A workshop by Susan Bale, Sara Thornes and Kirsten Thompson; University of Leeds - April 2014

1. SDDU & Library workshop
Creating accessible
documents

2. Overview
• Context
• Accessibility challenges
• Creating accessible documents
• Another way?
• Questions

3. Context

4. Context
Legal
• Equality Act 2010 replaces and simplifies
previous anti-discrimination laws
• Increased protection for disabled learners
• General Equality Duty to eliminate unlawful
conduct, advance equality of opportunity and
promote good relations between people who
do/don’t share a protected characteristic

5. Context
Equality and Inclusion Framework 2014-19
“As a research-intensive international University we
will attract and retain excellent people from across
the world to enable the University and the people
within it to fulfil their potential.” (vision)
“To be a beacon of excellence in the sector,
promoting a culture of inclusion, respect and
equality of opportunity for all.” (mission)

7. Context
"Web accessibility means that people with
disabilities can use the Web.
More specifically, Web accessibility means that
people with disabilities can perceive,
understand, navigate, and interact with the
Web, and that they can contribute to the
Web...”
(Web Access Initiative, online)

8. Accessibility
challenges

9. Barriers to Accessibility
• Deafness
• Dexterity
• Cognitive difficulties
• Colour blindness
• Low vision
• Blindness

10. Deafness and Hard-of-Hearing
• Relevant to any type of audio material
• Include a transcript or closed captioning and
in some cases, a description of what is
occurring
• Eg. SDDU’s Changing Landscape adds a transcript and an audio-only file
www.sdduonline.leeds.ac.uk/changinglandscape
• Transcripts are also searchable

11. Dexterity
• Many people can’t use mice and/or keyboards
• Affects everyone with a sore hand or poor
coordination to serious maladies such as
degenerative disease, birth defects and being
a gamer
www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/guides/

12. Dexterity
• The best solution is not to mess with the
solutions already in the technology!
• Use a logical tab order, especially in forms
• Ensure that hyperlinks/buttons are long/large
enough (avoid the dreaded click here)

13. Cognitive difficulties
• Dyslexia
• Attention issues
• Difficulty comprehending certain formats
• Also consider non-native speakers
• Web-users!
webaim.org/simulations/distractability-sim.html

14. Cognitive difficulties
• Solutions
– Structural organization
– Visual organization
– Uncluttered pages, avoid distractions
– Clear and simple writing
• Good principals for all types of disabilities!
webaim.org/articles/cognitive/design

15. Colour blindness
• Good use of colour can increase usability and
accessibility, but can’t rely on it to provide
information by itself
• Eg. “the green line on the graph shows”
• www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-
blindness/
• www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-
blindness-simulator/

17. Colour blindness
• Solutions
– Use words
– Patterned colour
– High-contrast

18. Low vision
Common problems
- age
- diabetes
- glaucoma
- macular degeneration

20. • Note that graphics don’t scale well

21. Low vision
• Solutions
– Allow the text to be enlarged
– Use proper text, not graphics of text
– Allow users to change fonts and colours
– Eliminate clutter
– Graphics
• Crop out unimportant bits
• Zoom in before making screenshot
• Use alt text

22. Blindness
• Requires special “screen-reading” software
• Software ironically also blind, relies on the
structure behind the page
www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/best_practice/case_studies/robin.shtml

24. Example: Web of Science quick start
guide: page 1

25. Example: Web of Science quick start
guide: page 2

26. 1
2 3
5
4
Example: Keyword search: page 1

27. Example: Keyword search: page 2

28. Creating accessible
documents

29. Repurposing VS. Optimised design
"It's cheap but degrading to reuse content
and design across diverging media forms
like print Vs. online or desktop Vs. mobile.”
(Jakob Nielsen, online)

30. Accessible Word documents
• Use Word styles to format and structure
documents
• San-serif fonts
• Use more than one way to highlight important
information
• Think about use of colour
• ALT text for images
• Images with a good contrast
• Plain English

31. [Activity]

32. Another way?

33. Another way?
• No single solution
• PDF + Word
• Printable webpages
• E-books
• Multimedia

34. Another way?
• No single solution
• PDF + Word
• Printable webpages
• E-books
The “future is mobile” mobile is already here.
How do we develop mobile-accessible content?

38. Questions