Common Teaching Scenarios

You open bCourses, click on Ally, and discover that many of your PDFs have very low scores, sometimes as low as 0%.  You may be thinking: “I have 90 documents flagged…”, “I can’t possibly fix all of this.” If this is your experience, you are not alone! This is one of the first reactions when instructors use Ally for the first time. 

The key is not to treat Ally as a grade or critique of your course materials, but as a guide that helps you identify and prioritize accessibility improvements. 

What Low Ally Scores on PDFs Usually Mean? 

In most cases, very low scores on PDFs indicate one of the following: 

• The file is image-based -that is, it’s like a photograph of the content (rather than the content itself), a scanned document without selectable or searchable text.

• The document lacks a heading structure. 

• Images inside the file do not have an alternative description.

So, a low score means the file was not created with accessibility structure in place. 

The Workflow

• Identify core readings that are essential and will definitely be used in the course.

• For these, check whether accessible library versions are available and replace the scans with those.

• If the content is instructor-created, consider using the original source file (e.g., Word, Google Doc, etc.) or bCourses Pages instead of a PDF version. To ensure your original documents are accessible, see the RTL resources for Accessible Documents (Microsoft Word & Google Docs), Accessible Slides (Microsoft PowerPoint & Google Slides), and Accessible bCourses Content

• If replacement or source files are not available

• For image-based scans, run the document through SensusAccess to OCR and tag it.

• Focus on what students will use in the first few weeks and set a routine; build an accessibility workflow aligned with what you release to students.

• Temporarily remove or restrict access to materials that are not currently being used. In bCourses, you can unpublish files while you work on making them accessible. 

• Let students know you are actively working on improving accessibility and invite them to flag materials that are not accessible.

Your slides might contain dozens of images. When you hear about alt text for images, you might be thinking: “Am I supposed to write descriptions for every image in this deck?”

Not necessarily. The goal of alt text is not to describe every detail of an image, but to make the visual's meaning accessible to all students.Alt text is a short description embedded behind an image. Screen readers and other assistive technologies use this text to convey the content of the visual. If the image fails to load, the alt text may also appear in its place so the information is still available.

The Workflow

Ask:

• Does this image need a description at all? Some images are purely decorative; for example, a banner image or a stock photo of a campus building at the top of a syllabus. If that is the case, you can simply right-click the image, select Alt Text, and check “Mark as decorative,” or remove the image altogether.

• Is the same information on the image already written on the slide or explained in nearby text? If the visual repeats information already available in the text, it can often be marked as decorative. 

• Does the image introduce new meaning or information? If the visual contributes to students' understanding of the lesson and is not decorative, it does need alt text. In that case: 

• Keep the alt text concise: Screen readers cannot easily "pause" or "rewind" alt text, so brevity is really helpful. Aim for one to two short sentences (~125 characters or less) describing the key idea or takeaway from the image.

• Context is everything: Describe the visual based on why it is in your lesson. A photo of the Golden Gate Bridge in an engineering course might require a very different description than the exact same photo in a photography course.

• Start with the content itself, rather than phrases like “image of”: Screen readers already announce that the element is an image. 

• Avoid repeating text that already appears in captions or surrounding text. 

• Is your image a complex chart or diagram? Use alt text to convey the graphic's overall pattern, structure, or trend. If the visual contains detailed data, include the full explanation elsewhere in the surrounding text or in notes.

• Is your image an equation or a mathematical expression? When possible, create equations using tools that produce machine-readable math, such as the bCourses Equation Editor, which converts LaTeX into MathML. 

• Do you have too many images that need alt texts? Use AI tools like Gemini to generate first drafts. Save your slides as a PDF, upload them to Gemini, and use this prompt: "Analyze the attached file and create a table listing every image and stock photo found (do not group them). Create a table with these columns: Page Number, Visual Reference, Alt Text (Provide a concise sentence describing the image's core meaning or data trend). Make sure to verify the output before inserting it into your document, as AI can make mistakes.Note: To protect sensitive data, always sign in to your bConnected suite with your CalNet account to use Gemini. This ensures your content is not used to train external models.