2022

Text - Accessibility

For all Blackboard shells, as well as online courses, reasonable accommodations must be made to web content (not only face-to-face instruction) to maximize student accessibility in your course and comply with federal ADA requirements.   
Instructors bear the responsibility of ensuring subsequent changes to approved courses continue to meet these and other  DEC and ADA  standards.   Contact IT and/or Disability Services  for assistance.

Below are items you must check to ensure all Text in your course is accessible.

Use a san-serif type face (i.e. Arial, Century Gothic, Helvetica, Trebuchet, Verdana) with non-justified text of no less than size 12 type for easy readability

Use one font throughout the site

Use Styles function to insert headings and other important navigational structures in documents

• Insert Headings in Word
  1. Select the heading text
  2. Choose a style from the Home > Styles toolbar
     

     

• Insert Headings in Blackboard
1. Select the appropriate heading text
2. Choose a Heading style from the Paragraph Style field
   

   

Avoid using font color as exclusive method to convey meaning

Color is sometimes used to convey meaning beyond the basic text. In a course syllabus, for example, you may use color to emphasize an important statement. Or, on a PowerPoint slide showing a multiple choice question, you might show the correct answer in green and color the incorrect answers in red. Using color to communicate meaning or emphasis is problematic for students with color blindness. If you want to use color to express meaning, you should also provide a supplemental means to convey the information without color. In a good example, survey results reported by gender would display data from males in a red font followed with an asterisk (*). Colorblind students could identify male data by the asterisks (*) rather than the colored font.

Avoid harsh color combinations, such as yellow-blue or red-green combinations

• Use the WebAIM Color Contrast Checker to ensure compliance

• Color Combination	Viewed with Protanopia (color blindness)

Avoid overuse of all CAPS, bold or italics

Avoid underlining words, which a screen reader can mistake for a navigation link

Use high contrast between text and background

• Use the WebAIM Color Contrast Checker to ensure compliance

Avoid extremely bright colors as a background color. Do not use patterned backgrounds or watermarks across document

Avoid using PDFs

• Instead, use the original files is Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), or other format.

Avoid the use of text boxes to set off content; screenreaders will not detect content