Category: Tech Tips à la carte

Brightspace, our Learning Management System (LMS), is designed with accessibility in mind. However, it is the responsibility of the instructor and/or course designer to ensure their course content is formatted using best practices for accessibility; including the use of good heading structure, text formatting, contrast and color, descriptive links, alternative text, tables, lists, etc.

You can make small changes when creating course content to make it accessible.

I am writing a series of accessibility related blog posts that will provide suggestions on how you can make small changes when creating course content to make it accessible. This is the second tip in my series of accessibility related blog posts and it focuses on text formatting.

Text formatting is an important consideration for accessibility. Readable content directly supports accessibility by:

• Supporting Users with Visual Impairments: Clear typography and proper contrast help users with low vision, color blindness, or other visual disabilities read content more easily.
• Assisting Cognitive Accessibility: Simple, well-structured content helps users with dyslexia, ADHD, autism, or other cognitive differences process information more effectively.
• Improving Screen Reader Experience: Properly formatted content with clear headings, lists, and link text helps screen reader users navigate and understand content efficiently.
• Reducing Eye Strain: Good typography and color choices benefit everyone, including users who experience fatigue or have temporary vision issues.
• Enhancing Mobile Accessibility: Readable content is especially important on smaller screens, where text clarity becomes even more critical.

An accessible font means using a typeface designed for easy reading by a diverse audience, including individuals with visual impairments such as low vision or reading disability such as dyslexia. Accessible typography ensures that textual information is accessible to all users, irrespective of their abilities or disabilities.

Here are a few suggestions for making text legible for persons with a visual impairment and that work for nearly everyone.

Contrast – Use the highest possible contrast for text
Point Size – The relationship between readability and point size differs somewhat among typefaces.
Leading – Spacing between lines of text, should be at least 25 to 30 percent of the point size.
Font Family – Avoid complicated, decorative or cursive fonts. When they must be used, reserve them for emphasis only.
Sans-serif or standard serif fonts with familiar, easily recognizable characters are best.
Font Style – Roman typeface, using upper and lower cases, is more readable than italics, oblique or condensed.

Some additional points to consider:

• Color should not be the only method used to convey information
• Avoid red or green text or text decoration, such as Word Art, Shadows, 3D, etc.
• Use bold or italic to display emphasis
• Do not underline text (screen readers interpret underlines as links)
• Avoid writing whole sentences in capital letters
• Avoid moving or blinking text
• Keep the number of fonts used to a minimum
• The reading order should be the same as the visual order

You can find more information about accessible typefaces and fonts at Web AIM.

You will remove significant barriers for the visually impaired if you take these suggestions into consideration when creating course content. An added bonus is that there will be students without disabilities, as well as those who have chosen not to disclose their disability to you, who will find your use of these tips helpful as well.

This is the first in a series of blog posts that is a follow-up to my recent Why Accessibility is Important post where I wrote,

Making accessible content doesn’t have to be complicated... Even small efforts make a big difference. Not only will your materials support students with disabilities, but you’ll also improve the learning experience for everyone. Plus, if you reuse your course content each semester, accessibility updates you make now will continue to pay off in the future.

Brightspace, our Learning Management System (LMS), is designed with accessibility in mind. However, it is the responsibility of the instructor and/or course designer to ensure their course content is formatted using best practices for accessibility; including the use of good heading structure, text formatting, contrast and color, descriptive links, alternative text, tables, lists, etc.

This first post focuses on headings. A good heading structure is an important accessibility consideration. Headings should be used to indicate main points and sub-points on a page. Like an outline, heading levels should appear in logical and consistent order.

Headings allow screen reader users to easily navigate through the page and can make the page more usable for everyone.

When creating documents, many people do not use true "heading styles." For example, when creating a heading, they simply change the font type, enlarge the font size, change the color, make it bold, etc. When this is done, the document has no real structure that can be detected by a screen reader program. While visual learners can scan the page for text that stands out from the rest, users who rely on a screen reader are not able to "see" these elements.

IMPORTANT: When creating heading styles always use the proper heading level. Create uniform headings so that a screen reader can navigate the content and can understand how it is structured. Watch this short video for an explanation of heading structures and reading order.

The correct way to provide structure for accessibility purposes is to use heading styles. Listed below are instructions for applying heading styles in MS Word, PowerPoint, Google Docs, Google Slides, and the Brightspace Editor.

Add heading styles in MS Word document:

1. Click on the Home tab.
2. Highlight the text.
3. Click on the appropriate heading selector in the styles panel (e.g. Heading 1 for top-level heading; Heading 2 for a subheading of the top-level heading, etc.).

Add heading styles in PowerPoint:

Using slide layouts will ensure that files have correctly structured headings and lists, and proper reading order. To assign a Slide Layout:

1. Click on the Home tab.
2. Click on New Slide.
3. Choose the desired layout from the slide options menu.

Add heading styles in Google Docs:

1. Highlight the text.
2. Click on the appropriate heading selector in the styles panel (e.g. Heading 1 for top-level heading; Heading 2 for a subheading of the top-level heading, etc.).

Add heading styles in Google Slides:

Use predefined layouts instead of manually created text boxes, because the layouts are specially coded to work well with adaptive technologies like screen readers. To assign a Slide Layout:

1. Click on Slide --> Apply layout button.
2. Choose the desired layout from the slide options menu.

Add heading styles in the Brightspace Editor:

1. Highlight the text.
2. Select the proper heading level from the Format dropdown menu (e.g. Heading 1 for top-level heading; Heading 2 for a subheading of the top-level heading, etc.).

Heading structures are essential for organizing documents into logical, hierarchical outlines, which improve readability for all users and ensure accessibility for those using screen readers.

Image credit: "Digital Literacy for visually impaired" by IAPB/VISION 2020 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0