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Thread: Moodle Accessibility
Number of posts in this thread: 6 (In chronological order)
From: Jan Heck
Date: Mon, Apr 07 2008 1:10PM
Subject: Moodle Accessibility
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I have two days to prepare for a meeting at which plans will be made to
migrate several online courses from the current CMS to Moodle. (It's already
been decided.)
What is the good (and not so good) word about Moodle's accessibility? I'd
appreciate input from anyone who has time to comment!
Thanks very much,
Jan Heck
Instructor, Accessible Learning Technology
Coastline Community College
From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Mon, Apr 07 2008 1:50PM
Subject: Re: Moodle Accessibility
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Jan Heck wrote:
> What is the good (and not so good) word about Moodle's accessibility? I'd
> appreciate input from anyone who has time to comment!
As would I, as we are about the build a VLE using it.
Cheers
Josh
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From: Emma Duke-Williams
Date: Mon, Apr 07 2008 2:10PM
Subject: Re: Moodle Accessibility
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On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 8:41 PM, Joshue O Connor < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Jan Heck wrote:
> > What is the good (and not so good) word about Moodle's accessibility? I'd
> > appreciate input from anyone who has time to comment!
>
There's a forum on the Moodle site re. Accessibility -
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=820 it covers quite a few of
the extra tools etc., that you might, or might not be using. It's not
very active, but seems to have some useful discussion points,
including the fact that they had been able to test the latest chat
tool with Jaws 8 (prior to reading that, I thought that the only
accessible chat tool in a VLE was A-chat - the one that SNOW have
developed.
Given that the Open University have now adopted Moodle, and that the
OU in the UK has more visually impaired students than any (?all?)
other Universities in the UK, I guess is likely to be good news for
ensuring accessibility, at least for screen readers.
--
Emma Duke-Williams:
School of Computing/ Faculty eLearning Co-ordinator.
Blog: http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/
From: John E. Brandt
Date: Mon, Apr 07 2008 4:10PM
Subject: Re: Moodle Accessibility
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I did a presentation on this last fall and have posted the handouts here
http://www.jebswebs.com/index.php/articles-and-resources
I also have a PowerPoint presentation.
To summarize: The current version of Moodle is very accessible with some
very minor problems. Version 1.9 will be even better.
The biggest problem with Moodle - as with all CMSs - is that it can be made
"inaccessible" by anyone who is allowed to add content and does not know
about accessibility. As I state in my notes:
A discussion board on the Moodle.org site continues to be active with
concerns and solutions discussed. The commentary in this forum is consistent
with those in other forums and lists dealing with web design, CMS and
accessibility. While efforts can and are being made to ensure that the
templates used in the Moodle application meet standards, there is no way to
completely ensure compliance without active engagement and persistence on
the part of the users to be knowledgeable about, and sensitive to,
accessibility issues.
Contact me off the list if you need more info
~j
John E. Brandt
Augusta, Maine USA
www.jebswebs.com
From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Tue, Apr 08 2008 3:50AM
Subject: Re: Moodle Accessibility
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Thanks for the link John. The 'Known Issues' and 'Resources' links look
very useful.
Cheers
Josh
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From: Sean Keegan
Date: Tue, Apr 08 2008 12:30PM
Subject: Re: Moodle Accessibility
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> 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