Back in 2018, Christina Moore (CETL), Dan Arnold (e-LIS), and I researched digital accessibility standards for online teaching and learning. Digital accessibility ensures web content is usable for all people, including users with visual, auditory, mobile, and other types of disabilities. We developed a series of workshops to introduce faculty to proactive habits for creating accessible videos, documents, and other types of course content. 

As a lecturer and instructional designer over these years, I can say that it has never been easier than today to get started. In terms of making your Moodle course digitally accessible and compliant with ADA Title II regulations, this teaching tip is a starting point.

Change starts with the person in the mirror

You may be surprised to read that hundreds of accessibility errors were found in my Moodle courses. “What? An Instructional Designer with over 15 years of experience?” Yes. 

To our benefit, Moodle makes fixing course page accessibility much easier than it was for us in 2018. By using the Brickfield Accessibility+ Review block in Moodle, you’re able to quickly identify and correct any accessibility errors on your Moodle course page.

User Experience: Brickfield Accessibility Review

New Kid on the Block

Current courses have the Accessibility+ Review block already added to your courses. There’s a blue button “submit for analysis” in that block that begins the process. It could take some time for that to produce results. Once it does, you’ll have a list of categories and how many errors are associated with it.

Bulk Fixing for the Win

With accessibility, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed before you actually start fixing it. “I can’t believe I have SO many errors.” The accessibility report allows you to Go to Wizards, which allow you to submit bulk fixes to many of the errors it detects. Many of the errors in Moodle can be fixed with the click of a button. Any one of the tabs shows all the errors on a scrollable list, and the bottom of the page allows you to Submit Bulk Fixing.

Finding this new power in the accessibility report gave me a fleeting sense of invincibility! Knowing the rest of the journey won’t be as quick as bulk fixing, these easy “wins” like this certainly gave me the confidence to forge ahead. I was on my way.

Finding “the Why” in Accessibility

Going through the Wizard, I will admit that I didn’t agree with one of the recommended fixes at first. For years, I had the personal preference of setting all of my links and URLs to open in a new tab. This, however, was identified as an accessibility error. I was able to correct these errors via bulk fixing, but I really wanted to know why I was “doing it wrong” when I really preferred the way I was doing it. In the Wizard, each category has a little question mark icon that when clicked provides a popup with a clear explanation on what the error is, why it is an error, and why fixing it makes it better.

Manual Fixes Are Easy Too

Brickfield can open a category of fixable issues that you can fix all on one page. For instance, a list of all images that need alt text. You can type in a box next to each image on the Brickfield page without navigating away to edit the original source. Even though it’s not as fast as Bulk fixing, it is worlds faster and a more organized approach to making these fixes than we would have without this tool.

The Help Doc DID help

e-LIS developed a guide for using Brickfield that goes into much more detail. It talks about how the block can toggle your course page to view individual links on the course page and color them red, orange, or green based on the accessibility evaluation of each link. I found the block to be intuitive overall, but reviewing the doc (or having it handy) allowed me to consider some details or double-check some specific areas where I might not have known to take a pause. For example, Bulk Fixing some areas like ALL CAPS take some review to make sure I’m not automatically changing the letter case of an acronym that should stay in all caps.

The Goal

With Brickfield, you’ll constantly see the number of errors in the block. The goal is to make them all zero. I just chipped away at it over a few days. With all the errors I had in my course, it probably would have taken me an hour or two in one sitting. It feels good to see the current number of remaining errors diminish. Anything new I added to my course will be scanned, so I continue to look at that block periodically.

Conclusion

When your Moodle course page is compliant, you’ve taken a positive first step in your own journey toward compliance in your online course. Know that as we all caravan toward compliance, you’re not alone. In addition to 1-on-1 guidance from e-LIS, we also developed an ADA Title II Compliance eSpace that not only covers using Brickfield, but also guides you through the next steps in your accessibility journey: making your files and videos compliant. In other words, Brickfield doesn’t fix everything. However, the ease and speed when starting with Brickfield gives you the momentum to dive into the other areas of accessibility. While on this journey, you may even learn a thing or two about yourself.

Save and adapt a Google Doc version of this teaching tip.

About the Author

Dr. Nicholas Bongers is the Senior Instructional Designer at e-Learning & Instructional Support at OU. Nic is also a Lecturer for the School of Business and the Honors College. He has been in the instructional design field for 17 years, just recently completed a digital marketing certificate. Nic invests his time outside of work learning Polish, advising the OU Football Club, and playing live music in a KISS Tribute band.

Photo by Kevin Schmid on Unsplash. Others may share and adapt under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC.

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