Accessibility in Moodle
Welcome to the Accessibility in Moodle guide. You are likely referring to this guide because you have some responsibility for creating online learning content in Moodle.
The aim of this guide is to give Moodle content creators a basic understanding of digital accessibility issues, and to support them in improving the accessibility of their online learning content.
Please remember that the Digital Learning Team are not responsible for digital accessibility at Warwick, and are not experts in digital accessibility. This guide should be considered as general information only, and is our own interpretation and understanding of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2.
For formal guidance, please consult WCAG 2.2Link opens in a new window directly. You are strongly advised to undertake your own research to ensure that the accessibility of your learning content meets the required standards.
1. Accessibility and Moodle
Digital accessibility means that websites, tools and technologies are designed so that everyone can use them, regardless of ability or disability. Not only is accessible design inclusive of users who may be using assistive technologies such as screen readers, it improves the overall user experience for everyone.
Please watch the following video for an overview of digital accessibility, why its important, and how it affects us (02:16):
What are the guidelines?
The Web Accessibility Content Guidelines WCAG 2.2 is the current international standard for accessibility and was established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
What does this mean for me?
As content creators in Moodle, we have a responsibility to make sure that content meets WCAG 2.2 AA requirements. The good news is that there are some simple techniques you can use to make your content accessible. Please refer to following sections of the guide for details.
The Moodle text editor has a built-in accessibility checker to scan for issues like missing alt text, incorrect heading structures, and poor contrast, ensuring compliance with WCAG 2.2 standards. It is available in any text field or description area within Moodle where the rich-text/TinyMCE editor is enabled.
Key tools include:
- Accessibility Checker: Located under the Tools menu, this feature actively scans content for potential issues before saving. It checks that:
- images have alt text
- contrast of font colour and background colour meets WCAG AA guidelines
- long blocks of text are sufficiently broken up into headings
- all tables have captions
- tables should not contain merged cells as they are difficult to navigate with screen readers
- all tables contain row or column headers
- Image Accessibility: It prompts you to add descriptive alt text to images. Do this when the image contains information that is important to know and isn't otherwise depicted in text. There is an option to mark images as decorative if they contain no useful information.
- Structure: Go to Format > Paragraph styles to insert correct heading structures, crucial for screen readers but they make long text easier to read, understand and navigate.
Anthology Ally is integrated with Moodle, helping instructors to improve the accessibility of their files. Ally automatically scans files you upload into Moodle and then performs these steps:
- Generate alternative formats for students to download
- Provide accessibility scores
- Give instructor feedback on how to improve your accessibility score
Alternative formats
Students can download alternative formats of instructor content wherever they see the download alternative formats icon. Available formats include PDF, ePub, mp3, and electronic braille. Alternative formats are completely self-service so you don't need to do anything.
You can choose to disable alternative formats for individual content items. This option can be found by clicking the download alternative formats icon.
For a full list of alternative formats, please see Ally's guidance on alternative formats for instructors.
Accessibility scores
Files uploaded to your Moodle course are scanned by Ally and assigned an accessibility score ranging from low to perfect. The higher the score, the fewer accessibility issues were found.
The following icons indicate how your file scored:
- Low
- Medium
- High
- Perfect
Important: Students are not able to view accessibility scores. They will only see the option to download alternative formats.
Instructor feedback
For files with a score of low, medium, and high, Ally gives details of the issues found as well as step-by-step advice on how to fix them. Simply click on the accessibility score icon to get started.
Ally instructor feedback view.
Further resources and information
You can also find more detailed and comprehensive guidance at Ally's Help for Instructors websiteLink opens in a new window. You can now do our Ally Moodle course on Improving Moodle content accessibility with Ally, which is aimed at enabling staff to improve the digital accessibility of their learning content in Moodle.
You are strongly advised to undertake your own research to ensure that the accessibility of your learning content meets the required standards. Here is a list of suggested resources to help you get started.
Suggested resources
Self-paced training
Other web resources
Creating accessible documents
- AbilityNet: Creating accessible documents
- Microsoft: Create accessible Office documents
- Adobe: PDF accessibility overview
Moodle
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
2. Course formats and design
Course sections break up the course into manageable or logical sections which could relate to a time period, a particular project, or to a pedagogic process of your choice. Sections add structure to your Moodle course and help participants to easily navigate the course content.
Sections are displayed differently depending on the course format.
