Online Accessibility Tips

This chapter provides tips for online authors to make sure their lectures and IMOS textbook contributions are accessible online to individuals with wide range of abilities.

Describe Images and Other Media:

Describe images you are showing in a lecture in written text or verbally – summarize their content and highlight important/relevant details.

Use alt text for images:

• Microsoft Office and PPT has alt text boxes attached to images.
• Be succinct, but make sure that important details are all present.
• No need to say “an image of” unless the format of the image is relevant.
• A “decorative image” is one that doesn’t need to be described because it’s not contributing information.
• Consider an image appendix if you have a lot of graphs and tables that are complex.

Provide a script for alternative download:

• Provide a transcript or use an automatic captioning service. Make sure you copyedit any AI-generated transcripts!
• Provide text alternatives to images/video.

Use Color and Fonts Thoughtfully:

Use colors to convey meaning

• Avoid using color alone to convey meaning, especially red/green. Use red x and green check.
• Ensure adequate color contrast by using an online contrast checker
• Convert colors to grey scale to check contrasts between them.

Keep texts readable:

• See Website Accessibility in Mind
• Sans serif fonts are better for readability: Avenir, Calibri, Arial. Comic Sans.
• Serif fonts are acceptable for titles.
• Use at least 12-pt font on documents and 20 pt on PPTs.
• Use heading styles (visible to screen readers) to provide well-organized content.
• Make sure to add table and image captions.
• Embed URLs in text versus pasting the URL in the text as text (unless intended for print). Instead of saying “click here” say “link to descriptive text.”