Karl,
I am very interested in using Moodle for presenting online courses and doing it with UDL in mind. I have encountered many setbacks as my university is not so interested. It is a challenge for them to comprehend life using screen reading software or in keeping things simple to lessen distractions for those with learning disabilities.
In Moodle 1.9, I created a navigational menu using an html block and arranged it in the upper left corner so it would be the first item encountered for screen readers. Now our university has upgraded to Moodle 2.0 and the snazzy, albeit nearly worthless, navigational menu is found there. My solution to this is to move the provided menu to the right column and create another one on my own that actually links a topic title to a block of learning unit material. The Moodle menu provided by whomever designed it, offers a listing of topics or blocks by date, but they do not link to them. While this may work for courses which don't use many materials, it is not working for me and I would love to hear how others are working around this feature.
My goal is to create a one-stop-shopping approach to a learner finding everything they need for that learning unit, in only one place. I have used headings and the topic blocks to give the learner directions and an overview of that unit, listing all the needed materials (videos, slideshows, reports, pdf's, etc.) and dropboxes, forums, and any other activities. This way, the diverse learner need not worry that they have missed something that might exist somewhere else like in a list of assignments.
As a learner myself I find it annoying to find materials or directions scattered throughout several pages like so many Easter eggs hidden and waiting to be found or overlooked. Thus, knowing that challenged learners may not have the vision to grasp visually presented directions, I have attempted to gather everything they need into only one page-size block. Trouble is, this causes there to be one huge and long page (the home page), needing to be navigated. I built the menu to solve this and used links to only one block at a time, so that the learner need only click once and then see only that one unit. This whole thing could be solved by having the ability to add actual pages, but being limited to only a home page and using blocks causes some challenges.
Again, I would love to hear from others about how they have designed their pages to support UDL and the needs of diverse method learners. I would like to see examples and possibly share mine. I cannot offer an open link "as a guest" to anyone and everyone, but would welcome contacts to work one-on-one.
Lennia Machen