Looking Back - Our 2021 Highlights!
At Brickfield Education Labs, we are proud of our work and the impact we have on the accessibility of online learning. This year was a challenging year for our team, and we thank all our clients, partners and investors for helping us get here and for your continued support.
Partnering with Moodle to Improve Accessibility
In April 2021, Moodle announced our collaboration with them on content accessibility and the accessibility of the Moodle LMS – the most popular learning management system in the world.
This collaboration with Moodle improves the accessibility of course content, reducing barriers and maximising learning opportunities for all learners.
Speaking about the collaboration, CEO and Founder of Moodle, Martin Dougiamas said that he is “very pleased that we have a partnership now with Brickfield Education Labs who will work with us and organisations who use Moodle to help address this important issue [of accessibility].”
Accessibility Checker Starter Toolkit in Moodle 3.11
Our Accessibility Checker Starter Toolkit was added to Moodle core in May 2021 and distributed as part of the core Moodle package 3.11.
The Accessibility Toolkit enables educators and administrators to assess the accessibility of content and identify existing accessibility issues. Over seven hundred organisations around the world use the Accessibility Checker Starter Toolkit. We are committed to maintaining and improving this core feature over the coming years.
This was a huge step in furthering our support to organisations and educators to create content and learning materials that meet accessibility standards.
Hosting our First Accessibility Conference
In June of this year, we hosted our first accessibility conference! We held the ‘Accessible Content for Moodle’ conference online on June 28th, 2021.
This full-day event had speakers from varied backgrounds and organisations. We were proud to host a variety of back to back presentations with high calibre guest speakers such as Sander Bangma from Moodle, Alistair McNaught from Alistair McNaught Consultancy, Lars Ballieu Christensen and Tanja Stevns from SensusAccess, Stephen Howell from Microsoft, Huw Alexander from textBOX and more!
It was brilliant to see experts from different accessibility backgrounds come together to highlight the subject of accessibility. Hundreds of attendees joined to learn about accessibility and what they could do to promote it within their organisations. This was a key moment for us this year!
We have summaries of each of these presentations on our website – if you want to check them out.
The Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit - now a Moodle Certified Integration
In October 2021, Moodle announced our subscription-based Moodle Accessibility Toolkit as a Moodle Certified Integration. As part of this certification, we contribute financially to Moodle for each of our Moodle Accessibility Toolkit sales.
If your organisation uses Moodle, take a look at what this Toolkit can do for your organisations’ accessibility. Administrators can book a private free demo of the Enterprise Moodle Accessibility Toolkit on our booking form!
“The last two years have seen a huge increase of interest from organisations wanting to improve the accessibility of their online courses. At Brickfield Education Labs, we are delighted that our Moodle Accessibility Toolkit has become a Moodle Certified Integration.” – Gavin Henrick, CEO and Co-Founder of Brickfield Education Labs.
We are the only Moodle Accessibility Toolkit that collaborates with Moodle to improve the core product and deliver an enterprise experience to organisations who wish to fix and future proof their course content and student experience.
New plugin! Moodle Board - A Virtual Collaboration Activity
We released Moodle Board in October 2021, making it available to download in the Moodle Plugins Database. Moodle Board is a sticky-note like feature to foster collaboration inside Moodle.
The project was co-funded by Ireland’s National Forum of Teaching and Learning for Higher Education, the Teaching Enhancement Unit at Dublin City University, Athlone Institute of Technology, University College London, and Brickfield Education Labs.
Jay Churchward, one of our developers, presented about Board at the 2021 Mountain Moot. Board was also the topic of several presentations at the 2021 UK & Ireland Moodlemoot and garnered lots of positive feedback once added to the plugin database!
Brickfield Education Labs is delighted with the progress so far with this feature! We look forward to the continued development and maintenance of Moodle Board.
Partner Webinars
As part of our partnerships, we have hosted short webinars about accessibility, its importance in Moodle and online learning, and explaining the purpose of our product. Here attendees could ask questions about accessibility and how our product worked in Moodle!
In November of this year, Enovation invited us to speak at their Lunchtime Learning: Moodle Accessibility Webinar. Moodle US invited us to Moodle US’s Lunch and Learn: Moodle Accessibility webinar. In December 2021, Spanish Moodle partner 3ipunt invited us to El Café de 3ipunt.
It is spectacular to see an increased focus on accessibility for online learning. We were delighted to speak about the importance of accessibility to over 850 attendees across the three webinars. Thank you to Enovation, Moodle US, and 3ipunt for enabling us to reach such an active, receptive, and engaging audience!
Completing our First Funding Round
This year marked the end of a big twelve months for our company!
We completed several successful milestones which coincided with the completion of our funding round which was backed by Enterprise Ireland. Brickfield Education Labs became a High Potential Start-up (HPSU) company, as a result of this investment by EI. This builds on the support and backing of the team at NDRC Arclabs in 2019. We are excited to be part of Dogpatch Labs.
We are delighted to be an integral part of Ireland’s thriving start-up ecosystem. We would like to thank all of our advisors, investors and mentors for your continued support and advice. With this funding and support, we aim to grow our workforce to 20 employees by 2023, building towards a Series A funding round in the same period.
So… What’s next?
As we approach the end of this year, we can look back with pride at what we have achieved. These were the highlights, but there were many more achievements to be proud of in 2021.
We look forward to 2022, where we plan to build out both our product and our team, with the aim of improving accessibility for online learning for all.
We at Brickfield would like to convey our heartfelt thanks again to our clients, partners, investors, and everyone who has supported us this year and look forward to working with you all in the new year.
Bring on 2022!
