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Re: Moodle Accessibility

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From: Sean Keegan
Date: Apr 8, 2008 12:30PM

> What is the good (and not so good) word about Moodle's accessibility?

I have been looking at version 1.8 and, so far, the container part of the
system looks fairly good. Does this mean there will be no problems when
using AT? No, but the system seems to have a lot of support in place.
Specifically, I have looked at the following 3 elements in the Moodle system
with a description of what I have found:

1. Navigation by heading, by Skip Links, and by the Tab-key In 1.8, there
appears to be good use of heading tags to identify different "regions" of
the interface. For example, when you first login to the Moodle interface
you can see either a Weekly Outline (or Course Modules, etc.) and these
"regions" are specified as headings. Additionally, the various widgets on
the left/right side of the interface also are specified as headings (e.g.,
Activities, Search Forums, Recent Activity, etc.). It is easy to jump to
these different regions to obtain the desired information.

There are also numerous Skip Links to bypass the various widgets, or you can
navigate the UI with just the Tab-key (that can take awhile). So, there are
a few different options from which to navigate the main interface.

2. If images have an alt-attribute and is it useful I looked through most
of the UI and found that Moodle-based images (those of the Moodle shell) had
an alt-attribute that was informative. Most of the images were also part of
a hyperlink, so it was really the text of the hyperlink that was being
revealed. Images that did not have a text hyperlink next to it had both an
alt attribute AND title attribute, so if a person was using a screen-reader
that announced both the alt and title there would be a lot of extra audio
information (note - this is NOT the default behavior of most
screen-readers).

3. Discussion forums and basic interaction with AT The discussion forums
are fairly simple in their design and there are not a lot of functions for
manipulating the interface. You can sort a set of replies in a topic in a
nested, threaded, newest first, or oldest first manner but there does not
appear to be a lot of options. Because the UI is fairly simple, it is (IMO)
easier to navigate if using AT. The biggest issue I had with the discussion
forums were understanding how responses were related to the original post.
You have to pay attention to dates/times, but it can be done.

I have also looked a bit at some of the data tables in the system (very
briefly) and it appears that the data tables have the correct <th> tags and
scope="" attributes assigned to column/row headers. I have not done an
extensive review, but just looked at these sporadically throughout the
system.

I also have to add that I was just looking at the basic container of Moodle
1.8 - content created by faculty is a whole other issue. Assuming that the
Moodle development in 1.9 did not wander too far from what was completed in
1.8, then I would say that the basic shell interface should work with AT.
If working with a student (or instructor) who uses a screen-reader, then
some basic orientation to the system and how it is organized could be
helpful.

These are just some preliminary explorations in the Moodle interface.
Accessibility compliance on the Moodle tacker can be found at:
http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-7396 .

Take care,
Sean