A presentation for administrative staff and other non teaching staff at Glasgow Kelvin College Springburn Campus.

1. Creating Inclusive Information
Margaret McKay, Advisor: Inclusion
Jisc RSC Scotland
http://tiny.cc/Accessible-Info
29/01/2015

2. Jisc Digital Media -www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/
Jisc Legal – http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/
Jisc Techdis - http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/

3. What barriers might people
experience accessing information?
• Visual issues.
• Motor/manual dexterity issues.
• Learning differences such as
dyslexia.
• Hearing issues.
• Cognitive issues.
• Language issues.
• Literacy issues
Dry_Icon Images

4. Think about it from another perspective
A typical group of 1st year FE students
were asked about difficulties that they experienced with
written information on a day to day basis.
What barriers do you think they highlighted?

5. • Blurred/fuzzy print.
• Headaches/discomfort if text too close together.
• Strong/bold print leaves a shadow.
• Lose place on line.
• Small print.
• Information not accessible with my assistive technology.
• Not all info can be seen on screen if magnified.
• Vocabulary difficult/unfamiliar.
• Long document difficult to follow.
• Forget the information if sentences long.
• I can’t read the information on the screen.
• The information on the screen is too small to see.
• I can’t adjust the font and colour backgrounds to suit my personal
preferences.
• The words keep jumping around the screen
• I find it difficult to navigate.
• I can’t use a mouse and instead use a keyboard to navigate.
• I keep miss-hitting the keyboard keys.
• I can’t hear the audio

6. Model of Accessibility Maturity
Where are you?

7. Accessible Font Styles
Serif Font Styles are less accessible
Times New Roman (abc DEF)
Sans Serif Fonts Styles are more accessible
Trebuchet (abc DEF)
Comic Sans (abc DEF)
Arial (abc DEF)
Verdana (abc DEF)
Helvetica (abc DEF)
Geneva (abc DEF)

8. Serif or Sans Serif Fonts

9. Good Practice with Font
• Text should be no smaller than 12 point.
• Use 1.5 line spacing - see the difference line spacing can make.
• Underlining of large volumes of text should be avoided as the
readability is significantly decreased.
• DON’T WRITE WHOLE SENTENCES IN CAPITALS. (This can be
undone by pressing shift and F3)
• Don’t use italics; consider using bold instead.
• Ensure all text is left aligned, not justified - see examples of
unjustified and justified margins

10. Using Bullets and Numbering
• Using bulleting or numbered lists helps break
up large blocks of text and makes lists of items
easier to read. This is most useful for print
impaired readers (e.g. people with dyslexia).
• Putting a punctuation mark at the end of each
item list helps blind people who use screen
readers to identify items on the list instead of
hearing a long list of text.

11. Tables
Let's pretend that you are a scree reader for just a
moment. You're going to a web site to find out where
the biology 205 class is going to be held. You go to a
web page that has this information, and this is what
you hear:
Do you know were biology 205 is supposed to be?
Table with 10 columns and 7 rows. Department Code, Class Number,
Section, Max Enrollment, Current Enrollment, Room Number, Days,
Start Time, End Time, Instructor, BIO, 100, 1, 15, 13, 5, Mon,Wed,Fri,
10:00, 11:00, Magde, 100, 2, 15, 7, 5, Tue,Thu, 11:00, 12:30, Indge,
205, 1, 15, 9, 6, Tue,Thu, 09:00, 10:30, Magde, 315, 1, 12, 3, 6,
Mon,Wed,Fri, 13:00, 14:00, Indge, BUS, 150, 1, 15, 15, 13,
Mon,Wed,Fri, 09:00, 10:00, Roberts, 210, 1, 10, 9, 13, Mon,Wed,Fri,
08:00, 09:00, Rasid.
Ref: webaim – accessible tables. http://webaim.org/techniques/tables/

12. Colour

13. Colour can make a difference
Page layout tab > colour > change colour to suit visual preferences

14. Changing background colours in a
word document
www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx/

15. Don’t use colour alone to convey information

16. Images
Adding alt text to images provides information
for assistive technology users
• Right click your
image and select
format.
• Choose the format
picture/alt text.
• Add an alt text that
describes the image.

