On a theme layout file, add the following code: if (isloggedin()) { echo $OUTPUT->user_picture($USER, array('visibletoscreenreaders' => false)); $foo = new user_picture($USER); $foo->visibletoscreenreaders = false; echo $OUTPUT->render($foo); } Navigate to a page that uses the layout file you edited and verify that the user pictures show up. Use JAWS to read out the two user pictures and verify that the screen reader ignores the pictures. NVDA does not support aria-hidden properly. Inspect the user pictures you've mouseovered. Observe that they do have role="presentation" set on the img tags, and aria-hidden="true" and tabindex = "-1" set on their enclosing a tags. View the page source code, and copy it all into your clipboard. Go to http://validator.w3.org/ and validate the copied source using direct input. Verify that there are no validation errors relating to improper use of the role attribute on a elements.