Digital accessibility has been a widely publicised issue since I first started at university. Even most students without any additional learning needs should be aware of the importance of, for example, having alternative text in place for images and closed captions for videos – because those things are essential for certain students.
However, I think one of the most important paradigm shifts many of us have experienced in recent history is understanding that accessibility improvements generally improve content for everyone, not just those who require it. Experiencing first-hand the benefits of such changes, and the difficulties encountering inaccessible content, has motivated me to ensure that content I create is always accessible. To that end, here are a few accessibility tips that can improve your content for everyone:
Ensure that PDF files are formatted properly
Nothing that I have encountered at university has made me groan and roll my eyes more than downloading a PDF scan of reading material, only to find out that ctrl+f, text highlight and copy+pastedon’t work. Most of us are likely to encounter this at some point – it occurs when a physical material (e.g. pages of a book) is scanned without any of the background data that populates a PDF file, leaving you with pictures of text and nothing else.
If you make a scan yourself, this is usually very easy to avoid. You need to make sure that Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is carried out at some stage in the process, as this will turn the images into a properly structured PDF. Some printers have this functionality built in. If yours does not, an external program such as Adobe Acrobat Pro can manually run the process on an existing document. University of Aberdeen students can also use Ally File Transformer to create an OCR’d document from a scanned file.
Don’t overuse colours, and be wary of contrast
Some of us like to make our work a bit more flavourful in its presentation through colour, whilst some of us are still very much Calibri and default heading styles purists. Both of those things are okay, as long as you keep a few guidelines in mind.
The first thing to remember is that colour alone should never be used to convey meaning. Imagine converting your work to greyscale – would it still make sense? This is not only essential for people with colour-blindness, but it can generally help to ensure that the intended meaning of your work is more widely understood.
The second element is to do with colour contrast. Most of us will have seen colour-blind tests with orange and green dots – not only do certain egregious combinations need to be avoided for the benefit of some readers, but some combinations are generally difficult to read for everyone. Thankfully you don’t need to do the guesswork yourself, as there are many free tools that can determine whether text on a background passes the appropriate contrast standards – for example, WebAim’s contrast checker.
Does your structure make sense?
The way a document is set out can have a huge impact on its readability. There are a few tips in particular worth keeping in mind:
If you have had to make a poster, diagram, or PowerPoint slide, you will probably have spent some time considering how to arrange the different elements. It is important to keep in mind that what usually seems like the obvious reading order to the author might not be immediately obvious to the reader. Particularly when mixing text with diagrams/graphs/images, make sure that the way that your work is meant to be read generally matches up with the intuitive way that a person will try and read it. You could do this by asking a friend if it is clear, for example.
When making a Word document, it is particularly useful to ensure that you use headings correctly. Using the default styles built into word - “title” for your title, and “headings 1, 2, 3” for levels of heading/subheading will not only add general structure to your document, but it will also be invaluable for screen reader users, as they rely on a correctly set list of headings to be able to read a document. You can find guidance on how to write accessible content in Toolkit.
Accessibility is more important than ever, and particularly with legislation now enforcing certain requirements on public bodies, many employers will be very keen to ensure that staff are well versed in the subject. Spending some time to keep up to date with standards and to be able to create accessible content would be an excellent skill to mention on your CV, and contributes to greater digital accessibility for everyone.
