I’ve gotten a fair amount of individual questions recently about accessibility tips for presentations and presentation materials. I thought I should share my responses with a wider audience, especially since it’s conference season for world language educators in the U.S. (and conference season for applied linguists will be here before we know it).
I’ve put together this short list of some fairly easy habits to get into for the sake of greater accessibility (when you aren’t already beholden to a style guide, and even then I’d argue you can push back against some of the more inaccessible practices).
Keep in mind my personal focus is inclusion in a broad and instructional design sense; while technical accessibility is a critical part of inclusion, it’s not the primary facet of my expertise. I often have to look these questions up to get appropriately nuanced answers. I provide links to primary resources when helpful.
- Avoid the forward or common slash (/); it’s hard to parse. For example, if you’re using it in a situation where you can’t choose the best lexical choice for the job, just choose your favorite term or a conjunction: muted/quieter would then become muted or quieter.
- The dos and don’ts of text enhancement:
- Italic text enhancement is hard to parse.
- My solution has typically been to choose bold instead, although I find bold hard to spot in MS Word (maybe just dark mode?) so I think the jury is still out on that particular alternative.
- Keep in mind that italics and bold are not read by screen reader technology so should be used sparingly. Screen reader users seem to agree that all CAPS or underlining for emphasis can cause problems in their platforms.
- Deque offers a simple solution: preface critical content with the word “important.”
- Try to avoid relying solely on color highlighting. It’s often not in strong contrast with the background or font color and may be incompatible with someone’s Color Vision Deficiency (i.e., colorblindness). Choose what I call “color, and”: pick a highlight color and then consider adding bold as a secondary enhancement.
- Consider that some fonts are more difficult to parse than others.
- Why? Here’s more information than you asked for, but also includes a helpful list of the top ten easiest fonts to read: https://blog.superhuman.com/easiest-fonts-to-read/
- Fonts designed specifically for dyslexia are fascinating, but possibly not strictly speaking necessary on a broad scale if you get into the habit of using one of the easier basic fonts available. Note: I say this not to diminish dyslexic’s needs or trivialize the usefulness of specialty fonts, but I think getting into a good habit of using an easily-available font that’s generally more reliably accessible is a great first step!
- Test your color contrast.
- There are simple ways to be mindful of contrast.
- There are also very specific web-based contrast checkers.
- Use images judiciously.
- Try to save image use for essential meaning (for good reason; keep reading).
- Decorative images are fine, too, but it’s good not to overdo it. Processing images can be really fatiguing for those with low vision. Help them conserve their energy for meaning-making.
- Add Alt Text to images. Don’t rely on the auto-generated ones; they are not informative enough.
- Get to know the difference between Alt Text and Image Description and which situations call for each type.
- Learn how to write Alt Text and Image Descriptions effectively.
- When presenting, it’s important to narrate your images.
- This is a very practical reason to be judicious about your image use. There will be less to narrate if you stick to images essential to meaning.
- When you come to very complex data visualization images, it’s probably ok to offer an alternative to on-the-spot narration in the middle of a presentation: “I have good descriptive text embedded as Alt Text for this image, so if you need that please email me afterward and I’ll get you a copy of the slide deck.” This is probably the better option anyway until you feel well-practiced in narrating your visuals.
- If you’re given a microphone for the space, assume it’s necessary and use it. You may think your voice is loud enough to carry, but you can’t possibly know that for all of your audience members.
Happy presenting!
Caitlin Cornell 