UX / Web Design Archives - Rebecca Rumble

Accessibility Notes

4 February 2022 Rebecca Rumble

Some notes, interesting quotes, videos and useful links for accessibility on the web and in apps that I’m noting down as I learn more about Accessibility.

Accessibility is about user experience

Understand how users with different disabilities use the web

Users won’t always be able to see the screen and won’t always be using a mouse and keyboard.

Disabilities can include

auditory
cognitive
neurological
physical
speech
visual
or a mixture of these

“around 15 to 20% of people require accessibility — over 1 billion worldwide!”

“The most important thing is making technology work well for people with disabilities.”
W3C / introduction to Web Accessibility (Edex)

A different point of view

Making the web and apps accessible can benefit more than just users with disabilities. It can help all users by making content easier to understand, easier to read, clearer and easier to access where connectivity is a problem.

As an example one of the first Typewriters was invented to help Pellegrino Turri’s blind friend to write more legibly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellegrino_Turri

Vision, hearing, cognitive ability and physical ability can also deteriorate over time as we get older.

“When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,
I don’t consider the bloody ROI.”
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple

Design Principles

Accessibility overlaps with User Experience and User Interface Design.

inclusivedesignprinciples.org

All design should follow a cyclical process of :

Requirement Analysis,
Design,
Implementation,
Testing,
Evolution,
And Repeat…

A Cyclical Process

The web and accessibility standards are constantly evolving and growing so we need to keep reviewing and improving our UX constantly. People also need to be continually trained on how to create accessible content. We all have a corporate social responsibility to make the web and apps accessible as well as a legal one. Accessibility is a human right.

Perceivable

Content should be presentable in different ways so it can be perceived by all users.

Operable

Websites and apps should be operable by all users regardless of disability

Understandable

Content should be understandable for all users.

Robust

Website, Apps and their content should be interpreted reliably by a variety of different devices.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/glance/

Consistancy

Be consistent with your pattern designs

For example do we really need 22 different buttons styles, when one or two would do?

Pattern Libraries can be useful in mitigating this across teams so team members can refer back to the reference.

“Interfaces that break too many rules may win design awards, but they’ll also alienate users. As a rule of thumb, users should be able to look at any part of your interface and think, “I’ve seen something like this before”. Not exactly like it, but like it.”
Inclusive Design Principles: Be Consistent by Henny Swan
Accessed 4/02/22 : https://www.tpgi.com/inclusive-design-principle-be-consistent/

Videos, Slideshows and Presentations

Videos should have closed captions for both blind and deaf users. Audio Descriptions can also be useful in making the videos understandable to blind or partially sighted users. Captions can be read out by screen readers so blind users can also follow along as well.

Captions are synchronised with the video content so they appear at the right time for users who can’t hear the spoken words or have trouble understanding what has been said.

YouTube will automatically create Closed Captions for you, but you should review these before publishing as they won’t be 100% accurate and may have some hilariously wrong translations in there. e.g. YouTube cannot translate the name of our college Dumfries and Galloway College.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-principles/#captions

https://www.w3.org/WAI/media/av/

Audio Only Files & Transcripts

Transcripts are optional for videos whereas captions are required. They can be useful for users who don’t want to watch the video and would rather have it read out to them.

They are essential for Audio only files such as Podcasts.

Signlanguage

Sign language can also be used on videos so a deaf user who knows sign language can follow the content. They can create a richer experience for deaf users whose first language may be sign language.

Alternative Text

Images and multimedia such as charts should have alternative text so that they can be read by Screen Readers or converted to brail and be understood by blind or partially sighted users. This is especially important where the image or non text media is used to impart information.

This text will depend a lot on context. For instance if you had a picture of a woman wearing a blue shirt and the context was a shopping website selling blue shirts you probably want the image alt text to mention that the woman is wearing a blue shirt and describe that shirt.

If the image has text in it that is readable you should reproduce this text in the alt tag as well.

Alt text should be succinct and understandable to the user.

Any empty alt tag indicates that the image is decorative and can be ignored this is not the same as a missing alt tag. You can also use aria-hidden=”true” but be aware that not every device will recognise this.

