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Spartan Ally: What will it do and what won’t it do?

Written by

Jeremy Van Hof

/ Published on

Spartan Ally: What will it do and what won’t it do?

With the recent launch of Spartan Ally in D2L, you might be more tuned in to the accessibility of your course. Spartan Ally is a wonderful resource to support faculty and staff in the creation of accessible content. Ally’s built-in scanner can provide you with a snapshot of accessibility issues thorughout your course, however Spartan Ally does not have the capability to scan for all accessibility issues.

Since technologies supporting accessibility are relatively new, they often are a tool that can be used to support a process, but can’t be the entire process on its own. As of now, manual checking content and other systems is the most reliable and effective way to ensure that your content is fully accessible. With that being said, the following checklists (see tables below) have been created in order to best support faculty when using Spartan Ally. These checklists will allow you to understand what Ally will scan for you and what you will still have to manually check for yourself.

Word

Checklist for Word Files

Accessibility Element

What will Spartan Ally scan?

What will Spartan Ally not scan?

Headings
  • Use of headings*
  • Appropriate heading structure*

*if a document contains a minimum of 12 paragraphs
  • Use of headings*
  • Appropriate heading structure *

*if a document does not contain a minimum of 12 paragraphs

Tables
  • Header row marked in the table properties
  • Use of merged and/or split cells
  • Caption or alternative text

Images
  • Use of alternative text
  • Accuracy of alternative text

Color and Contrast
  • Adequate color and contrast

None

Text Styles

None
  • Use of two text features when emphasizing text

Links

None
  • Descriptive link text

Lists

None
  • Use of built-in bullet and numbering list structures

PowerPoint

Checklist for PowerPoint Files

Accessibility Element

What will Spartan Ally scan?

What will Spartan Ally not scan?

Title
  • Use of title*

*minimum one title for every seven slides

 
  • Use of title on every slide

Reading Order

None
  • Accurate reading order of slide content

Tables
  • Header row marked in the table properties
  • Use of merged and/or split cells
  • Caption or alternative text

Images
  • Use of alternative text
  • Accuracy of alternative text

Color and Contrast
  • Adequate color and contrast

None

Text Styles

None
  • Use of two text features when emphasizing text

Links

None
  • Descriptive link text

Lists

None
  • Use of built-in bullet and numbering list structures

HTML Pages

Checklist for HTML Pages within D2L

Accessibility Element

What will Spartan Ally scan?

What will Spartan Ally not scan?

Headings
  • Use of headings
  • Appropriate heading structure

None

Tables
  • Header row marked in the table properties
  • Use of merged and/or split cells
  • Caption or alternative text

None

Images
  • Use of alternative text
  • Accuracy of alternative text

Color and Contrast
  • Adequate color and contrast

None

Text Styles

None
  • Use of two text features when emphasizing text

Links
  • Links are distinguished from surrounding text
  • Broken links
  • Descriptive link text

Lists
  • Use of built-in bullet and numbering list structures

None

Videos
  • Embedded YouTube videos for captions
  • Videos hosted on platforms other than YouTube for captions

PDF

Checklist for PDF Files

Accessibility Element

What will Spartan Ally scan?

What will Spartan Ally not scan?

PDF type
  • PDF is malformed
  • PDF is encrypted
  • PDF is scanned

None

Reading Order
  • Tags used throughout the document

None

Headings
  • Use of headings*
  • Appropriate heading structure*

*if a document is minimum three pages
  • Use of headings*
  • Appropriate heading structure*

*if a document is not minimum three pages

Tables
  • Header row marked in the table properties
  • Use of merged and/or split cells
  • Caption or alternative text

Images
  • Use of alternative text
  • Accuracy of alternative text

Color and Contrast
  • Adequate color and contrast

None

Text Styles

None
  • Use of two text features when emphasizing text

Links

None
  • Descriptive link text

Lists

None
  • Use of built-in bullet and numbering list structures

Properties
  • Title set in document properties
  • Language set in document properties

None

Images (JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BPM, and Tiff files)

Checklist for Image Files

Accessibility Element

What will Spartan Ally scan?

What will Spartan Ally not scan?

Images
  • Use of alternative text
  • Adequate color and contrast within images
  • Accuracy of alternative text
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