Blueprints + Ally? (associated course files now missing alt text)

[tbailey8121]

Hi everyone,

Okay, I need some help figuring out what is going on with my blueprint associated class shells.

We use Anthology Ally to check accessibility. I have updated a blueprint course to a score of 96%. The (newly) associated course shells for this blueprint are only showing now as 75%.

There were no instructor changes in between time - no imports, uploads, or edits that could have changed the score.

The culprit is image files missing their alt text in the associated shells.

Looking in the Files of the blueprint course, all images have alt text and are showing the green Ally icon. Looking in the associated course shells, some are now missing and showing the red icon accordingly (and I’ve confirmed they’re really not there).

The only thing that I can think, maybe, is that the blueprint images’ alt text on these files was added via Ally compared to the others... but if the blueprint is correct, shouldn’t the associated course be an exact copy of the blueprint now?

Does anyone have any suggestions? What do I do?! (Besides go back to importing the course instead of using a blueprint, because this removes the benefits of having a blueprint!)

Thank you in advance.

[DecoyLex · Accepted solution]

Hi @tbailey8121,

We also use Ally at our school. This is a known issue to them and covers all course copies, including course templates, import/export, commons, Copy/Send To, etc.

When we were actually able to get their team on a call, they said that this is a limitation of Canvas (and the IMS Common Cartridge standard more broadly). Basically, the only place Canvas stores alt text for an image is in the Rich Content Editor for a page/discussion/quiz question/etc. The idea, "[Files] Default Alt-Text on Uploaded Images", explains what would need to happen for Ally to work as intended.

Moreover, Canvas doesn't provide a way to fetch where in a course particular files are embedded nor does it provide a way for Ally to store arbitrary metadata (such as descriptive text) on a file. This means that when you fix an image embedded in the RCE, those fixes do not carry over to the file itself in the Files area. Likewise, when you fix a file in the Files area, it is only fixed in the particular course you are working in and won't carry over to future courses.

Also, while Ally does break out Files and WYSIWYG content on the institutional report (available to your school's Canvas admins), it doesn't provide a way to exclude certain problems in certain areas (e.g., exclude images without descriptive text when inside the Files tool) from the score.

The reason Ally counts these files in the Files tool against your course's score is because you can make the Files tool available to students, leading to these accessibility issues.

I hope this helps.