By Pubudu Gunawardhana, Learning Technologist (Curriculum Development)
Why STEM content deserves a closer look
STEM teaching is rich with visual and technical content — diagrams illustrating biological processes, graphs presenting experimental data, mathematical notation, and dense laboratory handbooks. This is what makes studying science, engineering, and technology so engaging. However, it is also what makes accessibility worth thinking about carefully in this context. When a graph has no description, a screen reader user loses access to the data it contains. When a lab manual has been scanned without Optical Character Recognition (OCR), a student cannot search it, highlight it, or have it read aloud. When a PDF has no declared language, assistive technology may mispronounce highly specific technical terminology in ways that are genuinely confusing. These are not edge cases affecting a small minority of students. Many of our students navigate their studies alongside other commitments — caring responsibilities, part-time employment, long commutes — and accessible content supports them too. A student who can listen to a module handbook as an audio file or read a data sheet in a high-contrast format on their phone, is a student who can engage with your material on their own terms. Accessibility, in this sense, is not a compliance exercise. It is good course design.
A new feature in Ally: fixing PDFs without leaving Blackboard
Until recently, resolving accessibility issues in PDFs typically meant going back to the original file, editing it in external software such as Adobe Acrobat, and re-uploading it. For many colleagues, this added enough friction to make the task feel daunting. That has now changed. Ally’s new PDF Quick Fixes feature allows instructors to address three of the most common PDF accessibility problems directly within Ally, without needing any external software. If you can see the content in Blackboard Ultra, you can now fix it there too. The three fixes are:
1. OCR for scanned documents
When a physical document is scanned and uploaded without OCR, what students receive is essentially a photograph of text rather than actual text. Screen readers cannot read it, students cannot search or highlight it, and Ally cannot convert it into an alternative format such as audio or ePub. Ally’s PDF Quick Fixes now allows you to apply OCR to scanned PDFs directly within the tool, turning an inaccessible image into readable, searchable text in just a few clicks. If you have legacy content sitting in your module this feature means you no longer need to leave Blackboard to make these documents readable.
2. Adding a document title
This one is easy to overlook because it is invisible in the day-to-day reading experience. A PDF without a proper document title is problematic for students using screen readers, who rely on that metadata to understand what they are opening and to navigate between documents. The Quick Fixes feature allows you to add a missing title to a PDF directly in Ally, without needing to open the original file or touch any external software.
3. Setting the document language
Screen readers use the document’s language setting to determine how to pronounce the content. A PDF without a declared language can result in content being read back in entirely the wrong accent or pronunciation pattern, which is particularly disorienting for technical terminology. Ally’s Quick Fixes also allows you to set the document language directly within the tool — a small change that makes a meaningful difference to how the content is experienced.
Beyond the fix: designing with accessibility in mind from the start
Ally’s PDF Quick Fixes are a genuinely useful tool, and we would encourage all colleagues to try them. However, remedying accessibility issues after content has been uploaded is a bit like proofreading a document the moment before it goes to print — it is better than nothing, but it would have been easier to get it right earlier in the process.
This is where Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (Universal design principles | Accessibility manual – Department for Education) offers us a more sustainable framework. UDL invites us to think about the diverse range of learners in our cohort from the very beginning of the design process. Rather than designing for an ‘average’ student, it encourages us to provide multiple means of representation, engagement, and expression to support a wider range of learning needs. In a STEM context, this might mean asking, when you first create a document: does this graph have a text description? Is this PDF using proper heading styles? If this handout were converted to audio, would it still make sense? Inaccessible content reduces clarity — not because the subject matter is difficult, but because unnecessary barriers have been built into how the material is delivered. The good news is that most of these barriers are easy to avoid at source, long before anything is uploaded to Blackboard. Accessibility is rarely about making dramatic changes; more often, it is the accumulation of small, thoughtful decisions that enable every student to engage fully with their learning.
A practical starting point
If you are not sure where to begin, Ally’s accessibility indicators are visible directly on your module content in Blackboard. Each file is given a colour-coded score, and clicking on the indicator gives you specific, actionable guidance.
Beyond fixing what is already there, the most impactful thing you can do for your students is to build accessibility into your content creation habits. Use proper heading styles in Word documents. Add alt text to diagrams and graphs when you first create them. Check that scanned documents have been OCR-processed before they are uploaded. These are small habits that, over time, make a substantial difference to the experience of every student in your module — not just those with formal accessibility requirements.
If you are an academic at the University of Derby and would like support getting started or would like to talk through your module content with someone from the Digital Learning team, please do get in touch (dls@derby.ac.uk). We are here to help.