Moodle - Using Open Source Software to Deliver Accessible Online Courses
Who we are
Agenda
- A History of Distance Learning and Moodle at the Carroll Center
- General Techniques for Improving the Accessibility and Usability of a Web Application
- Applying those techniques to Moodle
- Live Demo of Moodle
- Moodle 2.0
- Questions and Answers
Our Distance Learning History
2003
Static HTML
2004
Custom Distance Learning Software
2009
Moodle 1.9
2011
Moodle 2.0
Why Moodle?
- Open Source
- Incredibly Low Price (Free)
- Opportunites to Customize
- Wide Adoption
- Interoperability with other sites and contributors
- Free Support (Forum Based)
- Large Userbase
(As of October 2010: 49,952 registered and verified sites, serving 37 million users in 3.7 million courses - Wikipedia)
Creating Accessible Online Courses
General Usability/Accessibility Techniques
- Simplify your interface
- Reduce verbosity
- Avoid Feature/Module bloat or overly complicated Modules
- Offer Theme options (User Customizations)
- Enforce accessible/semantic content creation
- Offer options for diverse learners
- Promote interaction and communication
Improving Moodle Accessibility
Where to start
- Configuration
- Theme
- Modules
- Staffing and Support
- Content Creation
Configure for Accessibility
- Allow students to edit posted content
- Enable Forums and use them liberally
- Disable the Rich-text/WYSIWYG Editor
- Uncheck "Use Default Section name" for more meaningful links in navigation block
- Disable AJAX and Javascript (Currently not very effective)
- Limit navigation block to display only categories and courses.
Additional Configuration Options for Moodle 2.0
- Enable Comments (Block Level)
- Enable Site Messaging
- Enable RSS Feeds
- Disable the Dock
- Enable 3rd party file repositories
- Limit Quiz Question types (many of the 11 currently offered pose accessibility issues)
Theme for Accessibility
Moodle 1.9
- Keep things as simple and clean as possible.
- Do not use tables for page layout.
- Include your skip links in the Header
Moodle 2.0
There are many more opportunities to improve the accessibility of your site at the theme level in Moodle 2.0. We will go over those later in the presentation.
Accessibility Modules
Moodle 1.9
- Over 120 Modules designed to improve accessibility
- Many are of poor quality and specific to certain releases
Moodle 2.0
- Much Fewer Modules currently available
- Future Modules should be more stable and work with future releases
Staff and Support
- Make instructors regularly available
- Encourage instructors to participate in forum discussions
- Encourage instructors to engage students in ways that augment the learning process
Create Accessible Content
- Training
- Videos
- Quizes
- Content Creation (Text areas)
Finding Alternatives to Rich-text/WYSIWYG Editor
Markdown
Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).
Live Demo
(Cross your fingers)
Moodle 2.0
- Cleaner and Leaner
- Improved navigation and menus
- (although not necessarily more accessible navigation)
- More intuitive resource and activity labels
- Improved content management
- (although not necessarily more accessible content management)
- Comments (on just about anything)
New Opportunities for Accessibility
- More Powerful Theme Engine
- Filters
- Renderers
Themes 2.0
- Clearer and more consistent CSS classes and IDs throughout all pages in Moodle
- More control over page layout with the introduction of layout files (templates) describing overall layout HTML for many different types of pages in Moodle.
(previously limited to header, footer and CSS)
- Ability to build Customizable options into themes
Filters 2.0
- Auto-Linking (Activites, Glossary Terms)
- Multimedia
- HTML Tidy
- Algebra Notation
- TeX Notation
- Word Censorship
Example of Multimedia Filter:
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=WnhPRVvkU34[youtube]
Renderers
- Renderers produce the smaller "parts" of an HTML page.
Not all "parts" currently use renderers, but Moodle has plans to them for all components.
- At current count there are 26 components that can be modified with Renderers
(Idnetified by doing a recursive search for 'renderer.php')
Known Accessibility Issues
- onchange() in dropdown menus
- Currently only an issue in Internet Explorer
- Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Javascript Library
- Collapsible Menus
Hope for the future
- Improve the use of the Screenreader and the AJAX/Javascript User settings
- Universal search and search within course
- More Renderers and Filters
- A more formal committement to accessibility in Moodle core
References
Presentation Slides
This presentation is available for download or online viewing in a number of formats at either of the links below:
Questions can be emailed to webmaster@carroll.org
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