Accessibility (FAQs) By Learning Platform

Moodle 

 

Moodle is a web-based learning platform with short courses.  Courses include Reading, Writing, Math, Science, Digital Skills, and Employment readiness.  

You can do preparation for Ontario Secondary School Credit courses, GED, College, Apprenticeship, and complete Personal Management courses.  

Check out our course catalogue for more details.  We develop all the content on Moodle and are committed to improving and enhancing the accessibility of our products.  All content created over the last several years aligns with the accessibility standards mentioned below.  We do ongoing testing and review of our older curriculum as we work to get all content up to this standard.  If you find something that doesn’t support your needs, please let us know.

Yes, use the Chrome Browser for the best results.  Most content scales to size for the device.  

Please note that on a phone some the interactive activities may be difficult to do, and some images may be difficult to read.  Learners prefer tablets or computers, only using their phone occasionally.

ReadSpeaker has a multi-language translation feature that includes the following languages:

Arabic, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Chinese(Mandarin), Norwegian(Bokmal) Polish, Portuguese(Brazil), Portuguese(Portugal), Spanish, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian.

We strive to have all text meet WAG 2.0 AA colour contrast standards to meet the needs of users with visual difficulties and colour blindness.

  
Moodle has a ReadSpeaker text-to-speech tool that reads text out loud to users and alt-text for images but also has tools for enlarging text, and a page mask bar that you can move to highlight the lines being read.  You can personalize reading speed, set highlighting preferences, and font style, size, and colours.

Closed captions are included in videos. Read Speaker has a MP3 download feature to allow you to listen to text offline.

 

Edmentum  

 

Edmentum is a web-based courseware learning platform with core subjects in Reading, Writing, Math, Science, Digital Skills, and Employment readiness.  

You can do preparation for Ontario Secondary School Credit Courses, GED, College, Apprenticeship, and Personal Management.  

Check out our course catalogue for more details.

Yes, use the Chrome Browser for the best results.  Most content scales to size for the device.  You may need to view in landscape mode to view navigation buttons and a lot of scrolling will be required.  

Please note that on a phone some of the interactive activities may be difficult to do, and some images may be difficult to read. Learners prefer tablets or computers, only using their phone occasionally. 

Edmentum has reading tools with multi-language translation that includes the following languages: 

Arabic, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, French, German, Hindi, Haitian Creole, Hmong Daw, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kiswahili, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Thai, Urdu, Vietnamese.

Edmentum is taking concrete steps to comply with Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act and W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0).

Edmentum provides Reading Tools within a lesson and proper support for screen readers and magnifiers to increase accessibility for the visually impaired. i.e. alt text for images, etc. 

For optimum accessibility and performance, we recommend using Mozilla Firefox as your browser when using the following screen readers:  JAWS, Kurzweil 1000.

Zoomtext magnifies screen content up to 24 times. Combined with the use of a large monitor, Zoomtext can be an invaluable tool for visually impaired students.

Some of Edmentum learning products provide on-screen text backup and closed captions for instructionally significant audio and video.

 

Spellzone  

 

Spellzone is an online English spelling resource used by students aged six to adult.

It unlocks the mystery of Canadian, British, and American English spelling and adapts to all abilities. Including SEND, SLD, ESL students and those with dyslexia.

Students can work on tailored learning pathways at their own pace and on any device.  Spellzone teaches basic phonic spelling rules using multi-sensory activities and tests.

Yes, most content scales to size for the device.  

Please note that on a phone some of the interactive activities may be difficult to do, and some images may be difficult to read.

Words can be translated to 92 different languages via a Dictionary Option search.

Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Cebuano, Chichewa, Chinese Simplified(Voice), Chinese Traditional(Voice), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch(Voice), Esperanto, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French(Voice), Galician, Georgian, German(Voice), Greek, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi(Voice), Hmong, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Indonesian(voice), Irish, Italian(voice), Japanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Korean(voice), Lao, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Māori, Marathi, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian, Persian, Polish(voice), Portuguese(voice), Punjabi, Romanian, Russian(voice), Serbian, Sesotho, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish(voice), Sudanese, Swahili, Swedish, Tajik, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zulu.

Spellzone has features to choose background and text colour, font style, font size and letter spacing.  It also has a text-to-speech function.

Spellzone has Listen and Spell test learning using audio, which could not be done by someone needing auditory accommodations.

 

IXL

 

IXL’s K-12 curriculum is designed with all learners in mind and offers over 8,500 skills in math and language arts.

IXL makes personalized learning easy and accessible, available online for learning anytime. Its real-time diagnostic tool adapts to your learning abilities automatically, adjusting the difficulty of its questions to meet you where you are at.  It tells you what you know, and what you need to work on.  It’s a personalized approach specific to you.

The IXL app is tailor-made for tablets and phones to create a fun, immersive experience that students love.

IXL offers additional Spanish support for a collection of key math skills in pre-K through Geometry.  Your teacher can enable this.

For visual learners, there are picture and word questions with answers in different formats such as drag and drop, mapping, and picture selection. 

IXL’s audio support is available for those who need questions read aloud or who want help sounding out words and phrases.

IXL’s expansive video tutorials library is constantly growing! Access 1,800+ videos and they include the option for English closed captions.
Videos are available on desktop and mobile-web browser, but they are not available on the IXL apps currently.

 

Lexia

 

Lexia is committed to improving literacy for all students through research-proven, technology-based programs, like Core5 and PowerUp.  

These programs include activities that focus on six components of reading:  Phonological awareness, Phonics, Structural Analysis, Automaticity/Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension.

Note:  Lexia will not support use on a phone or tablet.  

An App is available for iPads.

The Language Support Button in PowerUp provides additional support for English language learners and allows them to hear task directions in their native language. Language Support is available in the following languages: 

Arabic, French, Haitian Creole, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese.

Lexia is taking concrete steps toward the goal of achieving alignment of their products and services with accessibility standards, including Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 A and AA criteria to meet the needs of users with visual difficulties and colour blindness.

While Lexia would like to be able to quantify their goals toward meeting various criteria, their products have been thoughtfully designed over many years and deliver research-proven instructional outcomes.  So, they are careful in the approach they take as they implement changes and enhancements, to avoid unanticipated negative impacts to their products and functionality.

Closed captions are included in videos in Lexia® PowerUp Literacy.

 

ReadTheory

 

ReadTheory is a personalized reading comprehension learning website.  It’s free to sign up.  We think it is a good resource to supplement your reading upgrading.

ReadTheory is available anytime on a desktop computer and mobile device wherever you have internet access. 

Materials were designed with native English-speaking pupils in mind, but we still believe the site to be appropriate for English language learners.

Here is a quote from the website:
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The task of an English Language Learner (ELL) to read and comprehend an English text must feel as insurmountable as eating an elephant! To comprehend what is read, the ELL must have a firm grasp of the language (including grammar), possess the necessary background knowledge, and know the specialized vocabulary for the content area. How does a student get from strictly translating what they’ve read to actually comprehending it? Let’s look at it one bite at a time.

ReadTheory has Focus Mode.  Learners can click to enter Focus Mode which will switch a student’s browser window to Full Screen Mode.  This creates a more distraction-free experience and increases the amount of screen space available for the passage and questions to be displayed. It’s the same as pressing F11 on a Windows computer. Learners will have 3 font options to adjust the size of the text.

Not applicable.