Accessibility Statement for Moodle (QMplus) at Queen Mary University of London

Queen Mary University of London is committed to making its Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This statement applies to all student-facing iterations of Moodle (QMplus), run by Queen Mary University of London. The content on this VLE is designed for everyone to find, read, and understand.

Moodle is highly customisable, and authors are free to create and upload content of their choosing. As a result, it is not possible to guarantee that all content on the VLE is fully accessible. This statement has been written with this in mind. Where we have identified issues with the VLEs accessibility or compatibility with assistive technologies, they are listed below.

If you wish to read the accessibility statement for our external facing website, please visit the Accessibility Statement webpage.

Please note, in this statement, the terms “QMplus” and “Moodle” are interchangeable. 

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this VLE. 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 VLE using just a keyboard,
• Navigate most of the VLE using speech recognition software,
• Listen to most of the VLE using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver).

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

Compliance status

Our current version of Moodle (4.1) is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Our internal policies are that we intend to provide accessible learning resources on our VLE by ensuring:

1. Staff create documents (PowerPoint presentations, Word and PDF) using a clear layout, alt text descriptions for images, sans serif fonts, high contrast coloured text, and descriptive links.
2. All recorded videos – either via QMplus Media (Kaltura), Q-Review (Echo 360) or YouTube – are captioned with additional transcripts available, where possible.
3. Staff adhere to accessibility recommendations when editing within the VLE, such as labels, section headings or resource descriptions.

To achieve this, we have committed to:

• Utilising Brickfield – an accessibility toolkit – which is available across our VLE site,
• Providing guidance and staff development on how to use Brickfield to create inclusive resources,
• Providing guidance and staff development on using in-built accessibility checkers such as those in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint,
• Ensuring students have access to Sensus Access to provide format conversion opportunities where required.

Non-accessible content

As of November 2022, we are aware that:

• Some teaching resources may not function completely with screen reading software due to accessibility issues,
• Some recorded videos do not have text transcripts or captions included,
• Some links are not described effectively and are therefore not as easy to navigate,
• Some third-party interactive teaching activities are not optimised in terms of accessibility, e.g. use of Padlet as an online bulletin board displaying text, images and other media.

Content not within the scope of accessibility regulations

PDFs and documents

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents (essential to providing our services) that were published before 23rd September 2018.

Feedback and contact information

If you have a query regarding the use of the Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit within QMplus, please raise a QMplus ticket with the IT Helpdesk.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared in November 2022 and approved on 31st January 2023.

This statement was last reviewed on 1st March 2024.