<img src="example.jpg" alt="A young woman in a floaty pale blue shirt" />
<img src="decorative.png" alt="" aria-hidden="true" />

https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-principles/#alternatives

https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/

Don’t assume that larger text is more accessible than small text. For some users this is not the case. Users with tunnel vision may actually prefer small text with tight linespacing because they can read more of the words at once making reading quicker and easier for them. This is why being able to adjust the text on the screen can be useful. Your web page should support adjusting text size so that text does not overlap when font size is increased. Avoiding fixed dimensions and using %’s, ems and rems rather than px or pt can help with this.

Target Size

Larger buttons, links an checkboxes with spacing around them are easier to hit or tap particularly by users who have poor motor control or tremors.

Colour Contrast

Colour contrast between textual information and its background should have a decent contrast so it is clear to the reader. Where colour is used as an indicator there should also be an alternative indicator for the colourblind so the differences are clear. E.g. underlines under text links.

“Colour (color) blindness (colour vision deficiency, or CVD) affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women in the world. In Britain this means that there are approximately 3 million colour blind people (about 4.5% of the entire population), most of whom are male.”
Colourblind Awareness https://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/

“Around 15% of people over 45 have some form of reduced vision”
W3C / Introduction to Accessibility

“The contrast ratio should be at least 4.5:1 and ideally 7:1 for text. For graphical objects, such as charts, and for large text, a contrast ratio of 3:1 may be sufficient.”
W3C / Introduction to Accessibility

https://www.tpgi.com/color-contrast-checker/ (Colour Contrast Tool Windows & Mac)

WCAG

Voice Inputs

Making search boxes on text boxes voice activated gives users the option to enter in information using speech.

Optional Animation / Low movement

Make animation and movement on a website optional. Make use of web browser indicators to turn this off where a user has this option set.

Understandable Content

How page content is structured can make it easier to understand for all users.

Headings help break up the text and make it easy to navigate and find information for all users.

Some things like logins and navigation should be kept where the user would expect to find it.

Tooltips and hover content can be lost when screen magnification is on.

Cognitive Accessibility Design

https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-principles/#distinguishable

Control of Audio

Being able to easily disable audio in order to hear the output of a screen reader is a must.

Dark Modes / Light Modes

Having this option can help reduce glare or eyestrain. Some users may find content is easier to read by changing the setting to either dark mode or light mode.

Assistive Technologies

“Assistive Technologies refer to hardware or software that enable people with disabilities to interact and engage with the digital environment e.g. using a screen reader or a switch control.”
W3C / Introduction to Accessibility

“Adaptive Strategies are techniques that people with disabilities use to interact with the digital environment such as adjusting platform and browser settings or resizing browser windows.”
W3C / Introduction to Accessibility

How People with Disabilities use the Web

Closed Captions / Audio Descriptions

These are used to help blind or low vision users to understand video content. They can also be useful to users with cognitive disabilities or users who are in noisy or quiet environments. They can also be used to help support children learning how to read.

Switch Inputs

These include:

Sip-and-puff switches which are triggered by sipping and puffing into a straw which then mimics tabbing and clicking.
Button switches which can be activated using the hand, foot or head. These can be single switches or multiple switches.
Camera switches which can be activated when tilting the head into a camera. Some mobile phones have this built into the accessibility settings.
Eye tracking, the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head.

Navigating by Keyboard or Switches

Links and Buttons should use standard HTML elements like <a> or <button> – this also applies for inputs and select fields.
Links and buttons should be labelled appropriately
links, buttons and inputs should be selectable and focusable using a keyboard.
Links and buttons should show when focus is on them using colour and another visual indicator.
Links and Buttons should follow a logical focus order. Left to right Top to bottom.

Table of the standard keystrokes:

Interaction	Keystrokes
Navigate to most elements	TabShift + Tab – navigate backward
Link	Enter
Button	Enter or Spacebar
Checkbox	Spacebar – check/uncheck a checkbox
Radio buttons	↑/↓ or ←/→ – select an optionTab – move to the next element
Select (dropdown) menu	↑/↓ – navigate between menu optionsSpacebar – expand
Autocomplete	Type to begin filtering↑/↓ – navigate to an optionEnter – select an option
Dialog	Esc – close
Slider	↑/↓ or ←/→ – increase or decrease slider valueHome/End – beginning or end
Menu bar	↑/↓ – Previous/next menu optionEnter – expand the menu (optional) and select an option.←/→ – expand/collapse submenu
Tab panel	Tab – once to navigate into the group of tabs and once to navigate out of the group of tabs↑/↓ or ←/→ – previous/next tab.
‘Tree’ menu	↑/↓ – Navigate Previous/next menu option←/→ – expand/collapse submenu, move up/down one level
Scroll	↑/↓ – scroll vertically←/→ – scroll horizontallySpacebar/Shift + Spacebar – scroll by page

