We’re committed to making digital content accessible to as many people as possible at Liverpool John Moores University. This article is one in a series of accessibility tips to help you improve the digital environment for everyone. We would like you to adopt these tips as part of your practice.  

There are some simple steps you can take in Word documents or web pages like those in Canvas to make your content accessible and it makes it look great too! 

People with dyspraxia or dyslexia find large sections of unbroken text difficult to read. People with visual impairments often use screen reader software to move efficiently through a document or webpage. Screen readers use headings and styles within a document or webpage to allow users to jump to different sections.   

Every time a style is applied to a heading or subheading in your content it organises your document into sections that can be navigated by keyboard or screen readers and it also provides consistent formatting for all users.  

How to Apply Headings 

Start by highlighting the title text in your document or page and apply the ‘Title’ style. Then select your first heading and apply ‘Heading 1’ from the styles menu. Work your way down to subtitles or nested headings applying further styles as you go e.g. 

> Document Title (Title Style) 

>  First Heading (Heading 1 Style) 

>  Subheading (Heading 2 Style) 

>  Subheading (Heading 3 Style) 

>  Second Heading (Heading 1 Style) 

>  Subheading (Heading 2 Style) 

For more information about applying styles in your document, take a look at this Microsoft guide: Improving Heading Accessibility 

The same principle applies in Canvas, simply select your text and use the ‘paragraph’ box to select an appropriate heading: 

Don’t Skip Headings 

It’s good practice to apply headings in a sequential order when applying them and not skip headings, for example: Make sure that a Heading 2 is not followed directly by a Heading 4. It is ok to skip ranks when closing subsections, for instance, a Heading 2 beginning a new section, can follow a Heading 4 as it closes the previous section. 

The following example skips from Heading 2 to Heading 4, this can be confusing: 

> Heading 1 

> Heading 2 

> Heading 4 

Headings should always be placed in sequential order, but it’s OK to skip ranks when closing a section. There should be a singular Heading 1 heading on your page, this should be your title, all other headings must be Heading 2 onwards: 

> Heading 1 

> Heading 2 

> Heading 3 

> Heading 2 

Don’t make your own heading by bolding the text or enlarging the font. The code behind the inbuilt styles will not be available to screen readers and users will not be able to skip to this section. 

Accessibility in Digital Education Design Project (AiDED) 

The Teaching and Learning Academy’s AiDED vision is to use the digital learning environment to help all our students improve their life chances. Find out more about accessibility and the AiDED project over on our AiDED Project page.

At Liverpool John Moores University, we’re committed to making digital content accessible to as many people as possible. This article is one in a series of accessibility tips to help you improve the digital environment for everyone. We would like you to adopt this tip as part of your practice.  

In the UK around 4.5% of the population is colour blind or has a Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD) (colourblindawareness.org). Using colour in your content can impact a user’s ability to view this information in a number of ways: 

• Using colour to convey information 
• Colour Contrast 

Avoid using colour to convey information  

Using colour to convey information e.g. using red text to highlight important course related information can be problematic for individuals who are colour blind or have CVD because they cannot identify the urgency or importance of this text from colour alone. You must use phrasing in your text to emphasise its importance for example, use phrasing such as: Important Information, Crucial Information, Important, etc. 

Sometimes people use colour to categorise information; the traffic light system is often used to highlight the importance of information using the colours red, amber and green (High, Medium, Low), or use red and green to signify a correct and incorrect response. Additionally, you may use colour to help aid navigation or link subjects. These techniques present barriers to individuals who are either blind or have CVD as they may not be able to see or distinguish between these colours.  

The below example uses a key to show which assessments are formative and which are summative. This would present a barrier to some students because they are unable to distinguish from this information which assignments are awarded a grade: 

The following example is also problematic, it shows the weeks of study and links to further content about the material covered each week. There’s no way of mapping out which subject belongs to which week, other than by the colour coding: 

Ensure that colour is not the only way of distinguishing information when adding content to Canvas. Embed these subtle characteristics into your text so that they are accessible to all users. In the first example, formative or summative could be added to the assignment text to ensure that students understand the context. In the second example, simply adding Week 1, before the week one subjects and then Week 2 before the week two subjects is an easy way to make this content more accessible. You might want to think about using Headings in your text to define sections and make the content easy to navigate too. 

