5 Keywords: Mouse, Moodle, Content Management System, E-learning, Accessibility

Moodle Navigation tips.

In my first year of university I did not have a computer in my room in Halls, and I tried to reduce the amount I typed or used the internet. In the second year, I bought a computer and continued to use it as I always had, but my RSI returned. I then tried various strategies for reducing my RSI. Firstly, I used keyboard shortcuts in the editor or forms (MS Word document download) to reduce my use of the mouse, which was one of the main causes of the problem.

Now I am working at a college that uses Moodle and I tend to use the tab key to navigate around. The problem is that there are a lot of web links in panels on the left hand side, and you would have to tab all the way through them to get to the important content in the middle of the page. The way around this is to skip each panel.

There is an invisible link on each panel that allows you to skip it. Hover your mouse above the title of each panel to find it. This link is very useful when using Dragon NaturallySpeaking or WebbIE.

The only problem is that you really do not see this link unless you are using your tab key and then press enter to skip navigation

The interface requires a considerable amount of movement around the pages used for entering data and navigation. I tend to collapse these so that I can jump down and back through the pages more easily.