Creating educational experiences for all: Approaching accessible and inclusive design
Many visual disabilities, such as colour blindness, often go unnoticed. Something as simple as the colours you pick when designing learning activities may be affecting how easily your students can participate, grasp concepts, and ultimately learn.
Designing for these, and all visually impaired, students is often glossed over or rushed due to time constraints.
So, how can we make designing accessible learning experiences an integral part of the process?
Here are some tips that can help:
- Design with colour blindness in mind:
- Ensure colour is decorative, and not necessary for students to understand the content or complete activities
- Avoid bad colour combinations, such as red and green
- Use textures, symbols, contrasting colours and/or different shades, particularly when creating a complex graph or diagram
- Check your images by converting them to greyscale, or printing in black and white. If you can’t make out the details of the image, neither will fully colourblind students. Follow this tutorial for a quick way to convert images in PowerPoint.
- When designing for screen readers:
- For images, include a description of what the image is about in the “alt-text” field
- Try not to use a table for layout. If you do,format the table to be read row-by-row
Many programs have built-in accessibility tools, such as theMicrosoft Office accessibility checker in Office programs on Windows and Mac, which can help you quickly identify potential issues. Additionally the W3 have created a short online Introduction to Accessibility course to teach you more about accessibility.
Keeping these tips in mind as you create learning activities will make designing for visual disabilities more seamless, straightforward and less time-consuming.