Accessibility Statement
Accessibility statement for Blackboard Ultra use at the University of Westminster
Blackboard Ultra is the University’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is based on the commercial software application product Blackboard Ultra, provided by Blackboard Inc.
We want you to get the best possible experience from this VLE so we endeavour to meet the standards of good practice laid out in the Public Sector Web Accessibility regulations. Students will come across a wide range of commercial systems and digital content in their university experience and it will take some time before we can guarantee all are equally accessible. This guidance helps you identify the benefits and barriers we know about, and how to get help if you need it.
Personalisation and accessibility – Blackboard Ultra
A step-by-step guide to individual adjustments that you can make to your computer, tablet or smartphone has been produced by AbilityNet. This is a good starting point and contains information on how you can make your device easier to use.
The link to the guide is available here: https://mcmw.abilitynet.org.uk/
With a few simple steps you can customise your browser settings to make it easier to read and navigate.
Getting the most from Blackboard Ultra at the University of Westminster
This guidance applies to the top-level Blackboard site. At individual module site level, accessibility also depends on the individual documents added to the module site by your teaching team.
Blackboard Inc provide detailed information about the VLE application and its accessibility along with a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) on their website.
https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/Hosting/Accessibility
We also had an independent review of our VLE carried out by AbilityNet in April 2020. We have used the findings of this review to inform this guidance and give recommendations.
We want as many staff and students as possible to be able to use Blackboard Ultra.
Whichever course you study, you should be able to personalise Blackboard in the following ways.
- Most of the colour contrasts meet accessibility standards. If you require different colour schemes, you can adapt these to suit your preference on a mobile/tablet, in your browser or on your computer.
- You can zoom in up to 400% on any page without the text spilling off the screen. The screen layout will change but you can still see everything without sideways scrolling.
- Navigate most of the site using just a keyboard. There are different Skip link options to allow keyboard users to navigate more quickly around the page. The tab order is logical and follows the visual layout. Menus can be accessed by keyboard only.
- Orientate and navigate using the breadcrumb trails at the top of the page, the site map or the Search function.
- Navigate most of the website using speech recognition software.
- Listen to most of Blackboard using text to speech software or browser plugins on a laptop or the accessibility settings on your phone.
- Listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver).
- Reading lists provided within the VLE have good accessibility features based on the independent review
- Use of lecture recording, through Panopto, is widely used across courses and modules, and adds significant accessibility benefits to the use of the VLE. We encourage users to use the auto-transcription within Panopto, as well as the keyword search, as well as to check with the tutors if in doubt about any results in these.
- We would recommend that you make use of our extensive and clear online support offering, providing guidance to students on how to access a range of tools within the VLE. The guides can be accessed from within the VLE’s Noticeboard menu as well as from the Student Intranet pages. The direct link is: https://blog.westminster.ac.uk/blackboardhelp/faqs-for-students
- As we move more of our teaching delivery online, we are providing guidance on how to make this work more effectively for you: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/current-students/studies/online-learning
- There is extensive guidance on how to customise your devices for digital accessibility also available here: https://libguides.westminster.ac.uk/digitalaccessibility
Things we are working to improve
There are some issues around the following themes; if you know this might impact on you please get in touch with your tutor or the disability support team as soon as possible so we can help with alternative resources or approaches. Details on how to contact them are in the section ‘What to do if you cannot access parts of this website’.
