Accessibility Statement – Learning Environments

Accessibility refers to an online service having been designed for all users. Accessibility online is comparable to physical accessibility in that it enables as many different people as possible to easily use an online service.

An accessible online service is technically flawless and has a clear user interface and understandable content.

The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health uses the following measures to ensure the accessibility of its online learning environments:

• Accessibility is part of our mission.
• Accessibility is part of our internal practices.
• We constantly offer our employees accessibility training.
• Our organization has clear accessibility goals and responsibility levels.
• We develop the accessibility of our online learning environment continuously.

This site is subject to the Act on the Provision of Digital Services which requires public online services to be accessible. This means that the online service must comply with the Level A and AA requirements of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 criteria.

The European Accessibility Act, that entered into force in 2019, requires that public sector websites and mobile services must be accessible. The law is also applied to public companies in the water and energy supply sector, logistics and mail services as well as financial industry actors. The law will also apply to organizations that receive over half of their financing from public funds.

Applying the accessibility requirements was started incrementally and in Finland the regulatory body is the Regional State Administrative Agency of Southern Finland. The requirements of the law and related instructions are published on the saavutettavuusvaatimukset.fi website.

The Moodle learning environment aims to conform with Levels A and AA of the WCAG 2.1 criteria.

The site conforms with the requirements partially and has the following shortcomings:

1.4.5 Images of Text – Level AA

• some images lack a text description (alt attribute).

3.3.2 Labels or Instructions – Level A

• some input fields lack names (labels).

2.4.1 Bypass Blocks – Level A

• navigation: order and nesting of the h1, h2, h3 and h4 elements should be improved to facilitate navigation.

Mediamaisteri Oy, the provider of the Moodle online learning environment service, has self-assessed the site’s accessibility in co-operation with the organization.

Moodle is designed to offer the same functionalities and information to everyone. This means that there should be no obstacles to using the online service, regardless of a person’s limitation, assistive software, display size or various input devices (e.g., mouse, keyboard or touch screen).

The site is designed to be compatible with the following browsers:

• Edge
• Firefox
• Chrome

The functionality of the site depends on the functionality of the following technologies:

• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript

Humap Software, the provider of the Howspace online learning environment, offers the Howspace environment to the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health on a SaaS basis. Howspace is a flexible and scalable browser-based software that can be accessed with any device that has an internet connection.

The technical properties of workspaces created with the Howspace product comply with all critical accessibility criteria presented as level A or AA Success Criteria in WCAG. This report details the realization of accessibility and the risks involved per user group.

The accessibility report concerns the technological solutions and default content of the Howspace workspaces: the administrators and content producers of each workspace are responsible for the accessibility of the content they create.

The provider of the Howspace online learning environment, Humap Software, has assigned the assessment of the accessibility of this website to a third-party expert organization.

The Howspace environment is designed to offer the same functionalities and information to everyone. This means that there should be no significant obstacles to using the online service, regardless of a person’s limitation, assistive software, display size or various input devices (e.g., mouse, keyboard or touch screen).

The realization of accessibility and the risks involved per user group below.

Hearing impairment

• In relation to sound, the accessibility of Howspace workspaces is good: no functionality is indicated by a sound and sounds do not start automatically. Videos embedded using the workspace’s built-in video player do not currently support subtitles, but we aim to start using automatic subtitles for speech in Finnish as soon as possible.

Near-sighted users

• Users with poor sight can utilise Howspace workspaces outstandingly. The pages and their widgets (the interactive user interface components that present content) adapt ideally to enlarging the display using different technologies.

Colour blind users

• Different limitations in perceiving colour do not cause issues in using the workspaces. Colours help in interpreting some elements in the buttons and functions of widgets included in Howspace workspaces. However, colour is not the only way to present the information, but the information of all elements is also presented as text and/or an icon. The graphs produced by the widgets utilise sufficient contrast between different colours of a graph and the background. The distribution of answers displayed in graphs is provided as numbers in the legend, making interpreting the graphs easy even for people who cannot tell the colours apart.

Use with the keyboard

• The application can be used well with the keyboard (without a mouse) while looking at the graphical user interface. Moving from an activated element to another is ordered logically and the focus of the elements is clearly visible. (The focus of some elements is slightly less clearly visible, but these will be improved during autumn 2020.) The summaries of workspace conversations, generated with artificial intelligence (word cloud, theme cluster etc.) open in a window that is currently not usable with the keyboard. This will be fixed soon.

Use with a screen reader

• Navigation, page templates and widgets of the Howspace workspaces are implemented in a way that enables them to be identified and browsed with screen readers. The roles and meanings of elements have ARIA labels, which allow a screen reader to find the purpose of different functions and participate in votes, surveys, comments, tests, assessments, temperature checks and similar functionalities even though these are implemented with scripts.

Did you notice a shortcoming related to accessibility on the website? Tell us, and we will do our best to fix it. You can contact us via e-mail at koulutusinfo(at)ttl.fi.

If you notice accessibility issues on our site, please first provide us with feedback. If you are not satisfied with the response or you receive no response within two weeks, you can give feedback to the Regional State Administrative Agency of Southern Finland. The website of the Regional State Administrative Agency of Southern Finland gives detailed instructions on how to file a complaint and how they are processed.

Regional State Administrative Agency of Southern Finland
Accessibility Supervisory Unit
www.saavutettavuusvaatimukset.fi
saavutettavuus(at)avi.fi
telephone number switchboard +358 295 016 000