Moodle Help Guide

Mount Holyoke uses Moodle themes with known accessible features.  Follow the best practices below to ensure that your Moodle site is accessible.

• Create a hierarchical structure to your Moodle site so that students have an easier time finding related content. 
• Consider displaying courses as one week, topic, or unit at a time.
  • Or group similar materials together into sub-categories (ie. videos, homework readings, quizzes, etc.)
• Collect files on similar topics into related folders.
• Double check that the names of linked documents match what is listed in your syllabus.
• Do not override the forced download document setting.
• Consider carefully when using the Chat feature. There are no new message notifications in the accessible Chat platforms, which negatively affect the usability of the platform. If you have a student using a screen reader, we recommend using Google Chat instead.
• Consider carefully when using other digital or online tools that can present additional accessibility barriers. Contact the Mount Holyoke Technology Access Committee with questions. 
• Create links that use descriptive keywords, not “click here”.
• Do not use color alone to convey meaning.  Include bold, underlining, symbols, or the word “important”  to designate important information.
• Describe images / Add alternative text to images.
  • To add a description to an image in Moodle, click on Edit, then Edit Settings.
  • Move your pointer to the image and click on it. 
  • Once highlighted, click on the Image tool on the menu above and complete the image description box.
  • Click Save Image.
• Use videos that are captioned and provide transcripts of audio files.
• For help with captioning, please see the Audio and Video section of the Accessible Documents and Media Resource page.
• Post accessible Word, PowerPoint and PDF documents. 
• See the Electronic Documents and Texts section of the Accessible Documents and Media Resource page for more information and resources.