Techniques for Keyboard Navigation

Common screen readers include Jaws for Windows, NVDA for Windows, Narrator bundled with Windows, VoiceOver bundled with MacOS and iOS, and TalkBack bundled with Android.

Content should be laid out in a structured way
Headings should follow a standard hierarchical order
Skip to Content links should be included
Links should have understandable labels not just “Click Here”

Remember : Not all Screen Reader users are blind. Some are partially sighted, some may have cognitive difficulties with reading text, some may be audio learners, some may may just want to listen to text being read out while they do other things.

https://egghead.io/lessons/screen-reader-navigate-a-webpage-with-voiceover-in-safari

How to Navigate your iPhone or iPad with VoiceOver (Apple Support)

Using Voice Over Example

1. Switch VO on and off

To switch on VoiceOver go to Settings → General → Accessibility → VoiceOver then activate the VoiceOver ‘on’ switch to enable it.

2. Map the accessibility shortcut key

Before you start navigating, please set up the Accessibility shortcut menu. It is recommended you do this as it makes testing a lot quicker and easier as you don’t have to go into settings each time to switch VoiceOver on and off. Once set up, you are able to switch the accessibility features on and off using triple click on the side button (home button for older devices).

To enable this go to Settings → General → Accessibility → Accessibility Shortcuts and select VoiceOver and Zoom from the list of options. When you want to switch VoiceOver or Zoom on and off quickly, all you need do is triple click the side or home button to activate the menu to select VoiceOver or Zoom.

3. Complete the VoiceOver tutorial

Using the gestures below complete the VoiceOver tutorial. To do this go to Settings → General → Accessibility → VoiceOver, turn VoiceOver ‘on’ and select VoiceOver Practice.

Explore by touch: drag your finger over the screen to have VoiceOver describe the items under your finger. You can tap with a second finger or double-tap to open links, press buttons, and so on.

Gesture navigation: swipe right with a single finger to move from one item to the next in sequence, swipe left to go backward through this sequence. VoiceOver describes items as you move focus around the screen.
Announce an element: single tap sets focus on an element so it is announced.
Activate an element: double-tap a single finger to open links, press buttons, and navigate using the Rotor.
Open the Rotor: turn a dial with two fingers to open the Rotor. Drag your finger around the dial to choose headings from the list of items.
Jump between element: swipe up and down to jump between headings.
Screen curtain: with three fingers, quickly triple-tap the screen to turn it on and off. If the Zoom feature is in use with VoiceOver, tap the screen four times with three fingers.

Assistive Tech: TalkBack on Android

Digital Braille Display

Users who are blind and read braille may combine a screen reader with a hardware called a refreshable braille display. This sits next to the keyboard and is made up of hundreds of pins that move to create the braille. There are also smaller, portable, Bluetooth braille displays that can connect to mobiles and tablets, and be used on the move.

Allows users who are blind and deaf to read text on the web or blind users to read text quietly.

Content should be laid out in a structured way
Headings should follow a standard hierarchical order
Links should have understandable labels not just “Click Here”
Skip to Content links should be included

Speech to Text / Voice Over

Allows users to navigate and interact with the web using their voice. This helps users with limited dexterity or muscular control limitations, paralysis or missing limbs.

Links and Buttons should use standard HTML elements like <a> or <button> – this also applies for inputs and select fields.
Links and buttons should be labelled appropriately
links, buttons and inputs should be selectable and focusable using only voice.
Links and buttons should show when focus is on them using colour and another visual indicator.
Inputs option to be speech activated so text can be inputted by speaking.

