The document provides tips and guidelines for building accessible courses in Moodle by following standards like WCAG 2.0 and ensuring course content is perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. It discusses making content accessible across different elements like assignments, forums, quizzes, pages, and books by following tips for text, links, headings, images, multimedia, tables, and equations. The goal is to raise awareness of accessibility issues and ensure users don't face obstacles so access is available to the widest possible audience without needing special accommodations.

1. Building accessible courses
Karen Holland
Technical Analyst
#mootieuk19
karen@lts.ie

2. “Accessibility, usability, and
inclusion are closely related
aspects in creating a web that
works for everyone.”
W3C.org Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

3. Accessibility means...
● Availability
● Inclusion
● Usability
● Standards
● Predictability
● Reducing negative impact of
disabilities on access

4. Moodle is designed to be
accessible by default to the
widest possible audience.

5. Moodle Accessibility Standards
Following standards:
● WCAG 2.0
● ATAG 2.0
● ARIA 1.0
● US Section 508 (USA)

6. Moodle Accessibility Objectives
Objectives (POUR)
● Perceivable (Knowable)
● Operable (Usable)
● Understandable
● Robust (Stable)

7. Moodle Accessibility foundations...
Each Moodle page supports:
(Teacher non-editable stuff)
● Page surroundings
● Navigation
● Form elements
● Skip to content links
● ARIA

8. Editable stuff...
● Assignments
● Forums
● Quizzes
● Pages
● Books
● The list goes on...

9. Atto editor features
● Accessibility checker
● Screen reader checker
● Prompts when adding media
● Prompts when adding tables
● Feature rich equation editor (Using Mathjax.org)

10. Text & Links Tips
● Colour Contrast
● Descriptive links
● Avoid “New Window” targets
● Consistent naming
● Lists (<ol> & <ul>)
● <strong>, not <b> etc

11. Headings Tips
Essential for long content
● Structure
● Context
● Follow hierarchy, e.g. H3, H4, H5

12. Images Tips
● Alt descriptions
● Repeat any image text in alt
● Complex images need text description
● Meaning with color alone?
● Pixelation
● No flashing!

13. Multimedia Tips
● Deliver via accessible media player!
○ E.g. Moodle default, video.js
● Closed Captions (CC)
● Subtitles
● Text transcripts

14. Table Tips
● Tabular data only!!
○ i.e. Don’t use for layout...
● Caption
● Row & column headers
● No merged cells
● No nested tables

15. Equation Tips
● Avoid using images of equations
● Use accessible equation displays:
○ Atto equations (Mathjax)
■ Feature rich
■ Great looking
■ Fully accessible
○ Equation writers using Mathjax
○ Wiris

16. Why?
Raising awareness of the
obstacles faced when
accessibility standards are
not followed

17. Why?
So that users don’t have to
ask for special treatment just
to get access, it’s just there

18. Thank you!

19. Questions?