Anthology, Boca Raton, Florida, United States: Anthology Ally

Written answers to the questions

The latest update was released to production on March 27, 2025. It is on Ally 2.13.1. 

Total 337 words used.

Anthology Ally is a powerful tool that helps make digital course content more accessible for all students. As more courses are delivered via digital platforms, digital accessibility is critical to providing equal opportunities for students to succeed. Ally supports digital accessibility efforts so that content can be accessed, navigated, and interacted with by people with a variety of needs, such as those with visual, auditory, cognitive, and/or motor disabilities.  

Ally is a tool for educators, students and institutions. For educators, Ally provides guidance and tips for improving the accessibility of the content in their courses. And it automatically creates alternative versions —formats— of their digital files —such as audio, ePub, and translated versions—so students can choose the format that best fits their learning needs. 

For students, this means more flexibility. Students can access course materials in different formats that suit their learning preferences, disabilities, and even lifestyle, whether that's listening to content during a commute, reading on a mobile device, or using a screen reader to assist with visual disabilities. 

With Anthology Ally, education becomes more inclusive, personalized, and supportive. And, best yet, Ally works seamlessly across all major learning management systems —LMS—, including Anthology’s LMS —Blackboard—, to automatically check for accessibility issues at scale.  

This scalability ensures that institutions, regardless of size, can efficiently monitor and improve accessibility over time. Ally’s feedback and reporting empowers instructors and administrators to take immediate action to improve content accessibility.    

Anthology works alongside institutions and the broader accessibility community to innovate beyond this foundation by gathering feedback that shapes our roadmap with frequent user group and office hours sessions and our Anthology Idea Exchange.  

This close collaboration produced Ally’s newest AI feature, the AI Alternative Text Assistant, which helps instructors by automatically generating suggestions for alternative text for images to help cut down on the time it takes to address this common but problematic issue.   

We also offer our Anthology Services which assist with Ally implementation and provide training resources and consultant expertise to support institutions' adoption of the technology. 

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Anthology Ally has achieved significant market success, earning praise for its ability to enhance accessibility and inclusivity in education. ListEdTech: "With 73% of the market share of digital accessibility solutions, Ally has been the clear choice of institutional leaders over the past ten years.” 

Since 2019, students have downloaded over 150 million pieces of content in alternative formats using Ally, proving that students want and need options in how they engage with course content.   

A key initiative showcasing the importance of Ally’s impact was Anthology’s annual Fix Your Content Day—a 24-hour global competition where universities worldwide leveraged Ally to improve the accessibility of their digital learning materials. In 2024, 55 institutions participated, resulting in 41,000 “fixes”—improvements to digital content—improving the learning experience for their 791,928 students! 

The value that Ally delivers faculty is also quantifiable. There is a knowledge gap in digital accessibility best practices. Anthology Ally provides an accessibility score for each file uploaded to a course, ranging from 0% —least accessible— to 100% —most accessible—, helping instructors identify and address accessibility issues.  

At California State Long Beach, instructors who completed the Ally pilot study achieved a minimum of 80% overall compliance score, as measured by the Ally “Course Accessibility Report”. Instructors easily re-used this high-scoring content, quickly multiplying the benefit for a larger number of students.

The University of Staffordshire reviewed their courses and found their Ally scores ranged between 30-50%. A score they deemed unacceptable to meet their students’ needs. They have instituted a requirement that all content in their Blackboard LMS must meet at least an 80% accessibility score in Ally.     

At Chico State University, Ally has been integrated into their Accessible Technology Initiative, reducing remediation time —time fixing content with accessibility issues— by 25%. 

At the University of Glasgow, its faculty cite the tool’s ease of use, stating, “Ally does not need training for people to use it. You just need to click on the score button and do what it recommends”. The university’s overall accessibility score has reached 85%, reflecting a 17% improvement in content accessibility. 

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• In just one year, Ally helped build more inclusive learning environments with 39 million alternative format downloads, 1.8 million instructor feedback fixes from faculty, and 416 million content items processed. Download the Ally datasheet. 

• Ally works across any learning management system to create accessible learning environments by dynamically enhancing digital course content for all. Download the Ally LMS datasheet and Watch the Ally trailer.  

• Alternative content formats created by Ally have been a success at the University of Glasgow, becoming extremely useful for all learners with 50% of their students taking advantage of them. Read the case study. 

• Chico State University has organized a more efficient system for handling content remediation requests. CSU estimates this solution has cut down content remediation time by 25%. Read the case study.  

• Website usability is about making it quick and easy for visitors to find the information they need. Mitigating accessibility barriers helps them to navigate better, which is key to user engagement. Ally works with any website to create more inclusive digital experiences by dynamically enhancing content for all visitors. Download the Ally for Web Datasheet. 

• Watch the Ally demo video for a comprehensive overview of its key features and how it enhances accessibility in your learning environment, helping create more accessible content and delivering an inclusive experience for all learners. 

• University of Staffordshire has noted that, in addition to significant improvements in accessibility, integrating Anthology Ally has made accessibility a seamless part of the content creation process. Read the case study.