Instructions & Course Materials
The choice of Moodle as a central platform for presenting and distributing your learning content is explicitly recommended regarding accessibility for people with disabilities of various kinds. For many students, gathering learning content from various sources is itself a first major hurdle.
Moodle as an e-learning platform comes with everything it takes to ensure good accessibility in the sense of Universal Design: System and content can be used flexibly and are compatible with assistive technologies such as screen readers and speech input software (machine readability).
If you consider using Moodle for document distribution, make sure all documents are accessible themselves. See our Accessible Documents & Presentations section.
Settings and components
The Tiles structure
The Tiles view leads to an illogical heading structure which can be confusing and misleading for new participants
Use e.g. Custom Sections view instead
Change course format settings
From the course menu choose
- Settings
- Course format
- Select format from drop down
You can try out other course formats from the list and test them using the h123 headings bookmarklet: external page h123 external page Bookmarklet
There, drag n’ drop one of the blue symbols to your bookmarks list. E.g.: "Show Headings"
From 2025, we will support your efforts to improve the accessibility of your Moodle courses with the Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit. It allows our authors to get an overview of the accessibility of their editorial Moodle content (texts, images, tables, media and links). Links to our resources and instructions for improving accessibility are directly linked form Moodle.
However, the Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit must be added manually by lecturers/teachers for each Moodle course individually as a block in the right sidebar. This is done as follows:
- Navigate to your course
- Activate the edit mode
- Open the sidebar
- Click on “+ Add block” and then on “Accessibility+ Review”.
Then activate the plugin by starting the first accessibility analysis of the course by clicking on “Submit for analysis”.
Wait until the first analysis has been completed. This may take several hours.
Get an overview of the accessibility of the course in the Accessibility+ Review. Find out how to avoid problems with images, layout, links, media, tables and text in the guidelines.
Have fun with the tool and good luck with the implementation.
Support at any time at
Caution with Moodle plugins and components
Moodle promises to create the conditions for producing accessible content with its core components. The next section describes the most important aspects to consider.
Caution is advised with the countless additional modules and components available, such as H5P quizzes, video players and many more.
We are currently gathering experience on the accessibility of frequently used components and plug-ins and keeping it up to date. Please help us!
Are you currently revising your Moodle content or creating a new course in Moodle? Contact us at for an assessment of the components/modules you plan to use. We will be happy to help develop optimal configurations or show alternative ways and benefit from your experience.
In Moodle, you can basically choose between two options for providing video content.
- Upload to the Kaltura video platform hosted at ETH Zürich and embed in Moodle
- Embedding from commercial video platforms such as Youtube or Vimeo
For both ways there are options to ensure that embedded video players are accessible.
Note: We strongly recommend using Kaltura for your video to protect your own video content in terms of copyright.
See also: Accessible Media
Kaltura: accessible set up
For videos in Moodle, we recommend embedding via Kaltura. It is important that you select the Full Player option and upload carefully checked caption files to ensure accessibility.
Chosse the "Embed Kaltura Media" button in the settings editor.
Settings > General > Embed Kaltura Media
Go to thedesired video from your media collection and click on "Embed Settings".
From the new view choose Full Player from the Choose Player drop down menu.
This player allows users to customize their video experience (display of captions, playback speed, position in the video, volume, ...). Even with keyboard alone.
Embed Settings > Choose Player > Full Player
Closed Captions in Kaltura
Caption files are added to videos in the Kaltura media collection “My Media” in the Moodle main menu.
If you do not have any caption files for your video ready, you can easily generate them automatically using the sonix.ai transcription service. Select the .vtt format there. Get access to sonix.ai
In order to upload and embed your caption files to your video, select
My Media > Edit (pen symbol)
On the Edit view of certain video select the Captions tab and upload your captions file. We recommend .vtt format.
Captions > Upload captions file
Youtube: accessible set up
Moodle also allows the embedding of videos from commercial video platforms.
Currently the Youtube video player is quite accessible. See how videos from YouTube can be embedded in Moodle in an accessible way.
Chosse the "Multimedia" button (video / play symbol) in the settings editor.
Settings > General > Multimedia
In the new view select the Video tab and paste the link to your video on a platform.
1) > Video source URL
In the accordeon tab Display options, set a descriptive title for the video you want to embed.
2) > Display options > set Title
In the Advanced settings tab, check the show controls checkbox
3) > Advanced settings > [x] Show controls
In the Subtitles and captions (accordeon tab), open the Captions tab and upload your clean and checked captions file.
4) > Subtitles and captions > Caption (tab) > Upload and set language
Create accessible content
For complex digital content, it is also important in Moodle that accessible content is embedded in a clear and clean headings structure that organises the content hierarchically.
