At California State University, Northridge (CSUN), one area of the Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) -- Instructional Materials -- has lagged behind the others. We did not have adequate data about all the materials our faculty are putting into the hands (and devices) of our students.

More importantly, our faculty are a diverse and busy group, with a wide range of understanding around accessibility and an even wider set of skills to approach it. While training in accessibility best practices was available, faculty attendance was not high.

In 2018, we added Ally (by Blackboard) to Canvas. Ally works on three levels simultaneously:
• Providing feedback to faculty on the accessibility of course materials;
• Offering all students alternative formats of their materials;
• Creating an institutional report.

Ally for LMS increases equity at CSUN by encouraging faculty to make their materials more accessible, while allowing all students to download alternative formats. It's another way we honor the diversity of our students, including those with disabilities.

We knew Ally can’t solve everything. Our goals with Ally were to:
1. Increase faculty awareness around accessibility, and
2. Obtain actionable data about campus instructional materials and the accessibility of such.

Our implementation so far has focused on our faculty and faculty support. Our communications, including surveys, have been primarily for faculty.

Taking this one step farther, CSUN’s Universal Design Center created a 75-minute interactive training session in and around Ally. Faculty participants learn how to use Ally within Canvas while simultaneously learning high-impact accessibility best practices.

To accomplish this, the UDC created an “Ally Demo” course in Canvas. First, it introduces Ally. The bulk of the course is example files carefully constructed to contain specific accessibility errors. The demo course also includes a few accessibility best practices we want to draw faculty attention to, though Ally does not report on them, notably a section on captioning videos.

Each participant has their own copy of this course, where they practice the fixes as UDC staff explain and demonstrate them. Participants are added to the demo courses in advance. The demo courses are refreshed by Canvas admins between training sessions.

The first hands-on exercise is adding an alternative description (“alt text”) to an image. This is done through Ally directly in Canvas, and gives the faculty participant an instant improvement to 100%.

Then participants move to downloading files (Word, PowerPoint and PDF) to make simple fixes to them, supported by Ally’s “how to” instructions, the instructor’s example, and, if needed, additional UDC staff and student assistants in the training room.

During the training, in addition to the Ally faculty interface, the presenter shows participants the Ally student interface, the Microsoft Office accessibility check, and PDF file properties. We share tips like switching to “student view” before projecting the instructor’s view of Canvas to their students.

This training has been well received by faculty at CSUN. Attendance at UDC’s scheduled sessions has been high, and departments around campus have requested this training, typically during department meetings.

In this presentation, we will review:
• CSUN’s goals in implementing Ally;
• Our Ally for Canvas demo course;
• How the trainings are conducted;
• Faculty response;
• What we’ve learned and what we’ve changed;
• Next steps.