Title: Accessible texts
Course: Digivisio - DEMO course template > Section: Accessibility

Text types

Many educational institutes have Word and PowerPoint templates. If your institute has one, it should be used, as they are usually already designed to be accessible. They are also an easy way to create accessible PDF files, as most of the editing is done already.

When writing, use different styles as most screen readers can process them. So instead of highlighting titles with underlining or bold text, use a Heading style. The same goes for lists: ready-made styles work well. This page uses Moodle’s own Heading and paragraph styles.

In text, bold works well to highlight things, using colours works less well. Any underlined words are often considered to be links, and using capital letters in the middle of the text is still considered shouting, not a neutral way of drawing attention.

Fontd

TChoose a clear, sans serif font, such as Verdana or Arial. The font size should be large enough, at least 11-12 points, and the line spacing should be 1,5. For accessibility reasons, align the text left, instead of justifying it – this keeps the spaces between characters even which makes the text easier to read.

If a page has more than one column, use the Column function instead of separating the columns by using tabs or a table. Screen readers read tables in Word based on their tabulation, which means the table might be read in wrong order in this case.

Images

If, or when, you use images, write their description into the text as well. Also make sure the image has an alternative text (alt text), which enables people who cannot see the image to know what is in it.

Photo: Coffee being made over a campfire in winter (Photographer: Marianna Leikomaa).

W3C standards