Standards and guidelines for Accessibility

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
defines requirements on how to make Web content such as text, images, multimedia, structure and presentation accessible
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG)
defines requirements on how to make the authoring tools themselves accessible, so that people with disabilities can create web content. It also defines requirements how authors can create accessible web content and conform to WCAG
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG)
provides guidance on how to make user agents accessible to people with disabilities. User agents include browsers, browser extensions, media players, readers and other applications that render web content
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA)

Testing Accessibility

You can test by

Using CMD+- and CMS ++ to increase font size in your browser
Text should wrap when it gets larger
You can test voice over on the phone
You can test by using the tab key and shift + tab to navigate through links on the keyboard
Check Colour contrast meets guidelines
Use visual indicators other than just colour to indicate links, focus and hover. Can you tell where you are when viewing in grayscale?
You can resize text by modifying the text size settings within your browser if the website is coded correctly the text will adjust.
You can use zoom to make the font larger too but this also magnifies everything else.
Consider disabled users, using mobile devices. Some may only have access to a mobile or tablet.
Turn off CSS styles using a plugin tool like Web Developer Toolbar or the browsers in built settings.
Replace images with their alt text using a plugin tool like Web Developer Toolbar

Useful Tools for Testing Accessibility

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-developer/bfbameneiokkgbdmiekhjnmfkcnldhhm

https://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/

https://wave.webaim.org/extension/

Before and After Demo of a bad website

Useful Reading

A Web of Anxiety : Accessibility for people with anxiety and panic disorders

https://www.w3.org/WAI/business-case/

Dos and don’ts on designing for accessibility

Building a new Moodle Theme

5 November 2021 Rebecca Rumble

With the launch of the college’s new branding and a planned Moodle upgrade our Moodle theme needed a refresh. Over the last 6 years or so I’ve built numerous WordPress themes from scratch so I took on a new challenge and looked at the Moodle Documentation and began learning how to building our own using the college’s new colours and fonts.

This was entirely new to me as I only started picking up Moodle when I joined the College in December 2019 and had to pick it up rather quickly given the pandemic.

Design Principals

There were a few things I was keeping in mind.

To maximise the space as much as possible for the Lecturers and Students
To make everything as accessible as possible.
Keep it as simple as possible ( K.I.S.S. )

Accessibility Guide
WCAG Accessibility Guidelines
The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018

Problems to overcome

There were (and still are) a few barriers to building the theme. Some of these will disappear once we are able to move to the new course layout that my colleague Steve has designed and developed. For now we need to support the legacy setup.

Multiple course formats have been installed into the existing VLE and need to be supported.
I focused on the CORE functionality to start with then started working on adding in support as we worked out what course formats were still being used.
Multiple plugins have been installed into the existing VLE over the years and some need to be supported.
This caused unexpected conflicts at points that took time to diagnose.
Eventually our plan is to install a fresh Moodle with Steve’s course layout and we will go through and remove unnecessary plugins

Overview of the new design.

To break this very long post up I have separated out each component into a separate post. Some of the changes were simple changes to the SCSS files and others involved output renderer overrides. Click on each of the post embeds to find out more.

Screenshot of the new Moodle Theme. — Screenshot of the New Moodle Theme Dashboard

Navigation Panel

Screenshot of closed side menu — Collapsed Side Menu

Moodle Theme : Modifying the Navigation Panel

Role Descriptor on top Menu

Moodle Theme Building : Role Descriptor

You are logged in as….

Moodle Theme Development : “Logged in as” Breadcrumbs

Redesigning the footer…

Currently writing up

User Menu
Custom Menu to useful services for the Students.

Editor Button

Currently writing up…

Forum Post Layout

Currently writing up

Course Search Layout

Currently writing up

Book Navigation Modifications

Currently writing up

POST TO BE CONTINUED….

Useful Documentation

Creating a Theme using Boost (Moodle Documentation)
Themes Overview (Moodle Documentation)
Moodle Template Overview
Moodle Renderers
Moodle Output Renderers
Moodle Filters
Moodle Roles
Moodle Navigation API
Useful UnObvious things
How to Override a Template
How to Override a renderer

Mustache Documentation
Moodle Theme SCSS
Moodle Theme Pre and Post SCSS
Moodle HTML Writer

Moodle Data Manipulation API

Moodle Theme : Modifying the Navigation Panel

22 September 2021 Rebecca Rumble

This post is part of a series documenting the work I did while developing a new Moodle Theme for Dumfries and Galloway College’s VLE. There will be further posts to follow. Watch this space!

