Accessibility statement for City, University of London’s Moodle Platform

This accessibility statement applies to City, University of London’s Moodle website (https://moodle4.city.ac.uk). Moodle is an online learning platform (or virtual learning environment) for staff and students. It does not cover external websites and services that may be linked to from inside this website or have content embedded in this website as these are covered by additional accessibility statements. The current version of Moodle on this site is 4.1.

Using this service

This website is run by City, University of London. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

change colours, contrast levels and fonts
zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
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)

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is

Our goal is for this website to be fully accessible and usable for all users regardless of ability. However the variety of third-party plugins and user-generated content means it is very difficult to maintain a fully accessible site.

Our Moodle uses the ‘Atto’ text editor as the default editor. This has a number of features to encourage accessible content authoring including a limited set of html editing functions (to discourage user-defined html styles), an in-built accessibility checker, a maths equation to text converter and enforced image alt tags.

Moodle maintains a page with information about accessibility conformance, authoring features, coding standards, external resources and accessibility tools.

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

Some image links may contain multiple accessible names, all of which are announced by a screen reader
Some elements of the page may be cut off or obscured when zooming page content
Some elements may be cut off or difficult to read when zooming text only to 200%
Some elements of the website may not be accessible to users of Dragon Naturally Speaking
Some heading levels may be skipped across the platform
Some video streams don’t contain captions or have transcripts available
Most video streams don’t have audio descriptions available
Some images do not have alternative text

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, contact:

IT Self Service call 0207 040 8181 or visit an IT Service Desk on campus

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

If you find some content or a document that is not accessible, you should speak to the owner of the content or your module leader or your personal tutor or your course officer in the first instance about how they can provide an alternative.

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

IT Self Service call 0207 040 8181 or visit an IT Service Desk on campus

For more information about IT Services for students, please visit the Student Hub: IT Services website.

In the event that you remain dissatisfied, then please follow the University’s existing complaints procedure.

You may wish to consider escalating your concerns to Student Health and Wellbeing by registering, telephoning +44 (0)20 7040 0246 or emailing wellbeing@city.ac.uk the first instance under stage 1 of this procedure, before completing the stage 2 complaints form.

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, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

To get in touch with someone to discuss accessibility issues for this website, please contact:

IT Self Service or call 0207 040 8181 or visit an IT Service Desk on campus

For more information about IT Services for students please visit the Student Hub: IT Services website.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

City, University of London is committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance Status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

We are also aware that WCAG 2.2 has introduced new success criteria for accessibility, and we are actively working towards achieving full compliance by testing our web pages and content against the new checkpoints.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Moodle maintains a list of accessibility issues.

A list of specific non-compliances is given below:

Some alternative text may contain multiple accessible text attributes which may cause the information to be repeated by screen readers. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 Non-Text Content.
We plan to resolve this by: 1st April, 2024
When disabling CSS on the page, some content will be displayed in the incorrect order. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence.
We plan to resolve this by: 1st April, 2024
Some links on the ‘Cookie consent’ page lack additional styling to differentiate the link text from the surrounding text. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.1 Use of Colour.
We plan to resolve this by: 1st November, 2023 RESOLVED
Some content such as the sticky navigation may cause content to be overlapped and difficult to read at increased zoom levels. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.10 Reflow.
We plan to resolve this by: 1st April, 2024
Some date elements may not be announced correctly depending on the screen reader that is used to navigate content. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value.
We plan to resolve this by: Date TBC
Some hidden headings and skip links are present that are not visible on the page. This information may be lost for non-screen reader users. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value.
We plan to resolve this by: 1st April, 2024
When multiple scrollbars are present, users of Dragon Naturally Speaking may not be able to scroll all content. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value.
We plan to resolve this by: Date TBC
Where upload elements are present, users of Dragon Naturally Speaking may be required to use the mouse grid feature to interact with the feature. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value
We plan to resolve this by: Date TBC

Disproportionate burden

The following are issues relating to core Moodle and not possible for us to fix:

Some pages may have skipped heading levels that may introduce confusion for the user as they navigate the page.
Some accessible text for elements within the quiz, such as the “flag” button may not have appropriate accessible text.
Some components may have a visual label that differs from the accessible text. This may interfere with voice recognition software.
Calendar content that is displayed on hover overlaps other content and cannot be dismissed using a keypress.
Calendar content that is displayed on hover is dismissed after the trigger is removed so content cannot be hovered using the mouse.
Some content may become overlapped or unreadable when zooming text only to 200%
Nested tables are present within the glossary and may result in some markup being confusing when announced by screen readers.

City is considering (October 2023 to January 2024) whether a disproportionate burden assessment exercise is a feasible way to assess what the cost may be of attempting to make Moodle more compliant than it is currently, which is only partially compliant.

City is considering (October 2023 to January 2024) whether a disproportionate burden assessment exercise is a feasible way to assess what the cost may be of attempting to make Moodle 3rd Party Plugins more compliant than they are currently, which is only partially compliant.

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

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Through the provision of workshops and online guidance, City is encouraging content creators to ensure that newly created content, PDFs and MSOffice documents are accessible
We introduced an instructor content accessibility reporting tool (Ally) on all modules
We enabled an automated format conversion tool (Ally) on all applicable content

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 17th August 2023. It was last reviewed on 6th October 2023.

This website was last tested on 16th August 2023. The test was carried out by Zoonou.

Zoonou used WCAG-EM to define the pages tested and test approach.

WCAG 2.2 note added 7th February 2024