Atto Toolbar: Accessibility Tool in Moodle

Moodle Accessibility Checker

The Atto Toolbar within Moodle includes an Accessibility Checker. The Accessibility Checker helps to check for common accessibility errors in text which could prevent all users from accessing information or functionality equally.

The Accessibility Checker will check for:

  • Images with missing or empty alt text (unless they have the presentation role)
  • Insufficient contrast of font color and background color
  • Long blocks of text that are not sufficiently broken up into headings
  • All tables include captions
  • Tables should not contain merged cells as they are difficult to navigate with screen readers
  • All tables should contain row or column headers

The toolbar icon is of a figure in a black circle.

Accessibility Checker icon in Atto Text Editor


To find it, you may need to select the "expand options" arrow in the ATTO Toolbar to open all options there.

Location of Accessibility Checker in ATTO text editor panel

The image below shows the Accessibility Checker displaying its results. It has identified the text and advises that "The colors of the foreground and background text do not have enough contrast. To fix this warning, change either foreground or background color of the text so that it is easier to read".

Pop-up accessibility checker results highlighting a lack of constrast between one sentence in the label and the background


A Note about Automated Accessibility Checkers

While automated accessibility checkers can be very useful, it's important to recognize that these tools alone are not sufficient to guarantee that your content is, in fact, fully accessible. Automated accessibility checkers can be found in a variety of places:

When you have access to tools such as these, it's a good idea to use them! These accessibility checkers will catch many commonly missed elements of accessibility. They are particularly good at:

  • Finding missing alternative text for images
  • Finding issues with document ordering and hierarchy, such as headers or missing titles

Banana Peel
Accessibility Pitfall
However, just because an accessibility checker returns a result that says "No accessibility issues found!" it doesn't mean that there are no possible issues with accessibility in your document.

Think of it this way: if your students said that their document didn't have any spelling or grammar issues because the spellchecker said all was clear, what would your response to them be? Accessibility checkers are similar tools: they can catch the most straightforward and automatic problems with accessibility, but they cannot substitute for human judgment and discretion.



Citation and link: IT Services. (2019, September 8). Using Moodle accessibility tools. University of Warwick. https://warwick.ac.uk/services/its/servicessupport/academictechnology/support/guides/moodle-guides/mdl-86/