To support students who are resitting in August we are asking all module coordinators to add the new Resit ready item into the Assessment and Feedback area in Blackboard courses.
Resit ready contains resources to support students who are resitting coursework or exams in the supplementary exam period. Once it has been added to courses, colleagues can add then any module or department specific information into the Assessment and Feedback area.
If you use Blackboard Assignment for your assessment, you may be interested in our latest update. Staff can now use the functionality of Blackboard Assignment whiles also getting a Similarity Report from Turnitin.
This is particularly useful for multi-part assignments and assignment files that are too big to use Turnitin. Like other elements of Blackboard, Assignment is available in Welsh for both staff and students. It also means that you get the benefits of Blackboard Assignment (such as an electronic receipt for students) as well as being able to use the same Similarity Report as other colleagues.
If you already make use of Blackboard Assignment, then we encourage you to try out the new Turnitin feature. Our Guide contains all the information to help you get started. Submission and marking stay the same, but you get the additional Similarity Report alongside your marking.
We’d also be interested in your feedback – during the year, we’ll contact you for feedback on using this new Turnitin integration.
Today (21st May) is Global Accessibility Awareness Day
Within Student Journey, we have a specialised Accessibility and Wellbeing Team who work with students throughout the year. The Team includes over 50 non-medical helper staff who provide 1:1 mentoring or study skills support for students with a disability or learning difference.
Last year they supported over 800 of our students – the number of students they support has increased by 34% in the last five years.
Here’s what our students have been saying about the team this year:
…incredibly invaluable, allowing me to… remain in university through the several challenges that have occurred during my course.
…really appreciate …[having]…continued support throughout our entire degree from the same people (as opposed to them changing each year). I am autistic and that makes a real difference for me.
[The support worker] has single handily been the most important person in my university experience… without the services I would have less routine and interest from others which have been the two most vital components in my success in university.
We think that this student sums up the service perfectly: “Amazing…Absolutely brilliant…Fantastic…Phenomenal…Invaluable…Top tier”
But it’s not only these staff who are making sure that what we do is as accessible as possible. Here are some of the things that our other teams do.
Blackboard Content
Blackboard Ally is available for all students and staff at the university. This year 59,541 documents have been downloaded in an alternative format by 3,894 users. The most common format is Tagged PDF.
Staff have made 3,417 fixes to content – that’s 3,417 changes that make teaching materials more accessible to use.
The average Ally course score for 2025-26 courses in Blackboard is 72%.
In November 2025, AU entered the Blackboard Fix Your Content Day and were placed 3rd in the UK for the number of fixes to Blackboard content made.
Pie chart style image showing Ally Overall Accessibility score as 72% – an increase of 2% from the previous year
Books and journal articles
All the book chapter and journal article scans that our digitisation service for reading lists are in an accessible format. They use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanning, which means that uploaded scans of book chapters and journal articles in reading lists are fully machine-readable, searchable, and accessible content. As well as complying with legislation, these scans are accessible for all learners. OCR scanned documents are compatible with assistive technologies such as screen readers, as well as having text navigation facilities.
As well as scanning items for reading lists, the team can also create accessible copies for books for students who have declared a disability to the university. We have a licence which allows us to make or find accessible copies of books if a suitable version is not available for us to purchase. If a text is not covered by the licence but we own an original copy, we may still produce an accessible copy for personal study or research.
This service is free of charge to eligible students and can be accessed by emailing digitisation@aber.ac.uk
Sensory items for wellbeing sessions
Staff in our Wellbeing Service introduced boxes of sensory items that can be offered to students in Wellbeing sessions to help them manage need for self-stimulation (stimming). Here’s an example of the items available:
Using AI
Our new AI prompt library which is available to everyone include information about using AI for users with accessibility requirements. You can see some examples of this in some samples from the prompt library
Plain Language Rewriting
“Rewrite the following text in plain, easy to understand language while keeping the original meaning. Break complex sentences into shorter steps and remove unnecessary jargon. Highlight any terms that may still require explanation.”
Neurodiversity Friendly Step by Step Guide
“Turn this task into a step-by-step guide suitable for neurodivergent learners. Include short, clear steps, optional visuals or metaphors, and a summary of key points. Avoid overwhelming detail. Do not add content unrelated to the task.”
Finding your way around
AccessAble is a brilliant resource that helps to make planning for and navigation of our Campus here at Aberystwyth that bit easier. It provides people with information about things like accessible parking space, ramp access, where hearing loops are and where they can find accessible toilets. This can be really reassuring for people as they plan to attend somewhere that is new and/or unfamiliar.
When adding items to Blackboard, the Additional Tools item is currently labelled Content Market. Staff should use this to add Turnitin submission points or Panopto links.
Settings in Welsh (Offer Ychwangeol) are working correctly.
This is a temporary change due to issues with the Blackboard language settings.
Note that students submitting Panopto assignments should also use the Content Market link.
We’ve had a look at all the queries that came into the elearning@aber.ac.uk inbox over September to see what the most common query was. And the answer is … Merged Courses.
So, here’s some useful information about merging courses which can help to answer some of your queries:
A merge links two or more courses together in Blackboard. It is an effective way of dealing with separate courses that have the same content, so you don’t have to upload materials to more than one course. More information is available on the blog. Some cases where this might be useful are
Modules are taught the same content but there’s a module available for 2nd and 3rd years.
Modules that bring together different degree schemes and have different module IDs, e.g. dissertation modules.
Courses aren’t merged automatically so you will either need to merge them via our new Module Partners tool or by emailing elearning@aber.ac.uk . If your courses were merged last year, you need to merge them again for 2025-26. If you want to check whether your courses have already been merged, you can use Module Partners (or email elearning@aber.ac.uk)
Students will see the module code and title of whichever course they are registered on. If you find that students can’t see content in courses that you think are merged, please check in Module Partners or email elearning@aber.ac.uk to check.
