Noteable - Accessibility Statement for the Moodle component service

⤺ accessibility

Application accessibility statement in line with Public Sector Body (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018

This accessibility statement applies to the Moodle service for the Noteable website at (https://noteable.edina.ac.uk/moodle/). Parallel statements are available for the website, service, and StatusPage.

Note that this test applies to the Moodle Service, not user-generated content. For example, it is possible for a tutor to add a graphic of text as part of their course - which would be an accessibility failure.

This application is run by EDINA, for the University of Edinburgh. Our aim is for as many people as possible to be able to use this website. That means you should be able to:

• navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
• navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
• listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)
• understand the content of the application
• zoom in up to 400% without the text spilling off the screen
• zoom in and out while using the application
• change colours, contrast levels and fonts using your browser settings

Customising the application

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability. This is an external site with suggestions to make your computer more accessible:

AbilityNet - My Computer My Way

With a few simple steps you can customise the appearance of our website using your browser settings to make it easier to read and navigate:

Additional information on how to customise our website appearance

How accessible this application is

The moodle service is running Moodle version 4.1 - We know some parts of this application are not fully accessible:

• some parts may not be fully compatible with screen readers (such as the Notebook Document pages)
• sometimes it can be hard to tell where you have navigated to using only the keyboard
• some non-text content does not have text alternatives
• some website features include pop-up windows. User are notified through the cursor changing to a hand-click icon when hovering over links which will open a new tab or window
• there may be some use of block italics and text over a background that changes colour
• Noteable is not primarily designed to be used on devices with particularly small screens smaller than 10 inches (such as a smartphone)
• some backgrounds change colour, with the user unable to pause or stop
• magnification beyond 200% may lead to reflow issues, where horizontal scrolling is necessary to see all content
• not all colour contrasts meet the recommended Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard
• some images may fail colour contrast guidelines if users redefine the colour palette in their browser

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website or the Noteable website in a different format such as an accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

• email edina@ed.ac.uk
• call us on 0131 650 3302
• British Sign Language (BSL) users can contact us via Contact SCOTLAND BSL, the on-line BSL interpreting service

We will consider your request and get back to you within 5 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this application

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of the Noteable website. If you find any problems not listed on this page, or think we're not meeting accessibility requirements:

• email us at edina@ed.ac.uk
• call us on 0131 650 3302
• British Sign Language (BSL) users can contact us via Contact SCOTLAND BSL, the online BSL interpreting service

We will consider your report and get back to you within 5 working days.

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the 'accessibility regulations'). If you're not happy with how we respond to your complaint please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) directly.

Contact details for the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS)

The UK government has also produced information on how to report accessibility issues: Reporting an accessibility problem on a public sector website.

Contacting us by phone using British Sign Language

Contact SCOTLAND BSL runs a service for British Sign Language users and all of Scotland's public bodies using video relay. This enables sign language users to contact public bodies and vice versa. The service operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Technical information about this application's accessibility

EDINA is committed to making the whole Noteable service accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance status

Moodle 4.1 is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard, owing to the non-compliances listed below.

Non accessible content

The Moodle service has non-compliance issues noted below.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

The following items to not comply with the WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria:

• 1.1.1 - Non-text Content
  • In most cases, graphics are included as decorative and should be ignored by screen readers - this includes graphics in the main menus, graphics for courses, and icons beside course "activities". There are a few situations where there is no text content, just the decorative graphic, in an aria-labelled element
• 1.3.1 - Info and Relationships
  • The service does not use HTML Landmarks well, so screen readers are not able to programatically determine areas & sections
  • Not all elements have unique accessible names (id attribute and/or role/label/title combination.), such as progression-bars
• 1.3.2 - Meaningful Sequence
  • The main menu is not within the nav section
• 1.3.5 - Identify Input Purpose
  • Not all inputs specify the type of data they want - for example the email address input field in the user profile specify type="text" rather than type="email"
• 1.4.3 - Contrast (Minimum)
  • We have identified that the left & right arrows in the calendar fail contrast levels, because they only have a single non-text character
• 1.4.10 - Reflow
  • The main menu has a fixed width, which sits over the main body of the page at reasonable zooming levels
  • At high levels of zoom, text overflows the window without a horizontal scroll-bar
• 1.4.11 - Non-text contrast
  • There are a few instances where the colour of the focus indicator and the background colour of the element do not have a sufficient contrast ratio
• 2.4.1 - Bypass Blocks
  • The module that provides the status pop-up is missing a title attribute, thus some Screen Readers cannot label it
• 2.4.4 - Link Purpose (In Context)
  • This Success Criterion asks that links to different places have different text. It is the flip-side to 3.2.4 - Consistent Identification.
  • The "exemplars" page has multiple links to different places, however they all have the same text.
• 2.4.5 - Multiple Ways
  • There is not complete site map or similar technique to provide alternative options for finding content within the service
• 2.4.6 - Headings and Labels
  • There are a number of instances where multiple (different) headings have the same text
• 2.4.7 - Focus Visible
  • There are instances where elements in the "Tabbing Order" are hidden from the viewer
• 3.2.4 - Consistent Identification
  • This Success Criterion asks that links to the same place have consistent text.This is the flip-side to 2.4.4 - Link Purpose (In Context)
  • There are a number of places where links to the same place have different text
• 4.1.2 - Name, Role, Value
  • Several web forms are missing their name, role, or value