Thing we are working to improve | How we are trying to address these |
| Consistency in organisation between different courses | In Blackboard Ultra, we have provided a core template for all module sites and encourage teaching staff to make use of it |
| Guidance on alternative formats (available through Ally) | We have addressed this with the introduction of a comprehensive guide on the use of Ally for Students, which is clearly linked on our Help pages for students. The direct link is: https://blog.westminster.ac.uk/blackboardhelp/blackboard-ally-students/ |
| Content uploaded on module sites, could in some cases be improved with the addition of headers and a better navigation structure | We have addressed this through a series of staff development workshops on how they can improve their documents to meet the accessibility guidelines. AbilityNet have also run information sessions for our teaching staff and provided guidance and advice. AbilityNet have provided a Good Practice Guide which has been made available to staff: https://accessibility.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2016/03/14/6-tips-teach/ |
| Content uploaded in Ultra as a Document may require downloading | Content accessed via the app opens on the screen for students to view. For content accessed via a browser, we have provided guidance to teaching staff on how to add content that opens in a new browser window. |
| Absence in some cases of contextualising information about the documents (especially if we are to use the upload feature which does not allow for typing of a file name on Blackboard) | We have addressed this in our guidance and workshop offering by encouraging staff to add brief descriptions in folders and documents |
| Accessibility of third party products such as Turnitin, Panopto, Voicethread, Padlet and Poll Everywhere may vary. | Third party products have their own accessibility guidance which is available on their websites: Turnitin: https://www.turnitin.com/about/accessibility Padlet: https://padlet.com/about/accessibility Voicethread: https://voicethread.com/about/features/accessibility Panopto: https://support.panopto.com/s/article/Learn-About-Accessibility-Features Blackboard: https://www.blackboard.com/blackboard-accessibility-commitment |
This list is not exhaustive but provides a good basis on the key themes identified during the independent review, and areas where further development and improvement needs to be done.
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. Improvements and recommendations have been listed in the section above, entitled ‘Things we are trying to improve’.
What to do if you cannot access parts of this website
Please visit our digital accessibility contact us webpage for information on how to report an accessibility problem.
Reporting accessibility problems with the VLE
We’re always looking to improve the accessibility within our VLE. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, please visit our digital accessibility contact us webpage to report this.
Enforcement procedure
If you find an issue we have not yet identified, please report it to us. We’ll pass this information to the website owner who will review the issue, make sure it is included in our plan to fix issues and add it into the accessibility statement when it is next updated. To report an issue, please visit our digital accessibility contact us webpage
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’). If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
Disproportionate burden
Content provided on Blackboard sites for modules which are no longer being used for active teaching, such as those modules taught during academic year 2018/19 or earlier, are considered disproportionate burden, as there is a substantial amount of content which would be accessed by a very small group of users.
Our implementation of Blackboard Ally will, however, still provide alternative versions of these files for students who require them.
We are encouraging teaching staff to check the accessibility of documents they upload on all module sites for academic year 2020/21.
With respect to the captioning of recordings, we recognise that automatic captions in recordings may not always be entirely accurate. The automated process may struggle to interpret subject specific terminology, negotiate heavy speaker accents or localised turn of phrase, or extract speech from recordings where the signal-to-noise ratio in the audio has been compromised. Whilst we encourage academic staff to manually correct auto-captions where they have time, at this point in time we also recognise that academic staff will not always have the time to do this.
For live video streamed classes via Blackboard Collaborate, automatic captions are not currently available within the core product. This is under review by the product vendor, Blackboard. At the University of Westminster we support the Google Suite, and we encourage users to utilise Google Chrome’s automatic captioning provision to access closed captions for live, browser-based video streaming.
Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
The following content does not need to comply with the accessibility requirement:
- office file formats published before 23rd September 2018, unless such content is needed for active administrative processes relating to the tasks performed by the public sector body;
- pre-recorded time-based media published before 23rd September 2020;
- live time-based media (though if a streamed lecture is then stored on a learning platform for more than 14 days it no longer counts as Live time based media)
- online maps and mapping services, as long as essential information is provided in an accessible digital manner for maps intended for navigational use;
- third-party content that is neither funded nor developed by, nor under the control of, the public sector body;
- reproductions of items in heritage collections that cannot be made fully accessible because of either—
- (i)the incompatibility of the accessibility requirement with either the preservation of the item concerned or the authenticity of the reproduction; or
- (ii)the unavailability of automated and cost-efficient solutions that would easily extract the text of manuscripts or other items in heritage collections and transform it into content compatible with the accessibility requirement;
- content of extranets and intranets published before 23rd September 2019, until such websites undergo a substantial revision; and
- content of websites and mobile applications qualifying as archives.
How we tested this website
An independent Digital Inclusion Overview on our current Blackboard Ultra system was carried out by AbilityNet in April 2020. The findings of this review have informed a large part of this document.