Accessibility

Websites built with accessibility in mind are flexible in meeting different user needs, preferences and situations. Though these methods can increase usability for everyone who uses the web they are often legally required to be implemented in a specific effort to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities.

See the tracker under Accessibility Compliance in Moodle 1.8 and Compliance with Italian Legislation on Accessibility for more information on what we are doing for Moodle 1.8.

Starting points

These are some readable introductions to accessibility that cover; what accessibility is, why it is important, as well as practical advice.

• Web Accessibility Initiative's Introduction to Web Accessibility
• Mark Pilgrim's Dive into Accessibility
• Joe Clark's Building Accessible Websites book

Standards, guidelines and legislation

International & USA

• Web Accessibility Initiative
  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (draft)
    • An article on the problems with WCAG2 from A List Apart
• Section 508

Other countries

• UK:

SENDA - Special Educational Needs and Disability Act/Bill

Disability Discrimination Act 1995

• Germany:

Barrierefreie Informationstechnik-Verordnung - BITV

Tools

Firefox extensions

• • Firefox Accessibility Extension by the Illinois Center for Information Technology and Web Accessibility (iCITA)
  • Web developer extension for Firefox
  • Blank Your Monitor and Easy Reading Extension for Firefox
  • plugin for Firebug
  • contrast plugin for Firefox

Accessibility validation tools

• W3C validation (for HTML in Moodle, CSS and RSS)
• Web accessibility evaluation tool
• Cynthia Says accessibility checker

Screen readers

• Fangs – the screen reader emulator for Firefox
• NVDA NonVisual Desktop Access - open source screen reader for Windows

see also this long list of accessibility tools.

Resources

• Web Standards.org's Accessibility Task Force Manifesto
• Accessibility articles from A List Apart
• Mark Pilgrim's Won’t somebody please think of the gerbils?

Dive Into Accessibility by Mark Pilgrim

• Joe Clark's writings on accessibility

Building Accessible Websites by Joe Clark (online version)

• Wikipedia article on Web Accessibility
• Validity and Accessibility
• Videos showing as student accessing another Learning Management System via Screen Reader software

Common accessibility coding errors

Using CSS for titles, bold and emphasis

It is generally a good idea to separate a document's content HTML and how it is presented using CSS, however where there are some tags that affect a document's presentation but also contribute to the structure and meaning of the content. These tags should remain in HTML. This includes heading tags <h1>, <h2>, <h3>..., which are used to form the document's hierarchical structure, and <strong> and <em> tags, which are used to add meaning to sections of text.

Avoid using background images for important information

Users of non-visual browsers cannot see images. They can read the alt tags of normal images, but background images are not presented like normal images.

See also

• Semantic HTML
• Accessibility forum on Moodle.org
• Using Moodle New Accessibility Themes forum discussion
• See en:Usability FAQ for the related concept of usability.
• en:Moodle Accessibility Specification
• http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=127807#p559951
• The Introduction to Moodle Programming provides some extensive information and discussion on accessibility.
• EASY: Interface Between The Virtual Environment Moodle Learning and People with Visual Impairments
• BBC blog post on how their Web 2.0 homepage was made accessible
• BBC Accessibility Help