Ensuring that all people can fully access educational content is key to effective learning.
Overlooking accessibility creates barriers that can exclude certain users and leave skill gaps within an organization. To avoid this, it is essential to incorporate accessibility from the outset of the development of any course or educational material. This allows you to plan accordingly and manage teams, resources, and timelines. Authoring tools, such as Articulate Storyline, now include accessibility checkers, making it easier, but the incorporation of accessibility features is not automatic and requires careful design.
As per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, also known as WCAG, there are three levels of accessibility (A, AA, and AAA) depending on the degree of compliance with different criteria. These guidelines are a great starting point when assessing clients’ needs in terms of accessibility. But regardless of the specific characteristics of a project, below you will find good practices to make your content more accessible.
Regardless of the format or platform, there are a few key elements that can make your content more accessible to more people.
Organize content with hierarchical titles and subtitles for easy reading and navigation, especially for screen readers.
Briefly describe the content of each image so that those who cannot see it can access the same information.
Make sure that the text and backgrounds have enough contrast to make reading easier for people with low vision.
Including subtitles in videos and offering audio transcriptions benefits both people with hearing loss and those who prefer to read or need to check the content in an environment where they can’t make noise.
Use other elements such as icons, patterns, or additional text, to convey key information, so that it is understandable even for people with color blindness.
Verify that all interactions can be performed without the need for a mouse, allowing the use of keyboard shortcuts or navigation keys.
At Third Term Learning, we use these and many other strategies at every stage of our course evelopment to ensure accesible and effective learning experiences.
Incorporating these good practices not only helps meet international standards, but also improves the learning experience for all people.
Do you want to continue improving accessibility in your courses? Let's talk!
