep our Ally community informed, inspired, and connected. Each edition will give you a quick snapshot of what’s happened over the past month, including new feature releases, recently published content, upcoming events, and a “Did You Know?” highlight. It’s everything you need to stay in the loop and get the most out of Ally.

Inside this month’s issue:

Feature release: PDF Quick Fixes

Recently published content: The Accessibility Gap White Paper

Fix Your Content Day

Did you Know?

Feature Release: Assisted Remediation with PDF Quick Fixes

Nearly 2 months ago, the much-anticipated PDF quick fixes were released, and we've already seen tremendous usage across campuses. These fixes help instructors make fast, meaningful accessibility improvements directly in the Instructor Feedback panel.

The best part? Instructors stay in control. Each fix must be reviewed and approved before it's applied, ensuring accessibility improvements align with instructional intent.

The fixes include:

Missing title: add a clear, relevant title to your PDF>

Missing language: set the correct document language from a dropdown menu.

OCRed PDFs: uses built-in OCR capabilities to make scanned documents readable by assistive technology.

Want to learn more? Check out the following resources:

How You Can Make Quick PDF Fixes in Anthology Ally Right now

Ally's Release Notes

PDF Assisted Remediation FAQ

Recently Published Content: The Accessibility Gap White Paper

Findings from our 2025 Anthology Faculty Survey reveal that while instructors care deeply about equitable access, many lack the awareness, training, tools, and confidence to deliver it. Drawing on responses from 2,508 U.S. faculty, this white paper explores these challenges, and more importantly, outlines practical steps institutions can take to close them. The goal is to move accessibility from a compliance checkbox to a shared culture of inclusion that empowers faculty, supports students, and strengthens institutional success.

Access to The Accessibility Gap: Why Faculty Struggle and How Institutions Can Help

Upcoming Events: Fix Your Content Day!

Join us on Tuesday, November 18th for Ally's 6th annual Fix Your Content Day! FYCD is a 24-hour, worldwide competition where institutions come together to improve the accessibility of their digital course content using Anthology Ally. Every fix-big or small-helps create a more inclusive learning environment for your students, while showcasing your institution's commitment to accessibility.

How it Works

Participating institutions register for the event and use Ally to identify accessibility issues in their LMS course files, such as missing alternative text or insufficient color contrast. Faculty and staff then work to fix those issues, with every improvement tracked in real time on a global leaderboard. At the end of the event, the Ally team tabulates the scores and announces regional winners with the most fixes, as well as celebrating first-time participants who joined the challenge.

How to Register

To register for this year's event, visit FYCD 2025 registration. To further support your institution in participating, we have prepared a FYCD Communications Pack, containing messaging templates, graphics, and strategies to help you drive participation across your campus.

We hope to see you on the leaderboard!!!

Did You Know?

Did you know that October is Dyslexia awareness month? Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability that can impact reading, writing, and spelling. Despite being a fairly common learning disability, dyslexia remains widely misunderstood. Observed every October, Dyslexia Awareness Month is dedicated to raising public awareness and support for people with dyslexia. The month not only promotes early identification and inclusive education practices but also highlights lived experiences directly from the community.

To help ensure that students with dyslexia can access and engage with digital course content in ways that suit their learning needs, Ally offers a wide range of alternative formats designed to enhance readability, reduce cognitive load, and promote autonomy. Here's how it helps:

Audio Format (MP3): converts text-based content into audio, allowing students to listen instead of read, making it ideal for auditory learners or those who experience visual stress.

BeeLine Reader: applies a subtle color gradient to text to help the eyes track from one line to the next more easily, which can reduce common challenges like skipping or rereading lines. This is especially helpful for students with dyslexia, who often experience difficulties with visual tracking and maintaining focus while reading.

Immersive Reader: interactive tool reading comprehension and learning tool that offers text-to-speech, customizable visual settings, and grammar supports to reduce visual stress and improve decoding, tracking, and comprehension.

Mobile-Friendly HTML & ePub: offers reflowable formats that adapt to screen size and customizable text settings for a more comfortable reading experience.

Ally Resources

For additional resources and support, please explore the list below:

Ally User Group-community of Ally users who engage in an online discussion forum as well as meetings every other month.

Ally Communication and Adoption Toolkit-collection of resources for administrators and faculty to support their Ally adoption efforts.

Ally Help Site-help documentation for Ally for students, faculty, and administrators.

Ally Office Hours-facilitated by the Ally product team, office hours are held on the second Monday of every other month. Agenda items include review of new feature releases, roadmap items, and dedicated time for customer questions.

Comments (0)

Popular