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To access the Accessibility Filescan (and all other) blocks, open the "block drawer" on the right of your Moodle course. Please see Moodle Blocks for more thorough information.
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The Accessibility Filescan provides a Summary report on files in the course. Click Details to get more information.
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The Accessibility Filescan tool checks the accessibility of PDF files in a Moodle class and provides a report on the accessibility of each file. The status is either Satisfies all checks, Satisfies some checks, or Satisfies no checks. A PDF file fails if it does not pass any of the checks. A file is marked as check if the file passes at least one check but does not meet all the checks. A PDF passes if it meets all the accessibility checks.
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| title | Please utilize the Accessibility FilescanEven if an instructor is not requiring students to utilize Moodle, the Accessibility Filescan can be a great tool to see where the course stands in terms of accessibility, so consider uploading files but hiding them from students in order to check their accessibility. |
What the tool checks for
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Language
A PDF file stores information about the language of the document. This is used by screen readers and other assistive devices to ensure proper pronunciation and is particularly important for documents that are in foreign languages.
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The following symbols are used to display the result of the Accessibility Filescan.
A green check means the test passed
A red X means the test failed
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Use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract the text from the image of the document. Here are a few options:
For existing PDF documents, upload your file on the convert inaccessible course material page and choose the accessibility conversion option. It is possible to select multiple documents to be converted at one time. You will receive the converted document(s) via email within a few hours.
For newly scanned documents, all department Canon multifunction machines have been set to automatically scan documents using OCR.
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To check that your scan was OCR'd, try copying some text from the document and pasting it into Word. If you can successfully paste the text you copied, your document has been OCR'd, but you should check a few things:
If there isn't any text in the document, please open a ticket with the help desk explaining that the Canon copier is not OCRing documents.
How accurate is the text? If there are significant errors with the accuracy or the reading order, please open a ticket with the help desk and flag the document for the accessibility team.
Setting PDF Title, Language, and Outline
The title, language, and outline can often be fixed by using Adobe Acrobat DC's "Action Wizard", which can be found in the right sidebar. Look for this icon: 
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Alternatively, navigate to the Tools menu → Customize → Action Wizard
One of the first options on the Action Wizard Actions List is to Make Accessible. Follow the steps. This will work for about 70% of documents.
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Quality of the original document is very importantNot all documents can successfully be made accessible. A great deal depends on the quality of the originalthe original document (consult this guide from the University of Washington for what makes a high-quality scan). Even if Acrobat successfully translates an image of text to text, it is very important to review the document. Original documents of poor quality, documents that have a lot of notes or underlines, and documents with blurred text may result in inaccurate translations and gibberish. If you find this to be the case, please contact accessibility@swarthmore.edu for assistance in working with your file. |
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The Accessibility Filescan is a very useful tool to use as an indicator of how much of your course material may be friendly to assistive technology. By assistive technology we mean tools like Kurzweil, Beeline Reader, and Read&Write; screen readers such as VoiceOver, NVDA and JAWS; and various other tools people might use to help them consume course readings.
If you'd like to learn more about accessibility, check out these these posts on the ITS blog.
Bonus Section: using screen readers
Below are a few informative how-to videos on the major screen readers:
VoiceOver on Desktop [video]- native screen reader for iOS
NVDA on Desktop [video] - stands for Non-Visual Desktop Access, only works on Windows
JAWS on Desktop [video] - stands for Job Access With Speech, only works on Windows, is the most robust and hardest to learn