Officials announced that faculty will pilot an initiative that enables an accessibility feature on Blackboard next semester during a Faculty Senate meeting Friday.
Sarah Wagner, a faculty senator and co-chair of the Education Policy & Technology Committee, said at the meeting that the committee has worked over the past year with members of the Student Government Association and the Disabled Students Collective to introduce Blackboard Ally, an extension of the course management platform. Faculty and student leaders said the extension will make navigating courses on the platform more accessible for disabled, blind and deaf students by providing options to faculty to modify their course materials, like ensuring documents have better visibility or adding text descriptions to visuals.
“We have a chance to gather data on how it’s working, on feedback from faculty,” Wagner said. “This is not a permanent initiative, it is a trial basis but one that I think could be beneficial to our students and to us as faculty.”
Geneva Henry, vice provost for libraries and information technology, said at the meeting that the program rates the accessibility of the documents that faculty upload on Blackboard and recommends modifications, like putting documents in e-readers, offering documents in audio options, changing documents’ colors and contrast and adding text descriptions to images and graphs.
“It will give you some guidelines on what you could do to go in and quickly make some adjustments to make it accessible,” Henry said. “And from my perspective, it’s just a very positive tool.”
Henry said officials will activate the extension automatically for all courses during the spring 2025 semester, with an option for faculty members to turn off the tool. She said Libraries & Academic Innovation will host faculty workshops and provide instructions on its website to help faculty use the tool.
SGA Sen. Jonesy Strell (CCAS-U) said Blackboard Ally was first brought to his attention by members of the Disabled Students Collective in February as they tried to raise awareness of the tool to faculty since many didn’t know about the feature or how to use it.
Strell said earlier this year, Madison Jennings, the president of the DSC at the time, met with Faculty Senate’s EPT Committee co-chairs Sarah Wagner and Irene Foster to present the idea to the senate. He said former SGA President Arielle Geismar also had separate conversations with faculty senators to prompt the idea earlier this year.
Strell proposed a bill in the SGA Senate that passed unanimously in March encouraging the Faculty Senate to pass their own resolution requesting faculty to use the program. The DSC created a petition earlier that month that called on officials to make Blackboard Ally mandatory in classes, which garnered 249 signatures.
Strell said the SGA initially proposed a mandate in the bill that would require faculty to use Blackboard Ally, but faculty pushed back because they didn’t like the idea of a policy forcing them to use the program. Strell said he believes the extension should be mandatory because accessibility is a “must” for all courses to give all students an equal opportunity to succeed in their courses.
“I think a mandate isn’t something we should be scared of because we’re talking about accessibility for all,” he said.
Strell said he had been working with the director of Disability Support Services this semester to make an official accommodation available to students, which would require faculty to use Blackboard Ally in their courses, should they turn off the extension.
“Part of DSS accommodation should be that students should be able to go to DSS and be like, ‘Hey, I’m taking this course, it’s not fully accessible for me, I need accommodations,’ and the DSS office should require that professor to make that course accessible,” Strell said.
Foster, a professor of economics, said the EPT Committee has worked throughout the summer and fall with the Provost’s Office, DSS and the Office of Information Technology to understand how the program works and what steps were required to implement it. Foster said the extension has been easy to use as she has utilized it in her own classes this semester.
“I think it will be beneficial,” Foster said in an email. “It is a common sense idea that educational resources should be readily accessible to everyone.”
Foster said the committee, the SGA, LAI and IT will examine faculty feedback on the usage of the program.
“We are hoping to collect information on usage, any pain points and whether it is making a difference for students at the end of the semester,” Foster said in an email.
Foster said the program is currently not mandatory as universities don’t usually mandate how faculty teach, including the use of Blackboard or class recordings. She said the committee can make student needs “clearer” to faculty and provide training to faculty on best practices to help students.
SGA President Ethan Fitzgerald said he had conversations with Faculty Senate Executive Committee Chair Ilana Feldman, Wagner and Foster about implementing the program this semester after progress “stalled” in the Faculty Senate last year after the SGA resolution.
“We’re working together on a number of projects, but Blackboard Ally was one of the ones that I recommended that we move rather quickly on,” Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald said he hopes that implementing the program helps students feel comfortable in classes with course materials that are “catering” to their needs.
“My hope is that it shows students that we’re recognizing varying challenges that different people face and that it’ll improve their learning outcomes and their ability to participate in the course material,” Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald said he plans to possibly conduct a survey with students about their experiences with the pilot initiative during the semester to report back to the EPT Committee and the Faculty Senate.
“The main goal is to ensure that we’re hearing from students if there are problems, we’re advocating for them, and if there’re positives, we’re communicating it back to the EPT and the Faculty Senate, so that they know that they’re made the right decision and that they’re having a positive impact on students,” Fitzgerald said.
Katrin Schultheiss, a faculty senator and member of the committee, said she doesn’t currently use Blackboard Ally in her classes, but she “can’t imagine” why she wouldn’t use it in the future. She said the capabilities of Blackboard Ally can be “really helpful” to students with disabilities or different learning styles.
“It’s a feature that will probably help a few students, and even if it’s just a few students, great, why not help a few students?” Schultheiss said.