How to edit course sections
See the Moodle video below for more information on editing course sections (01:47)
How to use course sections effectively
You can organise your sections in whatever way is most appropriate for your teaching and participants as long as it's clear and consistent. For example, you could organise your sections by:
- Week
- Theme
- Type of resources and activities (e.g. lectures, seminars, assessment)
Make sure you optimise the use of course sections by doing the following:
- Provide a short, unique title for each section which accurately summarises the content, e.g. Week 1: Michaelangelo
- Add a section summary to give a further description of the content
- Use the same naming conventions consistently
Course formats determine the overall display and layout of a Moodle course. A carefully-considered layout will benefit all users, but is particularly critical to participants using assistive technologies.
The most popular course formats are listed below with tips on improving ease of access and navigation.
How to change the course format
To review and change the course format settings:
- Navigate to Settings in the course menu.
- Scroll down and click to expand the Course format section.
- Select one of the formats from the dropdown menu.
- Use meaningful, short titles for each section for easy screen reader navigation.
The video below provides overview of the course format settings. Please note not all course formats available are listed in the video (03:58):
For more please see Course formats on MoodleDocs.
Popular course formats
Custom sections
Custom sections is the best format for supporting assistive technologies.
There are two layout options:
- Show all sections on one page shows all content on one page, i.e. the 'long scroll'
- Show one section per page splits content across several pages
To optimise accessibility:
- Use a short, clear title for each section
- Organise sections by topic, unit, or week
Weekly
The weekly format organises content week by week, with the corresponding dates as each section title. The section titles are auto-created based on the start date provided in the course settings.
To optimise accessibility:
- Give a clear summary for each section to help students find course content; it may be difficult to remember on which date(s) a topic was covered.
Grid
The grid format hides all course sections and creates a grid of customisable images and short titles. Clicking on an image or title displays the content for the corresponding section in a "lightbox" style display.
There are a small number of significant accessibility issues in the grid format:
- The "lightbox" style display is not accessible to participants using screenreaders or keyboard navigation
- Screen readers can't read text contained in an image
To optimise accessibility:
- In the course settings, set the course layout to Show one section per page. Instead of the lightbox display, participants will now view content on the course page
- Add a short, clear title for each section
- Use images for decorative purposes only and not for section titles.
A screen shot of the grid format in Moodle.
3. Content creation
Documents constitute a huge part of the learning content found in Moodle so it is important they are accessible. The most frequently used document types are Microsoft Office (i.e. Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc) and PDF.
Here are some suggested resources on creating accessible documents listed below.
Creating accessible documents
- AbilityNet: Creating accessible documents
- Microsoft: Create accessible Office documents
- Adobe: PDF accessibility overview
Naming your document
Remember that if you drag and drop a document onto your Moodle course, the document name is essentially link text which is used by screen readers. The document name should be clear, concise, and unique to other documents available in the Moodle course.
Give clear instructions and feedback
Participants shouldn't have to guess what to do. Please give clear instructions in the activity description so they know what is expected of them. You might also provide participants with the marking criteria for assessed work.
Giving clear and detailed feedback can also help participants to identify areas for further improvement.
Timed activities
Time-sensitive activities and assessments can lead to students becoming anxious or overwhelmed, so please consider whether a timer is appropriate on a case-by-case basis.
To mitigate the impact of timed activities and assessment, you might:
- Offer a practice activity so participants can familiarise themselves with the system in advance
Naming your activities and resources
Remember that your activity and resource names are essentially link text which is used by screen readers. The activity name should be clear, concise, and unique to other activities available in the Moodle course. This also applies to documents you upload to the Moodle course.
Text descriptions for images help people who cannot access images to understand their content and function. These text descriptions are known as 'alternative text', 'alt text', or in HTML language, the 'alt attribute'.
People who may find alternative text particularly helpful include those using screen readers or text to speech software. Users with low bandwidth can also use alternative text when images fail to load.
Does my image need alternative text?
If the purpose of an image is to add visual decoration to the page, alternative text is not required. You can simply mark the image as decorative when adding it to Moodle.
Important: For anything else, you will need to write an alternative text description.
You can use the alternative text decision tree to better identify whether your image needs any alt text or can be marked as decorative.
Colour contrast
Colours must have sufficient contrast between foreground and background to be readable. This namely applies to text colour and background colour, including text on images, icons, and buttons. Colour used in graphs and diagrams should also be distinguishable.
Contrast guidelines
Colour contrast is measured by a ratio. The highest contrast ratio is 21:1, where one colour is black and the other is white. The lowest contrast ratio is 1:1.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 guidelines on colour contrast are:
- Text must have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1
- Large text must have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1
- Large text is text at a minimum of 18pt font size, or 14pt bold font size
You can use a colour contrast checker to ensure your content meets WCAG 2.2 requirements. The following two are very reliable:
Please refer to the WCAG minimum contrast requirements for further details.
