Digital Accessibility: Quick Fixes to Make Your Content Accessible (Part 2)

Alternative text (alt text) is a short, written description of an image that describes the appearance, content and/or function of an image on a page. Alt text will be read by a screen reader. All images in your content must have alt text, except when an image is used purely for decoration.

Software like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and the content editor in Brightspace provide the ability to easily add alt text to your images.

When writing alt text, ask yourself these questions:

• What is the content conveyed by the image?
• What information should the user gain from the image?

And follow these tips:

• Keep alt text concise but meaningful.
• Use correct grammar.
• Describe the function of images used as links.
• Avoid including “image of” or “picture of” in your alt text.

Contrast and color usage are essential to digital accessibility. It’s important to remember:

• Not all people can see certain colors and some people cannot distinguish clearly between colors.
• The contrast between text and background colors needs to be high enough to be easily read.
• Red-green color deficiency affects about 8% of the population. Try to avoid using these colors.
• Color alone should not convey meaning. For example, avoid writing “See the red box for information.”

When you add a link to your content, make sure your link text can stand on its own and clearly describes where the link will take the user.

• Keep your link text concise and use meaningful keywords.
• Avoid using generic phrases like “click here” or “read more,” since those are not descriptive and do not provide any contextual information to screen reader users.
• Avoid using URLs as link text. Screen readers will read the entire URL!

Proper heading structure should provide an outline of your page content so users can understand how the page is structured and easily navigate between the headings.

• Picture your content in an outline – your main topics should be headings and sub-headings.
• Use the built in heading styles in your authoring tool (e.g., heading 1, heading 2, heading 3, etc.) to define your headings. Simply making text large and bold doesn’t make it a heading!
• Reserve heading 1 for the main topic of your page content.

Lists are important for accessibility because they provide additional information and structure to users. Use the features in your authoring tool to define your lists.

• Use a bulleted—or unordered—list when the order of the items in list is not important.
• Use a numbered—or ordered—list when there is a defined sequence or order to the items in the list.

Many of the Microsoft 365 apps include the Accessibility Checker, which identifies accessibility problems and provides suggestions on how to fix them. Using the checker will help you create accessible content directly in the program you are using. Learn how to improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker on the Microsoft website.

• Semantic structure: Lists (WebAIM)

Check out part 1 of this series, Digital Accessibility: Inclusion and Compliance where we discuss the importance of understanding why digital accessibility is important and how you can ensure your content is accessible.