Accessibility

Your content's structure

Why is content structure needed?

A logical heading structure with descriptive headings helps everyone to read and understand the content on a web page. Headings show how content should be organised on the page just like a table of contents. This helps screen reader users to navigate content and find the information they need. People with cognitive and reading disabilities find it easier to read content when it is broken down into logical sections with descriptive headings.

How to structure your content effectively

All text should be formatted consistently so that pages of content do not look messy and hard to read. This happens if a variety of fonts, text sizes and font colours are copied into a page from various sources. Use formatting styles or edit the text in HTML mode as good accessibility practice. Screen reader software will use the HTML formatting when navigating and reading a page out loud.

Copying and pasting text from other software such as Microsoft Word carries over some hidden formatting code that might not be compatible with Moodle. The following practice will help you avoid issues related to this and provide more consistently formatted text and tables:

• Copy and paste text into a text editor (such as Notepad) to strip out any hidden code. Then copy and paste the text from the text editor into a Moodle book. Reformat the text if necessary, using the Moodle formatting tools – or switch to HTML editing mode if you are comfortable editing in HTML.
• You must use heading, paragraph and list styles consistently in the Moodle formatting tools. If you’re in HTML editing mode, note that large, medium and small headings are tagged <h3></h3>, <h4></h4> and <h5></h5>; paragraphs are tagged <p></p>, and bullet lists are tagged <ul></ul> at the start and end with each item in the list tagged <li></li>. To help with accessibility, do not ‘skip’ heading levels – that is, don’t go from a heading tagged <h3></h3> straight to a heading tagged <h5></h5>.
• If you have written your content in Word and want to import it into a Moodle book, you can do this if you have applied heading and paragraph styles consistently in Word. Elsewhere in this guide you can find notes on importing text from Microsoft Word. 
• Ensure all tables use HTML styles and keep the tables simple. It is better to have a series of simple tables that explain how information and ideas are organised than one large and complicated table, which could hinder interpretation and not display well – especially if the learner is accessing your course on a mobile device. Avoid inserting tables as images, because these will be unreadable to screen reader software and difficult to describe in an image's alt text.