Modifying the navigation panel was a fairly small change from the base boost theme this theme was based on. The main changes made were :

Animating the menu toggle button along the top using the excellent CSS library by Jonathan Sue.
Note : rather than include the entire library I only included the SCSS being used.
Modifying the side panel so when minimised you could still see and click on the icons.
Modifying how the scrollbar displayed

The side panel can be navigated easily by keyboard (this is part of Moodle Core so I didn’t need to add this in). It is also scrollable on small screens or when there’s a lot of content.

The main content re-adjusts as the side panel is opened and closed (see example in the second video). This is actually handled using CSS and media queries targeting the classes added by Moodle when the side panel is open or closed. I’ve added some example SCSS below.

.courses  { 
	grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr;
	nav,
	.paging-showall {
		grid-column-start: 1;
		grid-column-end: 3;
	}
	.drawer-open-left & {
		grid-template-columns: 1fr;
		nav,
		.paging-showall {
			grid-column-end: 2;
		}
	}
}

Handling Feedback and Adding in a Scroll Indicator

Initially I set the scrollbar to be invisible. I did this because on Windows machines the scrollbar is large, chunky and takes up a fair bit of space on the side panel. It also doesn’t look very aesthetically pleasing compared to the Mac OS scrollbar. We were also keen to maximise space for the learner where we could so I felt hiding it while keeping the area scrollable as you hovered over this area was a good choice.

Despite the scrollbar being invisible it was still easy to scroll the side panel by gesture (mobile devices) or by using the mouse scroll wheel when hovered over and as mentioned above it was possible to navigate via keyboard for accessibility.

However, thanks to feedback from one of our Lecturers Margaret, it became clear that on some devices which didn’t have good trackpad / scroll support the scrolling feature wasn’t working quite so well. It took a bit of back and forth to isolate the issue as every device I tested on windows or mac worked correctly and I’m very grateful for Margaret’s patience!

After some additional research into the issue and discovering the cause could be due to the trackpad support on certain devices I felt we needed to have some kind of indicator that could be clicked and dragged to :

a) solve the issue Margaret had flagged
b) to improve on the existing accessibility by giving a visual cue.
c) make it more obvious that the section was scrollable

I also wanted to make sure that the scroll indicator didn’t take up too much space in the relatively small area and was consistent across devices and browsers.

For both methods (making invisible and changing the styling) I used CSS selectors that targeted the Shadow DOM.

The first code block is the original hidden scrollbar styling that uses the CSS selectors for the shadow DOM. There is some extra code to add support for old versions of IE (no longer an issue) and Firefox.

.scrollbar-hidden::-webkit-scrollbar {
	display: none;
}

/* Hide scrollbar for IE, Edge add Firefox */
.scrollbar-hidden {
	-ms-overflow-style: none;
	scrollbar-width: none; /* Firefox */
}

The second code block is the updated shadow DOM styling which just adjusts the look of the scrollbar so it is thinner but visible and matches the brand colours.

.scrollbar-thin::-webkit-scrollbar {
	width: 5px;
	height: 4px;
	cursor: pointer;
}
.scrollbar-thin::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb{
	background: $DGCOrange;
	border-radius: 0px;
}

.scrollbar-thin::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb:hover{
	background: $OrangeTint75;
	cursor: pointer;
}
.scrollbar-thin::-webkit-scrollbar-track{
	background: transparent;
	border-radius: 0px;
	box-shadow: inset 0px 0px 0px 0px #F0F0F0;
}

Further Improvements?

Web development is of course never done and it’s important to constantly think about how we can continue to improve the interface for users. There are a couple of things I’m thinking about in order to improve and develop this further.

A “hover over” to show the menu item title when it’s hovered over when collapsed. This does sort of happen anyway if you hover for long enough but I think it would be a nice feature if it was more instantaneous.
Checking that everything responds to the view area shrinking / growing – there may be a few areas that have been missed since Moodle is so huge and we have multiple extra course formats installed as well as hundreds of extra plugins.
Work out what changes are needed for Moodle 4.

I hope to add these in future iterations of the theme or in my Moodle 4 upgrade.

