Top Tips
Alternative Text
What
Alt text, or alternative text, is textual representation of a visual, such as a photograph or a chart, that provides a short description that could stand in lieu of the image’s content or indicate that the image is decorative. What the alt text says is dependent on the purpose of the image, but a good question to ask yourself is how you would describe the image to someone who cannot see it but needs to understand the purpose it serves.
Why
Alt text is especially important for learners who use screen readers and can also be valuable to people who are currently using a poor internet connection and can’t load the image.
How
Captions & Transcripts
What
Captions, scripts, and transcripts all provide text content for videos. Captions appear on the screen while the video plays and follow along with the dialogue or audio. A script is a document that accompanies a video file and provides contextualized dialogue, while a transcript marks the script with speakers and timestamps.
Why
Providing an alternative to audio makes videos usable for viewers who are D/deaf or hard of hearing. It also enables access to content for those who have a slow internet connection, do not have headphones or speakers, or are in a noisy location.
How
Color & Color Contrast
What
Careful and intentional use of color is a cornerstone of accessible content creation. It is important not to use color alone to convey content – for example, using red text and nothing else to draw attention to keywords in lecture slides is inaccessible to some users. Special attention should be paid to use sufficient color contrast to ensure readability.
Why
Color contrast is necessary to provide access to users who cannot distinguish between certain colors and for people with low vision, but it also makes reading easier for everybody.
How
Font & Font Size
What
Simple, sans Serif fonts like Calibri or Arial are easier to read and should be used for small text or large chunks of type. Serif fonts are more appropriate for adding visual appeal to large text like a title. Some users may benefit from specialty fonts like those made for people with Dyslexia. Text should not be too small to read easily: A good rule is no smaller than 12 pts for documents and no smaller than 20 pts for presentations.
Why
Choosing fonts and font sizes with accessibility in mind is especially beneficial to people with visual impairments or with certain learning disabilities such as Dyslexia, but making text easy to read at a glance makes reading faster and easier for everyone.
How
Headings & Text Structure
What
Word processing software contains options for text styles that include headings. It’s important to utilize these styles instead of denoting titles by simply making text larger. Start with the lowest number heading and nest smaller styles sequentially. The styles can be edited to look different if they maintain the style designation. Similarly, lists should be formatted as ordered or unordered list using the tools available in the program instead of marked with only line breaks and hyphens
Why
Heading and list styles are important for two reasons. They visually break up blocks of text, which promotes readability, but is especially helpful for users with cognitive differences. By using official styles instead of creating text that only looks like a title or a list, visually impaired learners who use screen readers can more easily skim and jump between sections.
How
PDF Accessibility
What
PDFs have a number of accessibility requirements. Some – like headings, color contrast, and alternative text – are shared with other document formats; others are more specific to PDFs, including ensuring selectable text, a reading order that is recognized by the program, a language, a title, and tags on non-text, among other things. Because PDFs can require more time to format than other types of documents, a good first step is to evaluate whether providing a PDF is the best choice or if providing the document in its native format might be a better route.
Why
Many of the accessibility factors that are specific to PDFs are to facilitate understanding for users who are accessing it through a screen reader because they cannot see the display. For example, without a reading order, the screen reader may present columns of text out of sequence and cause confusion.