Using colour to convey meaning
Important: Please do not use colour as the only way to convey meaning.
Colour is an important asset in the design of digital learning content, however users with colour perception difficulties and other visual impairments may miss important information if an accessible alternative is not provided.
Supplementing colour with text, icons, symbols, or patterns
The best way to design content for users who lack access to colour is to provide further emphasis using text, icons, symbols or patterns. Please use these additional elements when colour is used to convey meaning.
| Example of inaccessible content | Accessible alternative |
|---|---|
| "Click the red button" | Give the red button a label describing the button's purpose, e.g. "Start quiz" |
| Using green text to indicate something is correct, and red text to indicate something is incorrect | Add a tick icon next to the green text and a cross icon next to the red text; alternatively, write "Correct:" and "Incorrect:" at the start of each text block respectively |
| Bar graphs using colour only | Bar graphs using colour and pattern, with clear labels |
Clear and concise language
Keeping your writing simple will make it easier for participants to understand. Follow these tips to make your writing more accessible:
- Write in short sentences and paragraphs
- Avoid unnecessarily complex words and phrases
- Avoid idioms, jargon, and hidden or implied meaning
- Expand acronyms on first use. For example, "The Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is..."
- Consider providing a glossary of terms users may not know
You can measure the readability of your writing with tools like the Hemingway Editor.
Structure
Please consider the following tips when formatting your text. Good formatting enables participants to easily digest learning content.
- Break long blocks of text into short paragraphs
- Structure content with headings and subheadings, either in the TinyMCE editing toolbar or in the document you are working in
- Use numbered lists and bullet points where appropriate
- Leave a suitable amount of white space on the page
Emphasising content
Screen readers do not identify font styles, including colour, bold, italics, and underline. Please do not use font styles as the only way to indicate importance; an accessible alternative should always be provided.
Accessible ways of emphasising content include:
- Using exclamation marks or question marks. Screen readers will lend an exclamative or questioning tone as they read aloud
- Starting your message with "Important:". This will be read aloud to screen reader users and provides a further visual cue of importance
Meaningful link text
Link text is usually a word or phrase on a web page that a user clicks to open another web page or document, e.g. University of Warwick.
Link text is an important part of good content design. Not only do users of assistive technologies rely heavily on link text to quickly navigate a web page, it actually enables all of us to easily identify key information.
Meaningful link text should:
- Be short and succinct
- Be unique to other links on the page
- Describe what the user will find when they click the link
- Make sense without the surrounding sentences or page content
| Examples of inaccessible link text | Examples of accessible link text |
|---|---|
| For more information on the Warwick Assessment System, click here. | Read more about the Warwick Assessment System. |
| For more information, please see the Academic Technology support guides at https://warwick.ac.uk/services/academictechnology/support/guides/. | For more information, please see the Digital Learning support guides. |
4. Audio and video
W3C defines captions as 'a text version of the speech and non-speech audio information needed to understand the content. They are synchronized with the audio and usually shown in a media player when users turn them on'. Closed captions may be of particular benefit to people with hearing impairments and others who cannot hear audio.
Check whether your media requires captions at the W3C website.
A screen shot of a video with closed captions.
Closed captions at Warwick
Please refer to the table below for how to add closed captions to your media using one of Warwick's approved streaming platforms.
| Streaming platform | Closed captions availability | Further information |
|---|---|---|
| EchoVideo | Transcript can be manually applied to a video as closed captions | EchoVideo's guide for applying transcripts to closed captions |
| Microsoft Stream (on Sharepoint) | Captions are auto-generated | Office 365: How to view, edit, and manage video transcripts and captions |
W3C define basic transcripts as 'a text version of the speech and non-speech audio information needed to understand the content'. Basic transcripts may be of particular benefit to people who are deaf, hard of hearing, have difficulty processing auditory information, and others.
In the vast majority of cases, your media will need a transcript. You can check whether your media needs a transcript at the W3C's transcript guidance.
A screen shot of Lecture Capture video with inline transcript.
Transcripts at Warwick
Please refer to the table below for how to add closed captions to your media using one of Warwick's approved streaming platforms.
| Streaming platform | Closed captions availability | Further information |
|---|---|---|
| EchoVideo | Transcripts are auto-generated |
EchoVideo's guide for applying transcripts to closed captions |
| Microsoft Stream (on Sharepoint) | Transcripts are auto-generated |
Office 365: How to view, edit, and manage video transcripts and captions |