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All asynchronous content should be digitally accessible to comply with legislation. Most tools for producing online materials make provision for accessibility, but it is important to understand general accessibility principles when creating content in order to ensure the content you produce is accessible, and to check materials with accessibility checkers where available.
Providing material in a variety of formats (e.g. text, video, audio, images) helps to embrace principles of universal design for learning, making learning inclusive and accessible to all.
Always make use of tools for checking for accessibility where available before publishing your online content:
Microsoft Office applications, e.g. Word and PowerPoint, have built in accessibility checkers.
Blackboard Ally is a Moodle plugin that checks uploaded files for accessibility and often identifies issues that are not picked up by built-in accessibility checkers in Microsoft Office applications. LCCOS colleagues can use the Moodle test area space on the Library Skills Trainers Moodle course
Screen-reader software allows blind or visually-impaired people to navigate digital content and read it with a speech synthesizer. People use screen-reader software in different ways depending on their disability, so attempting to test online materials with screen-reader software can be challenging and is not always recommended.
We recommend relying on built-in accessibility checkers and Blackboard Ally where available. The one web output which we recommend always testing with screen-reader software are Articulate Storyline tutorials.
NVDA is a freely available screen-reader which you can download from the Software Center on Staff Desktop@UCL computers.
Always use the Library Services accessible templates for Word and PowerPoint. Make use of the in-built accessibility checkers and check for accessibility in Blackboard Ally.
It is generally advisable not to use PDFs as they are difficult to make accessible and cannot be manipulated by the reader in order to facilitate reading.
