These are short tips to help you improve the accessibility of our content. If you have questions about any of these, please contact Dhruti Bhagat-Conway.
The font size, font type, and line spacing of your content can affect how easily users can read and absorb the information.
For font size use:
For line spacing use:
Note: The default in most software is 1 or 1.15
There’s no single font that is better than others, but sans-serif fonts are a little easier to read, especially for dyslexic users.
Examples of sans-serif fonts: Arial, Calibri, Comic Sans, Open Sans, Tahoma, Verdana, etc.
If you’re doing a video presentation, turn on captions as soon as the meeting starts.
This means captioning will be available during the whole presentation, and a user can pull up the transcript during the call to go back and read through something they may have missed.
If you’re using the new version of Zoom, you have to turn on captions before you share your screen. The captioning controls disappear after you share your screen.
Remember to check the reading level of your content.
We aim for a grade 9 or 10 reading level for all informational and service content.
This helps:
Simple ways to improve reading levels:
We recommend using the free online version of HemingwayApp to review and revise your content's reading levels.
One way to improve accessibility is by using accessible links. An accessible link uses meaningful link text in place of the URL. This helps all users understand what the link will do but is especially helpful for screen reader users due to how they may navigate the page.
Meaningful link text means that the text of the link itself has meaning and isn’t vague, like “click here.”
Consider:
https://libraries.mit.edu/news/legal-considerations-for-your-ai-project/38256/
vs.
vs.
Learn more about legal considerations for your AI project
The last link provides the most information about where the link will take you.
Check your color contrast! Color contrast is how much one color stands out against another.
Low contrast means the colors do not stand out that well against each other. Low contrast adds to eye strain and is difficult to perceive for many users with vision impairments.
The WCAG has guidelines on recommended color contrast to avoid this problem and there are many tools you can use to check your contrast.
Resources:
University of Minnesota's quick guide on color contrast and find color contrast checkers
Review the slides and recording (~30 mins) from my “How to use color in your content” presentation.
Minimize the use of PDFs for online documents. PDFs pose many accessibility challenges that are difficult to fix. For this reason, we suggest using other software and formats for online documents.
For regular documents, you can make a web page, Confluence/wiki page, Google Doc, or LibGuide
If the document is a form, you can use Google Forms, Qualtrics, or LibWizard
MS Word documents are also preferable to PDFs if making a web page or web form doesn’t make sense
You can find this tip and others on my LibGuide dedicated to helping us create more accessible content.
2 easy ways to make meeting agendas or notes documents more accessible are: to use list buttons and to use headings to separate sections.
Using list buttons:
Use headings:
Read this University of Minnestoa page for more information and visual instructions on both tips
Remember to add alternative (alt) text to your images.
Users who cannot see an image use alt text to learn what they need from the image.
Tips for writing alt text:
You can learn more about including alt text for different types of images in this Libguide.
If you’re on a web page, working on a graph, presentation, or something else, there are a few tools you can download or access online to check the content:
Color Contrast Analyzer - needs to be downloaded, but it allows you to use magnified eyedroppers to find colors and adjust the colors in the tool
Silktide accessibility checker - has many accessibility features and checkers, but it is useful for its color blindness, visual impairment, and dyslexia simulators
Image Describer (Chrome extension) - Useful for generating alternative text for images
Grackle Slides for Google Slides - An add-on that works past the free trial to help you make your presentations accessible
PowerPoint has a built-in accessibility checker
Axe DevTools Chrome browser extension - used for assessing basic accessibility problems on web pages
HemingwayApp.com - used to help you improve you writing to make it more readable
Make sure the titles of your webpages, forms, LibGuides, Google Docs, etc. are descriptive and accurate.
Page titles are the first thing a screen reader reads aloud when a user lands on a page. A good title helps all users know what to expect and can help users choose the right tabs when toggling between them.
A good page title should be:
Avoid inaccessible question types. These will depend on the form/survey software, but the following are almost always inaccessible:
When the user needs to choose from a set of options, use radio buttons instead of dropdowns unless:
Radio buttons reduce the mental load by providing all the choices at once. They are also easier to select on mobile devices.