This Power Point was developed for Moodle Moot Canada 2011 and delivered May 4 2011.

1. Blind,
Deafblind and Nancy Friday from the
AlphaPlus Centre, Toronto,
Partially Ontario
www.alphaplus.ca
Sighted Adult nfriday@alphaplus.ca
Learners Use Lee Garrett from CNIB
Literacy Program for
Moodle in Deafblind Adults
Hamilton, Ontario: Specialist
Ontario Deafblind Literacy
www.cnib.ca
Lee.Garrett@cnib.ca

2. Moodle
Agenda
• Introduce our target audience and need for distance learning
• Customization of our Moodle site
• Course development considerations
• Course delivery
• Challenges
• Research
• What we need from the Moodle community
• Our needs moving forward

3. Moodle
Partnership
Nancy Friday Lee Garrett
AlphaPlus provides The CNIB Literacy
expertise to support Program for Deafblind
adult educators in Adults provides
Ontario in their use of individualized Literacy
innovative learning and Basic Skills
technologies – what to instruction for
use, how and when deafblind adults

4. Moodle
Adult literacy
• Four out of 10 adult Canadians, age 16 to 65 struggle with low
literacy (that’s 9 million people!)
• Low literacy levels are tied to lower rates of employment, lower
Economic status, lower physical and mental health status and
lower levels of civic and community involvement
• The Ontario Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities funds
Literacy and Basic Skills programs under the Employment Ontario
Umbrella of Services
• Programs serve adults learners from basic level to GED prep level
with goals of Employment, Further Education & Greater Personal
Independence

5. Moodle
Program Participants
Adults who lack the necessary Literacy and Basic skills
necessary to be fully independent, seek or maintain
employment or participate in further education and training
Blind: with no useable vision
– Require sight substitution technology – may or may not be
braille users
Deaf blind: combined vision and hearing loss
- Require different types of communication methods
- May have: congenital deafness with acquired blindness,
congenital blindness with acquired deafness; congenital
deafblindess or acquired deafblindness
Partially Sighted: have some useable vision
- Require sight enhancement technology such as Zoom Text or
other screen readers

6. Moodle
CNIB Mission
Our missions is to enhance independence
for Canadians who are blind, deafblind or
partially sighted and to be the leader in
promoting vision health.
The CNIB, recognizes the specialized
literacy needs of deafblind clients and
their limited access to community
programs. A Literacy Program
specifically for Deafblind Adults was
established in 1986 and an accessible
Moodle site in 2010.

7. Moodle
The CNIB Literacy Program
for Deafblind Adults
• 5 sites across Ontario (London, Hamilton, Brantford, Toronto & Ottawa)
• The only English Literacy Program of it’s kind in Canada (and 1 of only
3 in the world)
• Supports Adult learners pursuing goals of Greater Personal
Independence, Employment or Further Education
• Provides individualized literacy instruction to deafblind adults in each
learners preferred method of communication
• Has specialized technology and instructors who are knowledgeable in
operating and teaching with low vision devices
• Program is free of charge to students

8. Moodle
Need for distance learning
• Only 5 physical classrooms across the entire province of
Ontario
• All located in major cities
• Distances from their home to the program can be more than
50 km
• Many Rural learners
• Many learners don’t have private transportation (don’t drive)
• May live in areas without ready access to public transportation
• Disabled transit is limited in providing flexible scheduling
• Many have mobility issues and can’t travel unattended
Quality Distance or “E-channel Learning” may
be their only option for enhancing their
knowledge and skills

9. Moodle
Moodle training
•AlphaPlus offers 2 levels of Moodle training to Ontario Deaf,
Aboriginal, Francophone and Anglo educators funded by MTCU
•MTCU provided special project funding to develop and make
available online The Deafblind Curriculum Framework
•Moodle training required development and delivery of a 3-week
Moodle course and Lee developed her course on one of the
Deafblind Curriculum topics: Manage Health Needs
•AlphaPlus’ Moodle course site didn’t meet specific needs of
Deafblind students
•AlphaPlus worked with Lee to develop a Moodle site to meet
audience needs and Lambda Canadian Moodle partner for the
customization expertise

10. http://cnib.alphaplus.ca
Site Development

11. http://cnib.alphaplus.ca
Site Development

12. http://cnib.alphaplus.ca
Site Development
• 11 course categories
• Lambda customization
• Category summaries of
text + image used
• Defined category borders
• Importance of images
• Importance of alternate
image text for screen
reader

13. Moodle
Course Titles: accessibility info.

14. Moodle
Course Development - theme

15. Moodle
Course Development - theme

16. Moodle
Course Delivery - Glossary

17. Moodle
Course Delivery Challenges
1. Live Chat pop-up screen
• Individuals requiring sight substitution technology use a
program called JAWS – a screen reading software
• JAWS is unable to access the pop up screen in the live
chat feature

18. Moodle
Course Delivery Challenges
2. Video blogs
• Partially sighted sign language users need to communicate
through a video blog
• What is the best technology for this?
• Resolution quality & display size
• Speed control for the video – slow it down for greater
clarity

19. Moodle
Course Delivery Challenge
3. Video Speed Control
• Low vision sign language users need to be able to slow down the
speed of video materials in order to read the signs clearly
• Low vision sign language users could benefit from a feature
which allows any video components to be enlarged to full screen
while maintaining a high quality resolution

20. Moodle
Other Challenges Ahead
• We haven’t updated to Moodle 2.0 yet
• What will happen to our customizations?
• Will the CNWL theme be compatible?
• Will the Accessibility block plug-in work?
• Will software programs like enounce that enables users
to slow down video work with Moodle?

21. Moodle
Research found
• CANnect Report Sept 2009
http://www.cannect.org/testing-moodle.html
• EU4All Open University has been using Moodle since 2006
and uses content personalization to make Moodle courses
accessible to students http://www.eu4all-project.eu/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWXPfFgivZk&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

22. Moodle
Needs from Moodle
• Blind and Deafblind Forum separate
from Accessibility Forum
• Incorporation of Video blogs
• Larger Resource and Activity icons with
clear resolution and can be size adjusted
• 3 ring binder format for Book resource
set up

23. Moodle
Our Needs
• We would like to connect with others serving this user group?
• We would love to share access to Deaf and Deafblind Moodle
sites
• We would love to work with Moodle developers interested in this
user group
• We would love to access Moodle resource and activity icons
that are a larger with high resolution

24. Moodle
Questions or Comments
? ? ?
? ?