If you are a student with dyslexia, reading on Moodle might be difficult. However, there are dyslexia-friendly fonts, and those fonts can be turned on in Moodle—just ask your professor about Moove. In fact, Moodle has several accessibility features that students and faculty alike can take advantage of. Read more about them below!
Academic Technologist Don Vosburg works with Carleton College’s Office of Accessibility Resources (OAR) and faculty to make sure that Carleton’s instructional technologies at Carleton are accessible. One key application is Moodle.
Carleton professors can enable accessibility features through activating the “Moove” theme. They can do this by navigating to the “Appearance” section, selecting “Force Theme,” then clicking “Moove” in the dropdown menu. This may change the position of certain elements of the professor’s Moodle page, but Moove will add optional student customization. Once the Moove theme is forced, students can click into their Moodle profile and select elements from the newly enabled accessibility system, which will affect the Moodle page it is turned on for. From there, students can enable an accessibility toolbar. The default font will be changed to one that is dyslexia-friendly. Students can also change font sizes, colors, and more.
Professors can adjust their course pages so they work well with screen readers. For example, screen readers often do not work well with button functions on Moodle pages. Additionally, setting links to open in a new tab can hinder some screen readers. However, Don notes that if setting a link to open in a new window is preferable or necessary, adding a warning beforehand can be helpful.
In Moodle, faculty also have access to a software called Ally, which they can turn on for each course they teach. Ally provides alternative formats to some document types uploaded into Moodle. If you are a student, you may have to ask your professor to turn on Ally. Once it is on, a black “A” should appear next to course documents. After clicking on the “A”, an alternative formats menu should pop up. Ally supports an audio format, eBraille, an html version, and the BeeLine reader.
To learn more about accessibility options, students can get in touch with OAR, campus assistive technologists, and/or Carleton’s assistive technology program for more assistance.