Colour Contrast 

Content with low contrast can affect access for people with moderately low vision or impaired contrast perception, without the use of contrast-enhancing assistive technology. You should provide enough contrast between the colour of your text and its background to make it perceivable.  

Text should have a minimum contrast of 4.5:1 

OR 

3:1 for text larger than 18pt. 

The best thing to do is to keep your text standardised. Use a system’s default colour when creating new content. If you want to add colour to your design, ensure that it meets the minimum thresholds outlined above. 

How do I find out what the colour ratio is? 

WebAIM have developed a colour checker, so that you can ensure that your text meets WCAG guidelines. If you know the colour code of your text you can insert it into the ‘foreground’ box, and then place the code for your background colour in the ‘background’ box. This will usually be white unless you have changed it.  

WebAIM’s contrast checker shows the ratio of your colour, and whether it passes or fails for normal size text and large text. The panel on the right also shows how your text appears using these colours. 

If you don’t know the colour codes used, you can also use the colour picker by accessing the colour box and then selecting the colour picker icon and selecting the colour of the text from your page or document. You can also do this with your background colour.  

Tip: Have both the colour picker window and your content window open side by side to make it easier to select your colour. 

Hopefully this blog post has given you some insight into the importance of how to use colour appropriately in your content and how this might impact on people with visual disabilities accessing your content. 

Accessibility in Digital Education Design Project (AiDED) 

The Teaching and Learning Academy’s AiDED vision is to use the digital learning environment to help all our students improve their life chances. Find out more about accessibility and the AiDED project over on our website: https://ltech.ljmu.ac.uk/?page_id=10752 

Sometimes, information needs to be shared across a number of your Canvas courses. You may want to highlight shared resources or notify your students of up-coming events that might be useful for these courses. The inbox can be used to communicate information with students. It’s a really simple yet effective tool. This blog post will show you how to create a new message and share this with multiple courses.

1. Access your Canvas Inbox – You’ll find your Canvas inbox in the main canvas menu.

2. Click on the ‘compose a new message’ option in the message toolbar.

3. In the compose message window, skip the first option which asks you to select your course, but you need to ensure you select the option ‘Send and individual message to each recipient’. This option is automatically selected when you send a message to over a hundred users.

4. Click in the ‘To’ box and select ‘courses’ from the two options:

5. You can either select the course from the list of options that now appear, or start typing your course code into the ‘To’ box, and select it when it appears. Once you have selected your course, You will need to select ‘Back’ to select the type of participants you want to add to your message.

6. Select the ‘All in [Your Course Code]’ option to send to all users.

7. Once the course has been added to the ‘To’ field, you can add an additional courses, by clicking in the ‘To’ field and selecting the ‘back’ option to navigate back to the course list.

8. Select the next course from the list, or type the course code into the ‘To’ field. Repeat this until you have added all your courses to the ‘To’ field.

9. Insert your subject, and add your message into the main text area. You can attach files or add audio or video using the options at the bottom.

10. Click ‘Send’ to post your message. Users will receive this via their email inbox (users should have these notification options enabled by default) and will also receive the message in their Canvas inbox.

At Liverpool John Moores University, we’re committed to making digital content accessible to as many people as possible. To help meet this objective, this article aims to help you create an accessible Canvas course home page for your students. 

What makes a good home page? 

The good home page should provide an overview of the course materials and structure with relevant links. It should help students access learning materials and sections they need as easily as possible. The more complex the content and design of this page the easier it is for students to become confused and miss important links, and can, in some cases make it harder for students with disabilities. 

