Accessibility notes

These are DRAFT notes on what CSS classes, PHP functions and the so on have been added to Moodle 1.6 onwards to aid accessibility. They can be seen as design patterns, techniques, guidelines, and perhaps best practice(?) Based on a workshop at Moodlemoot 2007, Canada Lots for me to add/edit! Comments welcome! Nick Freear 11:38, 28 August 2007 (CDT)

Code pattern 1: unlist & inline-list

Cascading style sheet (CSS) classes to remove default list-styles from HTML lists. Class inline-list also makes a list horizontal (at present only in side blocks).

Difficulty: easy I hope. Please use!
Available: ? Moodle 1.8 December 2006 (MDL-6838, nested lists are safe).
Definition: theme/standard/styles_layout.css

.unlist, .inline-list {
  list-style: none;
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0;
}
.sideblock .content .inline-list li {
  display: inline;
}

Use Count: 5+ (12 including deprecated list)
Example: blocks/../block_blog_tags.php

<ul class="inline-list">
  <li><a .. class=" s20">Accessibility</a></li>
  <li><a .. class=" s10">Test</a></li> 
</ul>

Code pattern 2: accesshide

CSS class for text 'seen' by screen readers but not visual users.

Difficulty: tricky – mirror text in title.
Available: Moodle 1.6 March 2006 (30-May-06: MDL-5628 IE6 Farsi RTL language)
Definition: theme/standard/styles_layout.css

.accesshide {
  position: absolute;
  top: -1000px;
}

Use Count: 29 !
Example: calendar/lib.php

...
<td class="day">26</td>
<td class="day today ">
  <span class="accesshide">Today Friday, 27 April </span>
  <a onmouseover="return overlib(.. 'Today Friday, 27 April')" ..>27</a>
</td>
<td class="weekend day">28</td>
...

Code pattern 3: THEME->rarrow, larrow

PHP variables holding 'silent' representations of right and left arrows (example ►), to avoid misuse of characters including "greater than" >, "right angle quote" ». The variables are initialised by the function weblib.php: check_theme_arrows, unless they have first been defined in the theme config.php.

• Difficulty: medium. Careful with fonts.
  
• Available: Moodle 1.7
• Associated CSS in theme/standard/styles_fonts.css

.breadcrumb .sep, ... {
  font-family: Arial,Helvetica,Courier,'Arial Unicode MS', ...;
}

• Use count: ?
• Example PHP: weblib.php function print_navigation - breadcrumb trail.
• Also: Weekscss course format, Moodleforms .