Generating Buy-In
Encouraging faculty to embrace Ally as a tool for enhancing digital accessibility starts with building a shared understanding of its true value—not as a requirement, but as a pathway to more inclusive and equitable learning environments. To foster meaningful buy-in, accessibility must be connected to what faculty care about most: student success, engagement, academic integrity, and relevance to their teaching practice.
This section provides strategies for engaging faculty in conversations and efforts around accessibility, highlighting how Ally can simplify the process of identifying and addressing accessibility issues in digital course content. It also emphasizes the importance of cultivating a proactive mindset—one where accessibility is integrated into course design from the outset, rather than treated as an afterthought.
Key approaches include gamification, incentives, providing targeted training and faculty support, recognizing and celebrating faculty accomplishments, and emphasizing the human side of accessibility.
Gamification
Gamification is the application of game design elements and principles—such as points, badges, leaderboards, challenges, and rewards—in non-game contexts to increase engagement, motivation, and participation. In the context of Ally, administrators can gamify faculty participation to make the process of improving course accessibility more interactive, motivating, and fun. Consider the following gamification ideas for application at your own institution.
Accessibility Score Challenges
Description: “Boost Your Score” Challenge, faculty are challenged to increase their overall course accessibility score (s) by a certain percentage (e.g., 10%) or point value (e.g. 10 points) within a month.
Components: Create 1-pager describing the logistics of the event, guided information on how to find their overall scores in their Course Accessibility Report, and accessibility best practices information.
Incentive: Digital badge, certificate, small prize (e.g., coffee gift card), recognition in faculty newsletter/meeting/website.
Departmental/Unit Leaderboard
Description: Departmental or other institutional unit leaderboard, using the Directory in your Institutional Report, track overall accessibility scores of participating departments/units and share out at pre-determined intervals over designated period of time. Departments/units with the highest average Ally scores or most improved score wins.
Components: Create 1-pager describing the logistics of the event to share with department heads (to include guided information for faculty on how to use 1 of the 3 guided remediation approaches in their Course Accessibility Report to begin remediating content), leaderboard template to be filled in each interval and shared with participating units, messaging templates to use when sharing out leaderboard status.
Incentive: Depending on institutional resources, consider the following at-cost or free incentives:
Covering cost of annual membership for discipline-specific associations (e.g. Organization of American History or American Musicological Association), increase in stipend and/or research travel, student scholarship for the winning department, end of semester party, free coffee for a month at on-campus coffee shop.
Preference on choosing classrooms for the following semester (if possible), ability to rent out tablets or other devices indefinitely from IT.
Incentives
Improving the accessibility of course content is essential for creating an inclusive learning environment, but it can also be time-consuming and technically challenging for faculty. That’s where incentives come into play, not just as rewards, but as strategic tools to drive engagement, build momentum, and foster a culture of accessibility. Suggested incentives are organized by specific categories.
Faculty Recognition
Faculty spotlight: Highlight participants in newsletters, faculty meetings, or on the institution’s website.
Accessibility champions award: Accessibility Champion Awards: Annual or semester-based awards recognizing faculty who demonstrate leadership in accessibility
Faculty presentations: Faculty can present their strategies and techniques on content remediation and using Ally at their next department meeting.
Recognition at Faculty Meetings: Acknowledge contributors during department or campus-wide meetings.
Digital Wall of Fame: Create a webpage or digital display showcasing faculty who have improved their Ally scores.
A letter or certificate from senior leadership recognizing their contribution to inclusive education.
Faculty Accessibility Showcase: Host an event where faculty can share their remediation strategies and successes.
Peer-Nominated Recognition: Allow colleagues to nominate each other for accessibility efforts.
Accessibility Communities of Practice: Create communities of practice centered on accessible pedagogy and accessibility awareness, recognize faculty who participate.
Professional Development
Offer hours or points toward required faculty development goals, if applicable.
Certificates of Completion: Provide official certificates for completing accessibility training or remediation milestones.
Digital Badges: If available at your institution, award badges that faculty can display on their profiles, email signatures, or course pages.
Financial Incentives and Funding Opportunities
Stipends: Offer a fixed stipend for completing a certain percentage of content remediation.
Mini-Grants: Provide small grants for accessibility-related course redesign or technology upgrades.
Association membership: Cover the cost of a faculty member’s yearly membership to their discipline’s professional association/organization (e.g. American Musicological Association).
Accessibility Innovation Grants: Offer competitive mini-grants (e.g., $1,000–$5,000) for faculty who propose projects that go beyond basic remediation—such as redesigning a course with UDL (Universal Design for Learning) principles.
Technology Enhancement Funds: Provide funds for purchasing tools or software that support accessibility (e.g., captioning tools like Trint).
Conference Travel Support: Offer travel stipends to faculty who complete remediation and present their work at teaching and learning conferences with an emphasis on accessibility and inclusion.
Course Release and Load Reduction
Course release: Offer a course release for faculty who commit to remediating multiple courses or mentoring others in accessibility and remediation.
Summer Accessibility Fellowships: Provide summer funding (similar to research fellowships) for faculty to focus on accessibility improvements.
Support and Resources
Priority Access to Instructional Designers: Give participants early or exclusive access to instructional design support.
Technology Upgrades: Offer tools like screen readers, captioning software, or upgraded hardware.
Emphasizing the Human-Side of Accessibility
Buy-in doesn’t just have to come in the form of recognition or financial incentives, the why of accessibility can be just as powerful and motivating for many. As educators, we all play a role in creating learning environments where every student can equitably participate and thrive. But to truly engage faculty in this work, we need to meet them where they are. That means finding the right hook, the message that resonates most with their values, motivations, and teaching goals.
For some, the hook is student success: understanding how accessible content directly improves learning outcomes. For others, it’s about equity and inclusion, or the desire to create a classroom where all students feel welcome and supported. And for many, it’s about professional pride—knowing that accessible design is simply good teaching.
Ally helps translate those values into action. It gives faculty the tools and insights to identify and fix accessibility issues in their course materials, often with minimal effort. But the real driver of change is not the tool, it’s the why behind it.
Accessibility is the right thing to do: It reflects our shared commitment to fairness, empathy, and inclusive education.
Many students face invisible barriers: Accessible content ensures that no one is unintentionally excluded, even if they never ask for help.
Small changes make a big difference: A captioned video or a readable document can transform a student’s learning experience.
It’s a shared journey: Accessibility is not a one-time fix—it’s an ongoing practice that reflects who we are as educators.
To strengthen the hook, consider including additional data in your messaging.
Ally usage data: Share Alternative Format usage data, such as how many downloads of alternative formats happened during the most recent semester.
Share disability statistics: For the data-oriented, include current statistics of the number of disabled students attending college, or those that choose not to disclose, etc. The World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Center for Education Statistics are all reputable sources of statistical data.
Partner with disability services to learn more about the impact Ally has had in digital learning. Perhaps there are some quotes or case studies from students that can be shared.
Make the connection between Ally and Universal Design for Learning. Ally is rooted in the principles of Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning so that it can benefit all students. The alternative formats, while designed with disabled students in mind, also benefit those without disabilities (universal design). Having a wide range of alternative format options reinforces multiple options for engagement, which serves as one of the core principles of Universal Design for Learning.