Moodle 3.11 will incorporate the Brickfield Accessibility Starter Toolkit to help organisations create accessible course content
Accessibility is a constant focus in the development of Moodle LMS, and with every new release, we dedicate resources to improve accessibility in order to ensure that our software is accessible for everyone who uses it.
In Moodle 3.11, to further support organisations and educators to create content and learning materials that meet accessibility standards, we’re incorporating the Brickfield Accessibility Starter Toolkit into Moodle LMS to allow educators and administrators to assess the accessibility of content and identify existing accessibility issues.
Check the accessibility of your Moodle courses
Brickfield’s Accessibility Starter Toolkit includes the automated analysis of Moodle courses against a set of common accessibility rules, checking the content inside all of Moodle’s core activities. The Accessibility Starter Toolkit then generates a report with a list of all detected accessibility errors, which can also be broken down by type of content or type of activity. This provides insights to educators and organisations on the overall accessibility of their courses and the areas that should be improved.
Accessibility errors on a Moodle course, broken down by type of activity.
Identify accessibility issues on the spot
The accessibility report generated by the Starter Toolkit also generates a heatmap that enables course creators to identify course sections that have accessibility issues to be fixed.
Accessibility heatmap on a Moodle course
And finally, errors are also displayed on a list with direct links, which makes it really easy to navigate to their location and fix them.
Accessibility issues listed on a table, including direct links to each issue.
How to activate the Accessibility Toolkit on Moodle
From the Site administration panel, Moodle admins will find the Accessibility Toolkit under Admin tools in the Plugins section. The new ‘Brickfield Registration’ link will enable admins to register their Moodle site with Brickfield Education Labs and receive an API Key and Secret Key to enable the automatic analysis of their site.
The Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit: Premium and Enterprise Versions
The Brickfield Accessibility Starter Toolkit included in Moodle 3.11 is a subset of Brickfield Education Labs’ other Toolkits: Premium and Enterprise. These are available on a yearly subscription and provide extra features on top of the Starter version, including enhanced analysis of content and comprehensive reporting, automated fixing of accessibility issues and improved workflows for users to avoid creating more accessibility issues, as detailed in the table below:
| Starter | Premium | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common rule analysis | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Basic reporting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Links to errors | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Enhanced rule analysis | Yes | Yes | |
| Complete reporting | Yes | Yes | |
| Error Dashboard | Yes | Yes | |
| Automated Remediation tools | Yes | Yes | |
| Triage interfaces for bulk fixing issues | Yes | Yes | |
| Improved Editor | Yes | Yes | |
| User Interface Improvements | Yes | Yes | |
| Performance support materials | Yes | Yes | |
| Complimentary training course for staff | Yes | Yes | |
| Accessible file formats | Yes | ||
| Conversion to audio file | Yes | ||
| Student self service conversion | Yes | ||
| Conversion to Ebook | Yes |
Full details of the Premium and Enterprise subscriptions of the Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit are available on Brickfield Education Labs’ website.
