The Moodle Accessibility Toolkit

What is Digital Accessibility?

The term “Digital accessibility” describes the notion of ensuring that all users, without discrimination, have full access to information and equal participation on the web. Digital accessibility is measured by levels of conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international community working together in the development of international standards for the World Wide Web, WCAG is a ISO/IEC 40500:2012 Standard and globally recognized for creating accessible websites and digital content.

According to the W3C website, WCAG guidelines are based on four main principles: content must be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (also known as POUR). These guiding principles can be described in detail as follows:

Perceivable - Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
This means that information and web components need to be put into a format that enables access by assistive technologies, ensuring that data cannot accidentally be invisible to users’ senses.
Operable - User interface components and navigation must be operable regardless of restrictions experienced by users.
This means that the interface cannot require interactions that a given user physically cannot perform.
Understandable – Both content and the operation of user interface must be understandable (including language settings, instructions, etc.).
This means that users must be able to understand the information as well as the operation of the user interface (the content or operation cannot be beyond their understanding).
Robust - Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including the support of assistive technologies that may develop over time.
This means that users must be able to access content as both general and assistive technologies advance (content should remain accessible regardless of the source of technological advancement).

Why Accessibility is Important

People interact with technology and navigate digital environments in a wide variety of ways. While some people with disabilities use assistive technologies, others make use of different screen sizes, or adapt the use of input devices like the mouse, keyboard, or touch screen. Regardless of the device used or impairment suffered, however, it is important to remove any barriers that might inhibit the inclusion of users. This principle is known as Inclusive Design; a guarantee by web designers and content creators to ensure that digital learning environments are accessible without the need for special adaptation or specialized design.

Provincial regulations require us to adhere to WCAG guidelines, ensuring that our digital products (including public websites, educational platforms such as Moodle, digital teaching and learning resources, and educational technology tools) are accessible to all users, especially those with disabilities. This is an important step in competently and fairly moving Concordia towards Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Using Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit in your Course

Adding Brickfield toolkit to your Moodle Course Page

Submitting your Course for Analysis

Using the Accessibility+ Review Block

Report Tools

The Report tools give you several different ways to look at your Accessibility results.

Per Activity Results

This gives you results per activity, as both a ratio of passed to failed activities, and a total error count per activity.

Per Check Results

This provides results per check, as a total error count per check, either just checks with errors, or show all checks. It also gives you:

Each check’s percentage of the overall count of errors.
A Help popup for each check with further information on the check, its summary, and impact.
A View link for each check which brings you to the Errors page for all the errors which relate to this check alone.
Where relevant, some checks have corresponding Fix wizards, so you have a Fix link for each check where possible.

Per Check Type Results

This gives you results for each type of Moodle HTML content (which the Moodle Accessibility Checker will designate as Image, Layout, Link, Media, Table, or Text).

These results are shown per checktype, as both a ratio of passed to failed instances (activities, course areas, questions etc.), and a total error count per checktype.

Transcript

This feature gives you a course transcript of the accessibility issues found. It also provides a Download PDF link which can be used to download a PDF transcript of your course’s current accessibility status.

The course transcript summarizes many of the Find tools listed above in a handy one-pager.

Advanced

This allows access to further details regarding the full suite of Accessibility features in the Moodle Accessibility Checker Toolkit.

Wizard Tools

Errors
This allows you to review your accessibility error findings. The tool can find and fix these errors quickly. Each error has its own Edit link, which brings you directly to content in which the error occurs in order to make changes.
Fix Bold
This allows you to review your accessibility bold tag errors. The tool can find and fix these errors quickly on one or more pages, depending on how many of them there are.
Existing bold tag errors are listed with a “Submit Bulk Fixing” button, which fixes all the errors on the current page. These edit changes are also logged for content change tracking.
Fix Image Alt Text
This allows you to review your accessibility image alt text errors. The tool can find and fix these errors quickly on one or more pages, depending on how many image alt text errors are present.
Please note that image alt changes require a degree of teacher oversight / engagement, and thus need to be manually typed into each image’s “Update to” input field as plain text, which is then used to update the image’s alt text in its content location.
This feature is also has a help popup with guidance about how to write good image alt descriptions.
Existing image alt text errors are listed with a “Submit Bulk Fixing” button, which updates all the image alt errors on the current page. These edit changes are also logged for content change tracking.
Fix Italics
This allows you to review your accessibility italics tag errors. The tool can find and fix these errors quickly on one or more pages, depending on how many italics tag errors there are.
Existing italics tag errors are listed with a “Submit Bulk Fixing” button, which fixes all the errors on the current page. These edit changes are also logged for content change tracking.
Fix Link text
This allows you to review your accessibility link text errors. The tool can find and fix these errors quickly on one or more pages, depending on how many link text errors there are.
Please note that link changes require a degree of teacher oversight / engagement. We do automated retrieval of the website’s own title, however, and provide it as suggested text in the “Update to” input field. The teacher needs to review and edit each link’s “Update to” input field as plain text, which will then be used to update the link text in its content location.
Existing link text errors are listed with a “Submit Bulk Fixing” button, which updates all the link text errors on the current page. These edit changes are also logged for content change tracking.
Fix Strike
This allows you to review your accessibility strike tag errors. The tool can find and fix these errors quickly on one or more pages, depending on how many strike tag errors there are.
Existing strike tag errors are listed with a “Submit Bulk Fixing” button, which fixes all the errors on the current page. These edit changes are also logged for content change tracking.

Brickfield Alternative File Format Plugin

The Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit also gives course instructors the ability to provide their students with alternate file formats for resources used in their course (including Text, Audio, Braille, and Ebook).

When you (or a student) clicks on the Request conversion icon, a popup screen appears where the user can select alternative format options into which files can be converted. The Request Conversion icon is represented as a circle formed by red, blue and yellow arrows, and it can be found beside each of your course file resources as follows:

Course file resources with the Request conversion icon besides each format

The Conversion Type dropdown menu shows the initial options available for the file you are converting (Text, Ebook, Audio, or Braille). In the textype example shown below, the available formats are doc, xls, rtf, txt, csv, htm, docx, and xlsx:

Format dropdown menu on Accessibility File Conversion window

For detailed information on how to retrieve newly processed alternative file formats, please refer to this guide.

Digital Accessibility Best Practices

The following are the best practices addressing the most common web accessibility issues:

Provide text description (also known as Alt Text) for images, infographics, and complex graphs. Reliance on purely visual representations of information causes accessibility barriers for individuals who rely mainly on assistive technologies like screen readers to navigate and interpret digital information.
Provide transcripts or closed captions of audio and video recordings. Closed captions and/or a transcript make your media files more accessible to visually impaired and hearing-impaired users.
Provide meaningful text descriptions of the destination when you link to websites or file resources. For example, use the name of the web page in a link text rather than the URL itself, and add a warning if the link will open in a new window.
Use sufficient contrast between text and its background to ensure that people with low vision can read, understand, and use your content.
When creating PPT slides, use the built-in slide designs, and give each slide a unique title. Use a larger font size (18pt or larger), sans serif fonts, and sufficient white space.
When creating tables, use simple structures with a logical reading order, avoid merging cells, and use the <caption> tag to describe the content of the table. Make sure to specify column header information, as screen readers use this information to identify rows and columns.