Accessibility

By following guidelines and standards, we aim to make our Moodle as accessible as possible. We hope to ensure that this site can be used easily and effectively by everyone, including users with visual impairments, and other special requirements.We have attempted to ensure that all pages meet high levels for web accessibility, and this site is continually under development in order to improve its usability and quality of information.

If you find a problem in using this site, please tell us on al_supportservices@northamptonshire.gov.uk. Browse the topics below for more information.

Accessible themes

The new site includes various accessibility options including a choice four different themes. Themes that can be accessed via the ‘Theme Switcher’ block (see image below). Please note, this block is only available if a user is logged in.

The theme switcher block offers a choice of four different themes that can be accessed via a drop down menu.The four themes are:

• NALS_Staff                        default purple and grey theme with regular text size.  
• NALS_Staff_Lrg_Font        default purple and grey theme but with larger text size.
• Hi_Contrast                        high contrast black and yellow theme with regular text size.
• Hi_Contrast_Lrg_Font        high contrast black and yellow theme with a larger text size.

To select a theme use the drop down option box (the silver box with a down arrow) and select the theme you require. Next, press the 'save' button to activate the theme. At this point the visual appearance of the web page should change according to the theme selected.

Please note, once you have selected a theme the option you have selected will become your preferred theme and saved in your user account preferences. When next logging into Moodle your preference will be remembered and the appropriate theme will be displayed. Themes can be switched and saved as often as you like.

JISC TechDis Toolbar

The JISC TechDis Toolbar has been created as an open-source, cross-browser toolbar to help users customise the way they view and interact with web pages. Features include a text to speech function, spell checking and dictionary facilities, and a feature for gathering referencing information within a web page. It also provides simple ways to adjust the magnification or font used on web pages.

The JISC TechDis Toolbar is suitable for different operating systems and is designed to work with all browsers, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

Features

The table below shows the accessibility features that the toolbar offers. I should be noted that the features on the toolbar may not work with all parts of Moodle, as their functionality is dependent on the design elements within individual pages. It is important to realise it may not be possible to change certain colours, fonts, or even to check spelling in some forms.

	Select the Magnifier buttons to increase or decrease the size of text. If text resizing makes the site unreadable you may wish to use your browser zoom feature to increase both the image and the text sizes.
	Select the Font button to choose a different type of font for the text and increase line spacing.
	Select the Spell Checker button while writing in a plain text form. Suggestions are shown below the text-area after a pause. Disable the checker by selecting the button once more. Note that this may not work with rich-text editors that already have spell checkers.
	Select the Dictionary button after highlighting a word in the web page and a definition from Wiktionary will appear.
	Select the text-to-speech button and choose whether you want the whole page read out loud, or just the highlighted text. You can highlight a portion of text before selecting the Text-to-Speech button to have only that text read out. Wait for that section to finish before highlighting a new section of text. Note that large pages, such as Facebook pages, may require you to select smaller portions of text at a time.
	Select the References button and JISC TechDis Toolbar will scan the page for referencing information - it will collect as much as it can linked to authorship, dates, title of the page, name of the website and the URL. Once you have selected the green tick you can highlight the text and copy it into any notepad or word processor.
	Select the Styles button to alter the colour of the JISC TechDis Toolbar, change the web page colours - background, text and links or choose pre-made page styles. Some web page colour changes also impact on the toolbar.
	Select help to gain access to instructions for use.
	Select the return menu if you wish to restore the webpage to its original style.
	Select close to exit JISC TechDis Toolbar.

For more information about the toolbar visit the TechDis website.