Moodle Theme Building : Role Descriptor

14 August 2021 Rebecca Rumble

This post is part of a series for documenting the work I did building a new Moodle Theme for our VLE’s. More to follow…

We have many different user roles in our VLE. I wanted a way to show this clearly at the top just under the user’s name at the top.

How I set this up….

This wasn’t a simple task as it turned out I needed to override a core library output renderer in order to complete the task. The renderer function I needed to override can be found in /lib/outputrenderers.php

https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/lib/outputrenderers.php

I created a copy of the user_menu function from this file and copied it into my theme’s renderer override class.

https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Output_renderers
https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Overriding_a_renderer

My Theme’s renderer override class lives in : /theme/nameoftheme/renderers.php
I’m extending the core_renderer here Line 517 of lib/outputrenderers.php so the class should have “… extends core_renderer” when it’s declared.

I copied in the user_menu function into the theme’s override class so I can override it.
On what would be line 3371 of the original file I replace the role section with a call to a function I’ve created in the override class called show_user_roles (see further down). This function should return a HTML String that describes the roles the current user is in.

defined('MOODLE_INTERNAL') || die();

class theme_nameoftheme_core_renderer extends core_renderer {

     // Original Function in /lib/outputrenderers.php 
     public function user_menu($user = null, $withlinks = null) {

          ...

          // fetch all role information....
          $usertextcontents .= $this->show_user_roles($user, $opts);

          ...

     }

}

// Original user_menu function
public function user_menu($user = null, $withlinks = null) {

     ...

     // Role. (Line 3371 of original)
     if (!empty($opts->metadata['asotherrole'])) {
          $role = core_text::strtolower(preg_replace('#[ ]+#', '-', trim($opts->metadata['rolename'])));
          $usertextcontents .= html_writer::span(
               $opts->metadata['rolename'],
                'meta role role-' . $role
          );
     }

     ...

}

public function show_user_roles($user = null, $opts = null) {
	// fetch all role information....
	$systemcontext = context_system::instance();
	$allRoles = role_fix_names(get_all_roles(), $systemcontext, ROLENAME_ORIGINAL);
	$usertextcontents = '';
        
	$usertextcontents .= html_writer::start_span('roles d-flex justify-content-end');

		
	// Role.
	if (!empty($opts->metadata['asotherrole'])) { // Logged in as....
		$role = core_text::strtolower(preg_replace('#[ ]+#', '-', trim($opts->metadata['rolename'])));
		$usertextcontents .= html_writer::span(
		$opts->metadata['rolename'],
			'meta role role-' . $role
		);
	} else {
		if(is_siteadmin()) { // Is Site Administrator
			$usertextcontents .= html_writer::span(
				'Site Administrator',
				'meta role role-admin'
			);
		} else { // possibly another role....
					
			$ismanagerorlecturer = false;
			foreach($allRoles as $key => $role) {
					
				if(user_has_role_assignment($user->id,$key)) {
					
					if(in_array($role->shortname, array(...))) {
						// skip these ones :).
					} else {
						if(in_array($role->shortname, array('manager','editinglecturer','teacher','visitinglecturer') ) ) {
							$ismanagerorlecturer = true;
						}
							
						// some lectureres are listed as students as well which seems sort of pointless to display this...
						if($role->shortname != 'student' || ($role->shortname == 'student' && !$ismanagerorlecturer)) {
							$usertextcontents .= html_writer::span(
								$role->localname,
									'meta role role-' . $role->shortname
							);
						}
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}
        
	$usertextcontents .= html_writer::end_span();
        
	return $usertextcontents;
}

That’s quite a bit so here’s a breakdown of what this script is doing:

Line 4 : Fetch all the user roles used on the site ($allRoles)
Line 5 : Create a string to store the html in ($usertextcontents = ”;)
Line 11 : Check if the current user is masquerading as another role e.g. a Lecturer viewing as a “Student”
(if (!empty($opts->metadata[‘asotherrole’])) {)
- Line 12 : turn the role name into a class (i.e. remove spaces etc)
- Line 13 : Create a span for the role.
Line 17 : If current user isn’t masquerading….
- Line 18 : Check if current user is a Site Admin….
  - Line 19 : Create a span for this role.
- Line 23 : All users except the site admin….
  - Line 25 : This is a check to see if the user is a manager / lecturer since they may have multiple roles so we might want to skip some!
  - Line 26 : cycle through $allRoles
  - Line 28 : Check if current user has this role
  - Line 30 : This line I’m checking to see if this is one of the roles we should skip
    (we have some extra roles to set certain permissions for a custom course activity so we don’t want to display these since no one will care much about these)
  - Line 33 : Checking to see if the current user is in a manager / lecturer role in which case we set the flag to true.
  - Line 38 : If the role isn’t “Student” OR if the role is “Student” AND the user isn’t a manager or lecturer create a span for this role.
Line 52 – function returns the finished HTML string.

