Associate Professor William MacDonald used to manually check each slide, document, image, and page in his CarmenCanvas courses for compliance with digital accessibility standards. MacDonald, associate professor of Sociology and former dean and director of The Ohio State University at Newark, had to rely on Adobe Express’s color-blindness stimulator and PowerPoint’s alt-text feature, as well as online advice to make his materials usable for students with visual impairments.
Even after creating his own workflows, he didn’t realize how many accessibility issues were still hidden in plain sight. Screen readers, for example, ignore bold text, font size, and italics as structural cues. It wasn’t until Ally, an accessibility scanner, was made available within CarmenCanvas that MacDonald saw just how much he had been missing—and how much time he could save when he had a tool that not only flagged accessibility issues but showed him exactly how to fix them.
“Ally was tremendously helpful to me,” McDonald said. “It not only saved me time and provided me with excellent solutions for addressing inaccessible digital information but also made me aware of strategies for designing digital content.”
The entire Ohio State University community now has access to Ally, which reviews both published and unpublished course materials and generates an accessibility score. Ally also allows students to download course materials in a variety of alternative formats to support different learning needs and preferences. That includes tagged PDFs for improved screen-reader compatibility, HTML versions optimized for web viewing, ePub files for mobile or e-reader use, electronic Braille, and audio files that convert text into spoken narration.
“Ally was tremendously helpful to me. It not only saved me time and provided me with excellent solutions for addressing inaccessible digital information but also made me aware of strategies for designing digital content.” —Associate Professor William MacDonald
The Office of Technology and Digital Innovation (OTDI) enabled Ally in CarmenCanvas in November 2025 to support compliance with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. But beyond the basics of compliance, instructors and students across the university are beginning to realize the benefits of using Ally.
“Being able to show students they have format options like audio versions [and] color and text size adjustments, empowers the students to engage with content in ways that best support their individual learning preferences,” said Dr. Kristi Frazier, who teaches University Exploration classes and is involved in the Education department.
Before Ally, students first had to notice which PDFs, documents, or slides they needed adjusted and then communicate that with instructors or the SLDS Media team to get that content accessibly modified. That process had to be repeated for each course material. Now, it only takes a few clicks.
“Providing accessible materials for all our students in Carmen can feel overwhelming for instructors newly focused on this crucial responsibility,” said Jared Gardner, professor of English. “Ally helps break it down into discrete, manageable tasks for improving access to each of the many materials we use in our courses.”
“Being able to show students they have format options like audio versions [and] color and text size adjustments, empowers the students to engage with content in ways that best support their individual learning preferences.” —Dr. Kristi Frazier
When Ally scans course content, it generates an accessibility score, which helps instructors identify potential barriers to accessibility and provides step-by-step guidance for improving course materials. Ally can check PDFs, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files, images, and HTML files. Once issues have been remediated and these files have been rechecked for accessibility, the overall accessibility score of the course will rise.
To learn more about how to use Ally in your course, check out upcoming training sessions of Using Ally to Improve Accessibility in your Courses. You can also visit the Teaching and Learning Resource Center to find easy-to-follow Instructional Guides on Ally.