How to use Moodle’s inbuilt accessibility checker

Accessibility is a constant focus among online educators and administrators. In the context of online teaching, accessibility means making it possible for all students, regardless of physical or developmental impairment, to use all course materials and tools. In this post, we will learn how you can use Moodle’s accessibility checker to create accessible content for your learners.

Moodle’s goal is to be fully accessible and usable for all users regardless of ability. But due to its modularity, content created by teachers and other factors it is not always possible to make Moodle absolutely accessible. However, let’s have a look at the inbuilt accessible checker which you can use to make your online course in Moodle more accessible for your learners.

Accessibility of online course is important because:

• A significant number of people have disabilities that can make it difficult for them to take an online course
• Many students with disabilities prefer online courses to face-to-face courses.
• Accessibility is required by law in many countries.
  

In the Atto text editor – which is the default text editor in Moodle there is an automated accessibility checker tool is available which checks for some common errors in the text. These are usually things in the way the text is constructed that can prevent all users from having equal access to information and functionality. The Atto accessibility checker will be looking for the following concern areas:

• Images with missing or empty alt text (unless they have the decorative role only)
• Contrast of font colour and background colour meets WCAG AA guidelines
• Long blocks of text are sufficiently broken up into headings
• Captions for all tables
• All tables should contain row or column headers
• No merged cells in Tables as they are difficult to navigate with screen readers

To make your text more accessible in Moodle, you can follow this guide for Accessible Course design.

What are the other way to create Accessible course in Moodle? Do share with us in the comments section below.