Disproportionate burden

We are not currently claiming that any accessibility problems would be a disproportionate burden to fix.

Content that's not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

We will continue to address the accessibility issues highlighted, working alongside Moodle to deliver a solution or suitable workaround. We have shared our accessibility testing results with Moodle and hope to have a complete solution or significant improvement in place by December 2025.

While we are in the process of resolving these accessibility issues, we will ensure reasonable adjustments are in place to make sure no user is disadvantaged. As changes are made, we will continue to review accessibility and retest the accessibility of this application.

What we're doing to improve accessibility

The Noteable service team will keep the moodle service current with the latest Long Term Support [LTS] release.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 3rd November 2022. It was last reviewed in December 2024.

Testing

This website was last tested by the Noteable website team within the Information Services Group directorate. The testing was carried out primarily using a combination of Firefox & Google Chrome browsers on a Linux system; with MacOS (and Safari) and Windows 10 (and Microsoft Edge) also used for comparative purposes, including screen reader compatibility. Lynx was used to test text-only navigation for the main website (but not the notebooks). In particular, the website was tested using Chrome on multiple platforms since it is by far the most popular browser when using a screen reader and the most popular browser when using the Noteable website. Current worldwide usage levels for different screen readers and browsers can be found in the December 2023 to January 2024 WebAIM annual survey.

Automated testing

We try to be consistent with automated testing across all components in the Noteable service.

A representative sample of pages were chosen to cover the different types of content and presentation within the website.

We used a range of toolkits and services to check each page:

• The IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker is an open source tool for web developers and auditors that utilizes IBM's accessibility rule engine, which detects accessibility issues for web pages and web applications
• The Google Chrome Lighthouse DevTool is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. It has audits for performance, accessibility, best practice, progressive web apps, SEO and more
• The WAVE® Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool from WebAIM is a suite of evaluation tools that helps authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities
• The Accessibility tree viewer from the Firefox Developer Tools extension
• The Polypane web-development browser

We recognise the limitations of automated testing and we supplemented this with manual testing.

Manual Testing

Basic manual testing is viewing each page in a variety of browser/Operating System.

Content across the Noteable website has been tested without a mouse through keyboard navigation and has been found to be accessible using a keyboard interface. Note that the Jupyter and RStudio applications generally "tab" to navigate between sections, and "arrow key" within menus.

Using Windows 10 [Home Edition], We

• visually compared all pages using Firefox, Chrome, and Edge
• tested all pages using NVDA screen reader in Chrome and Edge (again, noting that the Jupyter and RStudio interfaces are complicated apps for a Screen Reader to address)
• tested all pages using the Windows magnifier tool

Using MacOS X [Big Sur], we

• visually compared all pages using Firefox, Chrome, and Safari
• tested all pages isung the built-in voiceOver screen reader (again, noting that the Jupyter and RStudio interfaces are complicated apps for a Screen Reader to address)

Using Linux [Linux Mint 22 LTS], we visually compared all pages using Firefox and Chrome, and used Polypane to compare rendering across multiple screen sized simultaniously.

We also tested for the following:

• spellcheck functionality
• scaling using different resolutions from –25% to +500%
• options to customise the interface (magnification, font, background colour et. cetera)
• notice of links to new window or tab when navigating the website
• information conveyed in colour or sound only
• flashing or scrolling text
• time limits

Our findings on these features are summarised above.

Changes since the previous statement

December 2024

Update all review and testing to WCAG 2.2