Particular attention should be payed to ensure that the headings describe the subsequent content briefly and concisely in each case, and that the hierarchical structure is reflected in the heading levels chosen. In correctly nested heading structures, no heading levels are skipped.
Screen reader users use headings to navigate. They can jump directly from heading to heading or to the next heading of a certain level.
Headings in the Moodle editor
Upon selecting the text you want to tag as a heading of a particular level, the tinyMCE text editor automatically opens an overlay with tagging and formatting options: with bold, italic, headings of various levels, paragraph, etc.
Checking the Heading Structure
As the overall structure of the headings in Moodle quickly becomes messy, we recommend using the h123 bookmarklet by Hinderling Volkart to check (note: in the role of "student" in Modle) and revise the heading structure before publishing your course.
Install external page h123 Bookmarket
The bookmarklet can be easily dragged into the bookmarks bar of most browsers and used for any web content. Detailed instructions can be found in our TeachingLab Moodle course.
HTML view in the Moodle editor
It is often easier and clearer to edit semantic tags (such as h1-h6) manually in the HTML view of the editor. To do so, click on “View” and choose “<> Source code”:
In the opened overlay, you can adjust the html source code according to your needs:
Blind people and people with other visual impairments are depending alternative presentations of important information solely convey by images. This is particularly important for learning materials.
Therefore write sensible, meaningful alternative texts. In general, the following applies to:
- Simple graphics: give a concise description of what you want to convey with the particular image.
- Linked graphics: Describe the link target or button function
- Decorative graphics: Checkbox "This image is decorative only"
- Complex graphics: If the 125 characters are not sufficient for a precise description, refer in the alternative text to the place in the content where a detailed description of the content can be found.
In the article on Alternative texts and text alternatives you will find detailed guidance helping you decide what a useful text alternative in a specific case might be, as well as a few best-practice examples of text alternatives for complex graphics from learning materials at ETH.
Assign alternative text to image
When images are uploaded and embedded, Moodle explicitly requires an alternative text:
"How would you describe this image to someone who can't see it?" (item 1 in the figure below).
If you try to save the image without entering an alternative text, an error message appears: "An image must have a description, unless it is marked as decorative only." (2).
If the image is indeed descriptive only, check the respective check box (3).
Tables
When data tables are used correctly, in most cases they represent data that is classified according to at least two dimensions. In table presentation, this classification is then reflected as columns and rows. For this reason, accessible tables usually must be implemented with both column and row headings.
Row and column headings are very important for screen reader users. They help them to know the context of table data by announcing the respective row and column headings when changed.
Assign table headings to a row / column
Moodle’s tinyMCE table editor comes with the ability to tag tables table cells as table headings <th>:
- Mark row / columns you want to define as table headings
- Choose Table tab from editor menu
- Choose Cell
- Then Cell properties to open Cell Properties overlay
There choose Header Cell from Cell type overlay:
More complex tables
The first columns or rows do not always contain the most relevant information (e.g. running numbers in the first column). HTML therefore allows table headings (<th> elements) in cells other than the first column/row, or even multiple <th>s, as in our example.
Source code view: Course Settings tab > TinyMCE editor View tab > Source code
Other complex tables come with merged cells and multiple levels of table headings. Although it is generally better to split complex tables into more simple tables, it is possible to also tag these complex tables accessibly in the source code view. In such cases refer to ") to find a feasible solution.
Lists
List tags are crucial for screen reader users. If listings are not tagged as lists, screen reader users have no possibility to estimate their size. This makes it difficult to decide whether the entire list should be “read” or skipped.
Accessible lists of items of any kind must always be explicitly marked as lists. Moodle does not automatically format lists and listings as lists, even if they are preceded by a minus or an asterisk sign. Use the formatting options of the Moodle editor (3) for this purpose.
Write the list items, mark them (1), open the Reveal and hid additions toolbox items (three dots) (2) and choose “Numbered list" or “Bullet list" from the Moodle Editor.
Accessible link texts are self-explanatory in terms of the link's target.
Therefore, avoid link texts such as "click here", "PDF" or "read more" ("hier", "mehr"), where the context is not clear.
Instead, for each link, briefly consider what a precise yet short description might be.
Special attention should be paid to pages with many similar links: Examples:
- Overview page of a newspaper: "to the article“
- Overview page of a course provider: "to the course“
In these cases, include the name of the article / course in the link text.
As with all digital formats and technologies, the following general aspects need to be considered in Moodle:
- PDF Accessibility
- Alt texts and good text alternatives
- Handling colours and contrasts
- Captions and integrated descriptions in videos