Accessibility in Totara

What is accessibility?

Accessibility refers to designing systems and products in a way that ensures that people of all abilities can use them. This means making adjustments so that users with physical, sensory, or cognitive impairments can use the system or product. Accessible design is important because it promotes inclusivity, reduces discrimination, and improves the user experience for all users regardless of ability. 

In Totara, this means users can independently access as much of their Totara site as possible. Totara is designed with accessibility in mind; see Accessibility for more information. 

However, Totara is highly customisable, and the majority of content on your site will be created or uploaded by you and your users. This means that while Totara may be accessible as a platform, the content you add and the way you configure your site can introduce accessibility issues for your users. In this guide we've covered some of the general principles of accessibility, as well as how to ensure that your site and content are as accessible as possible.

Theme and site appearance

Colours

Ensuring that your site and content have sufficient colour contrast helps users with varying levels of eyesight to read and understand things on a screen.

When setting the Header text colour and Header background colour in the theme settings, ensure that the colour contrast ratio is sufficient for users to read it. You can check the colour contrast ratio using a tool such as WebAIM's Contrast Checker.

This also applies to any other learning content you create, such as SCORM packages or PDF resources.

Consistent navigation

In Totara, you can configure a number of different navigation elements, including the main menu, quick-access menu, dashboards and blocks. When customising any of these elements, ensure that the navigation is predictable and consistent, meaning users will have a good idea of where each link will take them.

Additionally, any links to external sites should open in a new tab.

Font choice

Some fonts are easier to read on a screen than others, so think carefully about your font choices. Typically, sans serif fonts are recommended. Other factors such as font weight and spacing are also important to consider.

Creating accessible content

Course activities and interactions

When adding content to Totara courses, you need to be aware of any accessibility issues this may introduce. For example, if you plan on using SCORM activities, these may include activities or interaction types that aren't accessible for your users. Drag-and-drop questions, where a user needs to drag an item into place, can be difficult for users with mobility impairments. System simulations may be completely inaccessible to learners using screen readers or other assistive technologies. When selecting a content authoring tool, we strongly recommend that you assess each tool's accessibility compliance.

This is also true of the different quiz question types available in Totara, so when creating a quiz in a course you need to consider whether each question type is appropriate for your target audience.

Headings

Using headings appropriately is important as it makes your content more structured and helps with readability, as well as making it easier for users with assistive technology to navigate your courses.

When creating content in a text editor, for example, consider which heading levels you're using in that content in relation to the whole page. Do all of the heading levels on a page make sense for a learner?

Images and media

Most Totara sites will use a combination of static images and video or animation to improve the look and feel of the site, present important information, and elevate content. However, there are some principles to follow to minimise the accessibility risks that come with adding media.

Users with sight impairments may struggle with images or video, while users with hearing impairments might miss out on video voiceover or other audio elements. Therefore it's important to consider how you can ensure that all learners have access to the same information. Have you ever been on crowded public transport with no headphones, but wanted to watch a video? Both physical impairments and the context your learners are currently in make it important to consider how to ensure that all learners have access to the same information.

One significant issue with images and media is that this content won't be detected by screen readers (except for alternative text). Where important information is presented in graphics (for example, a diagram or infographic), ensure that you've presented this information in an alternative format. For the same reason, it's recommended that you don't use graphical text. Instead, content should be primarily included as text, with images used to supplement the text or add visual flair. Most modern devices allow a learner to increase the size of text to suit their needs, but the same is not true for media.

If you include any videos on dashboards or in learning materials, ensure that they have closed captions or a transcript where possible. In the Totara Academy, we include closed captions on all of the videos in our courses, which are hosted on YouTube.

Additionally, we include a transcript directly below any videos, and also provide a downloadable PDF version.

Plain English

When writing content for your site, it's important that you write in a clear, straightforward way to ensure that users understand you. Plain English is a style of writing focused on clarity and being easy to read by the intended audience. By writing in plain English, you can reduce the chance of your users being confused or misunderstanding. Perhaps most importantly, this also makes your content more accessible to non-native English speakers, users with cognitive impairments, and with varying levels of literacy.

Of course, if your content is delivered in other languages, the same principles may apply.

We also recommend creating and using a style guide to ensure that your writing, structure and formatting are consistent across assets.

Alternative text

Any images on your Totara site that contain any meaning beyond basic decoration should have alternative text (also called alt text), allowing visually impaired users to know what the images show. When adding content in the Weka editor, such as in resources or course activities, you can add alternative text to an image. For images in featured links blocks, you can provide alternative text in the Alternate text field. You can also add alternative text to the site logo in the theme settings.

Alternative text should be concise and descriptive - you should aim to convey the meaning of the image, rather than all of the minor details.

Summary

Accessibility isn’t always black and white - a site isn’t just accessible or not accessible. Accessibility exists on a scale, where you can always improve in some way. It also isn’t just a case of applying a set of guidelines when initially setting up a site or creating content. Instead, it is a continuous, iterative process in which you should continuously review your site and gather feedback. In doing so, you can best serve your Totara site’s users and their specific needs.