We’ve also had questions about enrolments – information about how enrolments work is available in our Access to Blackboard Courses FAQ.
Note: we produced the summary of our most common support queries using Microsoft Copilot.
Some staff will have made offline Panopto recordings because of the impact of an Amazon Web Services service disruption on Panopto on Monday 20th October.
All offline recordings will need to be uploaded to the Panopto servers before they can be made available to students. Instructions are available in our FAQ How do I manually upload Panopto recordings via the Panopto Recorder program? You can check teaching room availability from myadmin.aber.ac.uk > AAA/ATO (Aberystwyth Timetable Online)
We recommend that you upload any offline recordings with the next 7 days. If you have any questions, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk
On November 18, Aberystwyth University will join institutions worldwide for Fix Your Content Day 2025, hosted by Anthology. This 24-hour competition is part of our ongoing commitment to inclusive education.
We’ll be hosting a drop-in on 18th November between 2pm and 4pm in B23 Llandinam. E-learning Staff will be available to answer questions and help you use Ally (tea and biscuits also provided).
Together, we’ll aim to fix as many accessibility issues and course files as possible using Anthology® Ally. Every fix—big or small—contributes to a more inclusive learning environment for all students.
How you can help:
Review your courses for red and orange indicators
Focus on quick wins like adding image descriptions or improving Microsoft Word documents
Start fixing on November 18 and keep things going throughout the day
Aim for 100%, but improvement is what counts!
For more information on how to fix files using Anthology Ally, have a look at our FAQ on Ally.
Over the summer there have been some updates to Blackboard Ally which colleagues will find help them to fix issues with images and PDFs in Blackboard.
AI Auto-generate description
The AI auto-generate description tool has been improved to write better alternative text for charts, text in images, STEM content, and handwriting in images. Like all the AI tools in Blackboard staff can edit any aspect of the AI output and adapt it if needed. The AI tool also provides a good starting point for learning more about writing alternative text. And if you use Blackboard in Welsh, the AI tool will create Welsh alternative text.
To use the AI tool:
Click on the Ally indicator for your image (or access it via Books and Tools > Ally Adroddiad Hygyrchedd / Accessibility Report > Content)
Under Edit image description, click Auto-generate description
You can then click Save to use the description or edit the description before clicking Save.
If you don’t want to use the description, click Remove from image, and type your own description.
OCR layer on scanned documents
Around 15% of PDFs in 2024-25 courses were non-OCR documents. This causes a problem for anyone who needs to change the size of the text or use a screen reader because the text appears as an image rather than readable text. Ally now provides tools to add a readable OCR layer on top of a non-OCR document. The quality of this layer will depend on the nature of the content (typewritten documents work better than images or handwriting) as well as the quality of the scan.
We suggest that you try the OCR layer tool and see whether it may help you to provide more accessible PDFs. Remember that you can also use the Library Digitisation service which provides OCR readable scans of journal articles and book chapters.
To use the OCR layer:
Click on the Ally indicator for your image (or access it via Books and Tools [Llyfrau ac Offer] > Ally Adroddiad Hygyrchedd / Accessibility Report > Content)
Click on the Preview and Apply button to add the layer
A preview will appear – use your mouse to highlight the text on the preview. This will show you what text will be add to the file.
If you are happy to use it, click Apply. If not, choose Cancel
If you don’t use the OCR layer, the Learn how to fix PDFs button will give you options for adding a library reference.
PDF Language and Title
PDFs without language or title set can now be fixed directly in Ally:
Click on the Ally indicator for your PDF (or access it via Books and Tools > Ally Adroddiad Hygyrchedd / Accessibility Report > Content)
Under Add PDF Language, select the language of the document and click Apply fix
Type the title of your document in the Set PDF Title box and then click Apply fix.
Guidance for students
To help you encourage your students to use the Ally Alternative Formats, we have a Learning Object Repository (LOR) item on Ally that you can use in your course. See our FAQ on adding an item from the LOR to your course.
More changes are planned for Ally over the next three months, and we’ll keep colleagues updated via the blog. For more information on Ally, have a look at the Ally help pages
Staff and students can now use the Pronunciation section of the Blackboard Profile page to record their name. They can also select the pronouns they use. For further information, see our FAQ.
Automatic captioning has now been set-up for all 2025-26 folders in Panopto. The language for captioning matches the language of your Blackboard course template.
For bilingual courses we recommend creating a sub-folder to hold the recordings for one of the languages of your course delivery (see FAQ).
When you make your recordings, you must select the correct language folder before pressing record. This is because Welsh captions cannot be added to recordings copied or moved from other folders.
You can create a link to the Panopto folder in your Blackboard course. This means that students will be able to see the recordings for the course all in one place.
Finding your Panopto folder
Panopto folders for all this year’s modules are in the 2025-26 folder.
To find the Panopto folder you want to record into:
Click the dropdown button on the right-hand side of the Folder box.
Click the dropdown arrow to the left of the academic year folder to expand it.
Select the Panopto folder you want to record into.
You can also search for the Panopto folder you want to record into:
In the Folder box start typing the module code or name of the Panopto folder you want to Record into
Select the folder you want to record into.
What to do if you can’t see your Panopto folder
In a small number of courses, the Panopto folder wasn’t created over the summer. If you can’t find your Panopto folder using the steps above, you can create a folder from Blackboard:
Login to Blackboard and find your course
Click on Books and Tools > View course and institution tools
Click on Holl Fideo Panopto / All Panopto Videos
You should then be able to find the Panopto folder to make a recording.
