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Material Accessibility Part 2: Trying It Out

C2C Workshop - Instructor Day 3 Block 2

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Plans for this block

  • Part 1 (~15 minutes)
    • Intro & summary of big things to watch for (~15 minutes)
  • Part 2 (~30 minutes)
    • Activity: accessibility in presentations (~30 minutes)
  • Part 3 (~30 minutes)
    • Activity: accessibility in documents (~30 minutes)

Time

Day 2 - Activity

8:00 - 9:00 am

Gathering

9:00 - 10:15 am

1: (S) Disclosure in Workplace

(I) Materials Access Pt.1

10:15 - 10:45 am

Break

10:45 - 12:00 pm

2: (S) Navigating Workplace

(I) Materials Access Pt. 2

12:00 - 2:00 pm

Lunch

2:00 - 3:15 pm

3: (S) Support Structures

(I) Syllabus & Course Policy

3:15 - 3:45 pm

Break

3:45 - 5:00 pm

4: Independence vs Interdependence

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Block 2 - Goals

  • Learn to apply common best practices with presentation and document accessibility
    • Exploring in-software accessibility tools/checkers
    • Writing alt text on images
    • Color, contrast, text, figures, and structures
  • Use the existing tool to improve access in one of your teaching presentations and one of your teaching documents

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Starting with Presentations - Big things to watch out for

  • Contrast​
    • Makes text/images hard to see​
    • Also lots of projector are old & distort colors….​
  • Color​
    • Should not be the sole distinguishing feature​
    • Different types of color blindness: red/green, blue-yellow (blue/green, yellow/red) – BAD COMBOs​
  • Text/Words​
    • Big enough font (24+ for presentations)​
    • Sans serif fonts (Calibri, Franklin Gothic Book, Lucida Sans, Arial)​
    • Leave whitespace, limit lines/words​​

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Watch figures especially:

  • Contrast​
  • Color​
  • Text/Words​
  • Labels & axes​
    • Big enough to read, descriptive to the audience (not just you)​
  • Highlighting information​
    • How are you pointing out the important information in your figure?​
    • Describe the figure​

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Watch figures especially:

  • Alt text: should communicate the content and function of the image​
  • Context matters! Why are you including the image? What are you trying to say with it? (Put that in the alt text!)​
    • This is also why you should put in the alt text. AI generated alt text is usually drastically lacking.​
  • Should be succinct, accurate, equivalent to content & function​
  • Should not be redundant to surrounding text & does not need to include “image of” or “graphic of” words at the beginning

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Example of alt text:

  • Too concise: alt="United States Per Capita Energy Use."�
  • Too wordy: alt="Line graph showing per capita energy use in the United States from the year 1650 through the year 2000, showing a large increase after 1900 with the peak between 1970 and 1980."�
  • Just right: alt="United States per capita energy use increased sharply after 1900 and peaked around 1975."

Example from Technical Writing

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Example: Powerpoint Slides

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Activity: Working on presentations

  • Task (~30 minutes):
    • A common teaching tool is to use google slides or powerpoint. Select a presentation you have for your class, and create a copy of it so you can make changes freely.
    • Work on making the presentation more accessible:​
      • Try using the built in accessibility checker​s
      • Pick a juicy figure & write the alt text​
      • Use the basic accessibility checklist to go through your presentation​
    • Chat with a neighbor, run ideas past each other, ask questions, share noticings/realizations, etc.

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Switching to Documents - Big things to watch out for

  • A lot of overlap with check list for presentations and a lot of overlap in tools�
  • Other big things with documents:
    • Make sure to use heading structure to designate titles & sections. (Not just making the font bigger & centered.)
    • Use bullets/numbered lists
    • Descriptive link text (not just “click here”)
    • Tables should have headers and captions

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Activity: Working on documents

  • Task (~30 minutes):
    • Select a document you have for your class, and create a copy of it so you can make changes freely.
    • Work on making the document more accessible:​
      • Same things as before; built-in accessibility checkers, use the checklist, think about color, contrast, image usage, links…
      • What are the structural pieces used (titles, headings, etc.)?�
    • Chat with a neighbor, run ideas past each other, ask questions, share noticings/realizations, etc.

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Other considerations

  • Many online teaching tools now have accessibility checkers built in
    • E.G. D2L (at MSU) uses Ally - very useful scoreboard & checker�
  • You may have noticed that we haven’t talked about pdfs…
    • Pdfs are difficult to work with in terms of accessibility
    • When possible, better to use documents or slide files
    • Some resources to make pdfs accessible (technical, often pay wall)
    • Be prepared with alternative formats. (If someone can’t use a screen reader on a pdf of equation sheet, what would you do?)

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This can feel overwhelming…

  • Feels like a lot of things to keep track of.​
    • Start small: pick one thing to work on & build out from there​
    • Basics: use the built-in accessibility checkers​
  • Most of this just boils down to being purposeful in creating materials
    • Good practice anyways – what are you trying to communicate with each slide? What do you actually need to communicate that idea?​
    • As with lots of areas of unconscious bias, takes conscious thought, time, & practice to undo.​
  • “Perfect” is not a good bar to set. “Better” makes more progress over time.

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Links to additional resources