Handling a user with Multiple Roles

But what if the user has multiple roles?

When I initially wrote this I didn’t have the bit where I check for manager / lecturer or the bit where I skip some of the extra roles.

For some users where they were in multiple different roles on the site made it display weirdly as there wasn’t enough space.

If they are viewing as a specific role we won’t see the additional roles (this is handled on line 11)

To deal with this. I first added the check for manager / lecturer since those roles we don’t really care that they are also in a student role.

I also hid some of the irrelevant roles we don’t care about by skipping them in the loop.

This reduced the list down from about 10 roles to maybe 3 but it was still displaying in a column.

I added some bootstrap classes (boost and my theme uses BootStrap) and CSS to handle this.

$usertextcontents .= html_writer::start_span('roles d-flex justify-content-end');

https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.6/utilities/flex/

.roles {
	column-gap: 5px;
	.role:after {
		content: ',';
		display: block;
		float: right;
	}
	.role:last-child:after {
		display: none;
	}
}

This may need further improvements if the user is a member of even more roles but so far it hasn’t been an issue for me. I will revisit this if it becomes and issue.

What about Mobile?

On mobile I’m collapsing it down to make it more minimal.

Further Improvements?

I’m wondering if it’s a bit wasteful to fetch $allRoles everytime and if there is someway I can cache it (like set_transient does on WordPress). It won’t change very often.

There may be further ways to optimise the code and I’m open to suggestions.

Documentation Links

Moodle Documentation : Roles
Moodle Output Renderers
Moodle Documentation : Overriding a renderer

Breadcrumbs CSS

25 March 2021 Rebecca Rumble

Breadcrumb Styling example I wrote.

I need to double check browser support. ~~Add a fallback for IE 11~~ and add mobile support.

CSS SVG ClipPaths

24 March 2021 Rebecca Rumble

CSS clip path can be useful for creating complex scalable shapes in webdesign.

Example of a Clip Path in action

See the Pen Clip Path Example (Banner Arrows) by Kavita (@Kayakkavita) on CodePen.

Creating an SVG Clip Path in Adobe Illustrator

Create a new file 1px high and 1px width*

*This is required because for the svg to be scalable the path coordinates need to be between 0 and 1.

Draw your shape out.

Select your shapes and go to Object > Compound Path > Make.

Draw a rectangle around your shapes (keep within the bounds of the 1px by 1px artboard.

Select that shape then send it to the back so your drawn shape is in front.

Select both your shape and the box and go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make to change your shape into a clipping mask.

Go to File > Export > Export As to export your vector as an SVG.

Open the svg file into a code editor like Kate and you should see something like this.

<svg id="Layer_1" data-name="Layer 1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" viewBox="0 0 1 1">
	<defs>
		<style>.cls-1{fill:none;}.cls-2{clip-path:url(#clip-path);}.cls-3{fill:#fff;}</style>
		<clipPath id="clip-path">
			<path class="cls-1" d="M0,0,.6.47,0,1ZM.136,0,.707.464.1,1H.2L.813.461.21,0"/>
		</clipPath>
	</defs>
	<g class="cls-2"><rect class="cls-3" width="1" height="1"/></g>
</svg>

You need to modify this a bit to use as a mask.