17. Adding alt text to images provides information
for assistive technology users

18. Alt Text Descriptions
“It’s important to
have description of
images to help a
visually impaired
person imagine what
that image could be“
“Alt text gives me
the idea of what
the image, is not
just a massive gap
when the screen
reader is reading
back.“Jennifer - screen reader user
2nd year university student

19. Using Images
When using
images
It is worth
checking the
colour in
greyscale
to determine how
accessible it
Would be if
photocopied
or if viewed
by a student who
was using screen
reading software.

20. Structuring Documents
Microsoft ® Word has an inbuilt structuring system for
heading styles which should be used when creating any
document

21. Accessibility Benefits of Using
Heading Styles
Follow this link for an example of a well structured document
Note how easy it is to navigate the structured document using heading styles.

22. Heading Styles“Without heading
styles in electronic
documents, it is
difficult for me to
read & often I am
the one spending
time making my
course work
accessible “
“As a screen
reader user it is
important for me
to have heading
structure in a
Word document.“
“very time consuming
scrolling down
continuously not
knowing and
listening to
information you don’t
want to know about. “ Jennifer - screen reader user
2nd year university student

23. Well Structured Documents: Why?
Follow this link to hear a screen reader user talk about the
importance of well structured documents

24. Accessibility Checker in Office 2010
http://vimeo.com/54452119

25. Well designed heading styles can be used to
create a table of contents
Click on the image to see an animation on how to insert a Table of
Contents (TechDis)

26. Hyperlinks
Where would you add the hyperlink in this
description?
Click here for more information about Glasgow
Kelvin College.

27. Hyperlinks should make sense out of context
Especially important for screen reader users who can
opt to listen to hyperlinks as a summary of information.
The links need to make sense out of context.
• Click here for Topic List.
• Click here for Topic List.
• Click here for Topic List.

28. Creating Accessible PDFs
• Adobe Acrobat Pro has a series of action
wizards one of which takes you through the
process of creating accessible PDFs -
http://tiny.cc/accessPDFwizard.
• Using the Accessibility Check in Adobe
Acrobat highlights any major accessibility
issues with your document -
http://tiny.cc/PDFAccessCheck.

29. Saving a Word document to PDF

30. Document Navigation when
converted to PDF
• If a document has been
structured correctly, users can
view a hierarchical list of
bookmarks allowing them to
quickly locate the relevant
information within a
document.
• To open the bookmarks within
a PDF navigate to View >
Navigation Panels > Bookmarks
or click on the Bookmarks icon
on the left of the screen.
• If available, the bookmarks will
open on the left of the screen.

31. The Accessibility Benefits of PDFs
Portability
• Can be downloaded for use at the
learner’s convenience.
• Can be transferred to portable devices.
Consistency
Looks the same on screen and printed.
Accessibility
Documents can be read without the need
to buy Microsoft Word or other
proprietary software (if the reader
doesn't’t have this application).
Personalisation
With Adobe Reader there are many
accessibility options to personalise how
PDFs are accessed.

32. Adobe Reader-free software that
will read back your PDF File
From a user's viewpoint the following functionalities
in Adobe Reader offers the following benefits:
• The ability to navigate via bookmarks.
• The ability to magnify text.
• The ability to reflow text
• The ability to change the text and background colours.
• The ability to automatically scroll through the
document and therefore read it without mouse
interaction.

33. Accessibility Features of Adobe Reader
http://tiny.cc/AdobeReaderAccess

34. Ref Alistair McNaught
Images courtesy of Alistair McNaught Jisc Techdis
Magnify Reflow Recolour

35. Format shift Navigate Interoperate
Images courtesy of Alistair McNaught Jisc Techdis

36. The beneficiaries
Magnify
Enough to support a wide range of users………………………
Reflow
So that magnified text still fits the page. ………………………..
Recolour
So people who need different contrasts can read easily………
Format shift
So people can read with ears as well as eyes ………………….
Navigate
In using the semantic structure of the text ……………………...
Interoperate
With different assistive technologies …………………………….
(text to speech, screen-reader, voice recognition, keyboard/switch).
V.I. Dyslexia Motor
control
Images courtesy of Alistair McNaught Jisc Techdis

37. Techdis Guide to Creating
Accessible Documents in MS Word
2010
http://tiny.cc/AccessibleDocumentsGuide

38. Techdis Toolbox
http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx

39. Creating Inclusive Information
Margaret McKay, Advisor: Inclusion
Jisc RSC Scotland
http://tiny.cc/Accessible-Info
29/01/2015