by Caitlin Wake and Lavina Dhillon
The University of Leicester relies heavily on Blackboard and so it is imperative to the university that all students can use it without any accessibility concerns.
If you believe certain content or features on Blackboard are not accessible for you after reading this document, please get in contact with your department or IT in order for this to be promptly resolved.
Features to support students with hearing impairments:
All lectures uploaded onto Blackboard should have captions which can be viewed by clicking on the ‘CC’ icon. Additionally, any podcast or audio material that is uploaded to the Blackboard site should offer a full transcript.
Students with hearing impairments may benefit from the use of Blackboard Ally which allows students to download course materials in different accessible formats to use with assistive technology.
To access Blackboard Ally:
- Go to the document you wish to download in an accessible format.
- Select the Blackboard Ally icon which looks like a capital ‘A’.
- Choose the accessible format you wish to download (e.g., PDF, audio).
- Select the download button and then you can use the document.
Features to support students with a visual impairment:
The Blackboard site follows a common structure, thereby ensuring that all users, but especially those with visual impairments, are able to navigate it easier and with a sense of familiarity.
Moreover, if you have enabled high contrast settings on your computer or laptop you will be able to enable this feature on the login page of Blackboard Learn. Teaching staff will support this by ensuring light text is only be used on dark backgrounds and dark text is only be used on light backgrounds in order to improve readability to teaching material.
Additionally, all images uploaded onto Blackboard must include alternative captions which conveys information about the image to the reader. If the image is purely for decorative purposes, then empty alternative text will be used (“”) which tells screen readers specifically that they can ignore the image.
Students with visual impairments may benefit from the use of Blackboard Ally which allows students to download course materials in different accessible formats to use with assistive technology. To learn how to access Blackboard Ally refer to the previous section.
Features to support students with a mobility impairment:
The keyboard navigation system used throughout the Blackboard Learn system follows common web navigation models to ensure consistency and a sense of familiarity.
Furthermore, keyboard shortcuts are available for a variety of tools in Blackboard Learn to increase efficiency for keyboard users. You can discover which keyboard shortcuts are available by opening the Quick Links tool (Shift+Alt+L). Additionally, quick links will form a list of all the headings and landmarks on the page you are on and this allows you to quickly find and navigate to elements in the middle of the page.
Features to support students with a learning disability:
When you click on a module course, you can collapse the course menu to reduce the clutter on the page to help you focus. If you want to bring the menu back, you can do so by holding your mouse on the left of the screen and selecting the bar that appears.
Activity counters within the global navigation menu and My Blackboard tools alert you to new information requiring your attention. As you review these items, the counters are cleared so that you are aware of what is new since you were last on the system. Furthermore, if your system is enabled, you can set up email or text message notifications for new posts within Blackboard Learn to alert you to new information when you are not logged into the system and so can keep on top of your workload.
