Instructors and administrators can turn off alternative formats for an individual content item within a course. For example, on a file uploaded to the course.
Ally for Students
Overview
Ally is a feature that creates easy-to-use file formats for students. Ally works within your online course so it's available right where you need it.
Alternative files include readable text for screen readers, pictures with captions, and easy-to-navigate content. Ally creates multiple alternatives from the original documents in your course. You can download these alternative formats anywhere that files are used.
Video: Ally for Students
Getting Started
Online courses often have many different materials that are posted in Moodle. Ally lets you choose alternative formats for those materials. It's very simple to get started.
- Log into your course, and find the selected file.
- Open the file menu by selecting the Ally icon (or the letter 'A') beside the file and choosing "Alternative formats."
- Choose a format and download the document.
Ally provides alternative formats for these file types:
- PDF files
- Microsoft® Word files
- Microsoft® PowerPoint® files
- OpenOffice/LibreOffice files
- Uploaded HTML files
These alternative formats can be generated:
- OCR’d version (for scanned documents)
- Tagged PDF (currently for Word, PowerPoint and OpenOffice/LibreOffice files)
- Mobile-friendly HTML
- Audio
- ePub
- Electronic Braille
- Translated Version (Disabled by default.)
- BeeLine Reader
When a particular alternative format for a particular content item is requested for the first time, Ally generates this on-demand. In most cases, this completes within 1-2 minutes.
As soon as it has been generated, the alternative format is downloaded. Ally then also caches the result, so any additional requests for the same alternative format can be served and downloaded from the cache immediately.
Ally currently only processes instructional content. For example, content added by someone with edit permissions in the course, such as the instructor or instructional designer. Ally currently does not process student content or student submissions.
The OCR’d version is made available as a tagged PDF.
The audio alternative format is made available as a downloadable MP3 file. We also add some of the extracted semantic information into the speech, which adds additional structure to the audio and makes it easier to follow.
Ally uses Braille Ready File (.brf) as the electronic Braille format. The braille code used depends on the language the document is in. For English documents, Ally uses Grade 2 Unified English Braille (contracted). You can learn More on Unified English Braille on the UKAAF website.
The Braille Ready File (.brf) format can be used for both electronic braille displays and braille embossers (printers).
Note: You still need to check whether a specific Braille embosser/printer supports the .brf format.
You can learn More on BRF on the Accessible Instructional Materials website.
The Translated Version alternative format is great for students enrolled in a course that is not in their primary language. The Translated Version is an ideal resource to compare with the original document when they are stuck or having trouble comprehending.
This alternative format provides a machine-translated version of the instructor’s original into a total of 50 different languages and supports PDF, Word, PowerPoint and HTML documents.
Note: Accuracy varies and depends on the type of language being used in the document. For example, if there is a lot of technical languages, complex sentence structure, and local colloquialisms.
The Translated Version is currently available in the following languages:
- Afrikaans
- Arabic
- Bosnian - Cyrillic
- Bosnian - Latin
- Bulgarian
- Catalan
- Chinese - Simplified
- Chinese - Traditional
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- English
- Estonian
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Greek, Modern
- Haitian
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Malay
- Maltese
- Norwegian Bokmål
- Persian (Farsi)
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Serbian - Cyrillic
- Serbian - Latin
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Spanish
- Swahili
- Swedish
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Urdu
- Vietnamese
- Welsh
This information was pulled from Ally for LMS Help for Students web page on Blackboard.