Remove the styles
Remove the <g> element
add width=”0″ and height=”0″ to the SVG label
Add clipPathUnits=”objectBoundingBox” to the clippath (this makes it scalable)

<svg id="Layer_1" data-name="Layer 1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" width="0" height="0" viewBox="0 0 1 1">
	<defs>
		<clipPath id="clip-path" clipPathUnits="objectBoundingBox">
			<path class="cls-1" d="M0,0,.6.47,0,1ZM.136,0,.707.464.1,1H.2L.813.461.21,0"/>
		</clipPath>
	</defs>
</svg>

The CSS to use it as a clip path…

.banner {
  height: 140px;
  width: 200px;
  background-color: black;
  position:relative;
}
.banner:after {
  content: ' ';
  display:block;
  position: absolute;
  right:-100px;
  bottom: 0px;
  height: 100%;
  width: 100px;
  background-color: black;
  -webkit-clip-path: url("#clip-path"); /* required for Webkit/Blink browsers if you're using only inline SVG clipping paths, but not CSS clip-path */
  clip-path: url("#clip-path");
}

Tips

If you want an SVG to only be at the top. Add a height to the SVG.

(example to follow later).

Reading / Resources

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/05/creating-responsive-shapes-with-clip-path/

https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2015/01/the-ultimate-guide-to-svg/

https://cssfordesigners.com/articles/clip-path-scaling

https://css-tricks.com/using-svg/

https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/website-layouts-with-svg-shapes–cms-35259

Browser Support

https://caniuse.com/?search=clip-path

IE 11 does not support this.
Some browsers will need fallback support.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21904672/internet-explorer-and-clip-path

Useful Articles on UX Design

27 October 2020 Rebecca Rumble

A few interesting articles on UX design I want to read later.

CSS Conic Gradients

10 July 2020 Rebecca Rumble

A recent project I’m working on had an image where a series of colours were laid out like sun rays behind some figures. I was curious if I could do these blocks of colour with CSS. I came across conic-gradients and I’ve been experimenting with it to see what I can do with it.

Repeating Conic Gradient (Sun rays)

.rays {
  background: -webkit-repeating-conic-gradient(from 270deg at 50% 120%, #FFA500 0deg 10deg, #ff6700 10deg 20deg);
  background: -moz-repeating-conic-gradient(from 270deg at 50% 120%, #FFA500 0deg 10deg, #ff6700 10deg 20deg);
  background: repeating-conic-gradient(from 270deg at 50% 120%, #FFA500 0deg 10deg, #ff6700 10deg 20deg);
}

Note : Firefox does not currently support repeating-conic-gradients 🙁

Setting Sun : Repeating Conic Gradient

background: conic-gradient(from 270deg at 50% 100%,#f3d8e6 0 36deg,#F8DCC4 0 72deg,#CAD9B9 0 108deg, #9FC0CC 0 144deg, #BEC5D9 0 180deg, #ffffff 0 100%);

Polyfills for Firefox / IE 11

https://github.com/jonathantneal/postcss-conic-gradient

http://leaverou.github.io/conic-gradient/

Accessibility is about user experience

Design Principles

Perceivable

Operable

Understandable

Robust

Consistancy

Videos, Slideshows and Presentations

Audio Only Files & Transcripts

Signlanguage

Alternative Text

Text Size

Target Size

Colour Contrast

Voice Inputs

Optional Animation / Low movement

Understandable Content

Control of Audio

Dark Modes / Light Modes

Assistive Technologies

Closed Captions / Audio Descriptions

Switch Inputs

Navigating by Keyboard or Switches

Screen Reader Notes

Using Voice Over Example

Digital Braille Display

Speech to Text / Voice Over

Standards and guidelines for Accessibility

Testing Accessibility

Useful Tools for Testing Accessibility

Useful Reading

Design Principals

Problems to overcome

Overview of the new design.

Navigation Panel

Role Descriptor on top Menu

You are logged in as….

Redesigning the footer…

Editor Button

Forum Post Layout

Course Search Layout

Book Navigation Modifications

Useful Documentation

Handling Feedback and Adding in a Scroll Indicator

Further Reading on Styling Scrollbars using the Shadow DOM

Further Improvements?

How I set this up….

Handling a user with Multiple Roles

What about Mobile?

Further Improvements?

Documentation Links

Example of a Clip Path in action

Creating an SVG Clip Path in Adobe Illustrator

The CSS to use it as a clip path…

Tips

Reading / Resources

Browser Support

Breadcrumbs

Menu Design

Footer Design

Repeating Conic Gradient (Sun rays)

Setting Sun : Repeating Conic Gradient

Polyfills for Firefox / IE 11