WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Moodle and Accessibility

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Jun 28, 2006 5:50PM

M.Cooper wrote:
> The 3 people who have done the bulk of this work have decades of
> accessibility experience behind them. Not only do they have extensive
> knowledge of the principles of and guidelines for accessibility but they
> also regularly conduct evaluations with disabled people and pay due
> regard to the interplay between accessibility and usability in web and
> other software applications. I hope you meant no offence by your
> comment but I am afraid some was taken.

I certainly did not mean offense and apologize if it was taken as
offensive. I certainly understand the complexities of accessibility and
that folks will be critical of your work, no matter how much effort you
put into it (did you read some of the responses to our own recent site
redesign?). My comments, like the original posting, were intended to get
others to get involved in this project, not in merely being critical of
the great strides that have already been taken.

> That having been said, we of course welcome constructive criticism of
> our work. If you wish to do so could you please post this to the Moodle
> Accessibility Forum? The current draft of the Moodle Accessibility
> Specification and the invite for feedback is at:
> http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=48603

And this is where I should have sent my criticism, instead of to this
public list. I've been working for some time on some recommendations for
changes and will need to review them with the complete 1.6 release. I'll
be posting them to the Moodle forums soon, though in reading your 1.7
specifications document, it seems that most of my concerns are being
addressed.

> Achieving good accessibility in any application is an iterative process.
> We do not claim to get it right first time but we do claim to be working
> towards better access for all including people with disabilities.

I certainly applaud you and the rest of the team for doing what you are
doing in regards to accessibility. Yes, there is ALWAYS more that can be
done on any project. I look forward to being more involved in these
efforts in the near future.

Jared Smith
WebAIM.org