Instructional technologies provide many opportunities to support assessment and track student performance in Blackboard.
The following articles provide details describing the best practices we regularly publish to support our pedagogical community of practice.
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When Good Design Is Invisible: Four UMBC Faculty Share How UDL Supports Student Learning
Small design choices make learning more accessible for all.
Students in Sarah Bass’s chemistry courses who use the course-grounded AI assistant say it feels like talking to their professor. Many of their classmates, though, don’t know the assistant exists...
Posted: November 3, 2026, 2:30 PM
6 Ways to Make Humanities Content More Accessible
The text matters. So does whether students can reach it.
A student pulls up the assigned primary source the night before class: a scanned nineteenth-century pamphlet, photographed at an angle, half the page lost in shadow. She can make out maybe...
Posted: October 27, 2026, 12:00 PM
6 Ways to Make Visual and Creative Media More Accessible
Art can challenge students without creating barriers.
A student opens the image for tomorrow's critique. The assignment asks her to analyze composition, contrast, and scale, but the image description says only, "abstract painting." She knows what...
Posted: October 20, 2026, 4:59 PM
6 Ways to Make Social Science Content More Accessible
Where evidence lives shouldn't decide who can reach it.
A student opens the assigned dataset the night before discussion, ready to test a hypothesis about voting patterns in urban counties. But the chart won't resize, the color-coded legend is...
Posted: October 13, 2026, 10:00 AM
6 Ways to Make Complex STEM Content More Accessible
Keep STEM rigorous while opening up student access
A student opens the problem set and finds an equation embedded as an image. She understands the math, but her screen reader can't interpret the notation. Later, the assignment asks her to analyze...
Posted: October 6, 2026, 10:00 AM
6 Things to Check Before You Share a Table with Students
Good structure makes information easier to navigate.
Imagine you’ve created a table showing your weekly course schedule: dates in the first column, readings in the second, and assignments in the third. It looks organized and easy to scan. But a...
Posted: September 29, 2026, 2:02 PM
Assistive Technology Explained: A Look at How Users Experience Your Content
How does an accessible course behave for everyone?
Most faculty design course materials thinking about how they look. But for a significant number of students, how course content looks is only part of the picture -- or not the picture at all....
Posted: September 22, 2026, 10:00 AM
5 Things to Check After Blackboard Ally Gives You the Green Light
Ally catches a lot. A few important checks still need you.
You launched the Ally course accessibility report, worked through the flagged issues, and watched your score climb to 85% or higher. Green across the board! It feels like the job is done. But a...
Posted: September 1, 2026, 2:59 PM
6 Tips for Troubleshooting Common Ally Errors
Ally flagged it. What to do when guidance isn’t enough
Blackboard Ally is one of the most useful tools in your course accessibility toolkit. It scans your content, flags potential barriers, and offers step-by-step guidance for fixing them. However, ...
Posted: August 25, 2026, 2:12 PM
Mind the Gap: 6 Accessibility Features to Improve Your Ally Score
How to scan, fix, and improve your Blackboard files easily.
You just finished uploading a PDF - a syllabus, lecture notes, or a set of slides exported for printing. It looks fine to you, but how does it perform for a student relying on a screen reader?...
Posted: August 18, 2026, 1:28 PM
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