The key principles of an accessible homepage:

It has a responsive design and works on all devices 

• Some students may access your homepage on a device with a small screen. Responsive is a term used to signify the adaptability of a page across all devices, tablets and smartphones. The page should display without the need to scroll horizontally, and sections of the page should not require vertical scrolling. 
• Students should be able to resize text without causing elements on the page to misalign. Students with visual impairments sometimes increase the size of text when reading online. If your page design is complex this may make the page difficult to read. 
• Sections of plain text. These will resize easily and maintain their structure.
• Headings. These will provide logical identification of the structure of the content allowing screen readers to move to each element of the page easily. See our blog post on how to use Headings in your content for more information: Blog Post: Accessibility – Just do one thing [1. Headings] 
• Avoid fixed width tables, or tables containing a number of images. Fixed tables can’t readjust to new screen sizes and students will need to use horizontal scrolling as well as vertical scrolling to read content. 

It uses images purposefully and accessibly 

Images for the most part can also be resized, unless specific dimensions for the image have been set in your html. People with visual impairments sometimes use screen reader software to read your document or webpage out loud. Screen readers have no way of delineating the purpose of an image without you telling it. This is where the Alternative Text or Alt Text field takes centre stage. Screen readers read out text in the ‘Alt Text’ field allowing users to understand the purpose of the image. If the image contains important information you need to ensure that you include this information in the Alt Text field. You can create Alt Text for shapes, pictures, charts, SmartArt graphics, or other objects. You can also mark an image as decorative in Canvas if the image is used purely for aesthetics. 

You can find more information about Alt Text in our recent blog post: Blog Post: Accessibility – Just do one thing [2. Alt Text].  

It is consistent – matches other course homepages in the same programme  

Consistency across course pages in a programme allows students to concentrate on the content rather than learning a new design or layout for each part of the site. If you are designing your canvas course in a particular way, talk to the other module leaders to move towards a shared level of consistency in the design and layout. This will make it easy for your students to focus on learning from the resource and materials rather than spending time trying to work out where things are in each course.  

Avoids the use of tables 

Tables can be problematic. We advise that you avoid tables where possible and instead simplify your homepage and ask students to navigate your content via the ‘Modules’ section of your course. Tables can be used for both layout and data purposes, but the accessibility regulations around them can be conflicting depending on the intended use of the table. 

This useful Table Accessibility guide from Canvas, shows you to how apply captions and headings should you want to use a data table on your home page. Tables can be problematic for a number of reasons: 

• Reading Sequence 

  Depending on how you have structured your content, tables are navigated in a linear sequence by screen readers. For both data and layout tables, the order in which content is presented can affect its meaning. “Many web sites use tables for layout, and most of them use spanned rows and columns to achieve formatting effects. The end result is that the linearized reading order may not be the same as the visual reading order. This can lead to confusion on the part of people who access the linearized reading and navigation order, such as individuals who use screen readers or who navigate with keyboards.” according to Webaim.org. Use the ‘Tab’ key on your keyboard to navigate through your table, does the linear sequence make sense? 

• Horizontal Scrolling 

  Tables aren’t always responsive, which means that anyone accessing the page on a mobile device may need to scroll across the page horizontally. 

• Table Headers 

  If you’re using a table for tabular data or a data set, accessibility regulations require ‘Header cells’ to be marked up and a caption to help identify the overall topic of a table. A header cell is the title for the column or row that helps identify the purpose of all the corresponding cells. For example: Bus Stop Location, Bus A, Bus B, Bus C and Bus D are all marked as a header: 

Bus Stop Location	Bus A	Bus B	Bus C	Bus D
Location A	09:00	09:15	09:20	09:25
Location B	09:10	09:20	09:25	09:30
Location C	09:15	09:24	09:30	09:35

Tables used for layout purposes only, should not apply headers or use a caption. 

It should have an accessibility statement 

A good course homepage should have a course accessibility statement outlining what a student should do if they encounter any issues related to accessing content.  

Example Course Accessibility Statement 

At LJMU, we are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible learning environment for all students. We believe every student should have the chance to succeed and fully engage in our courses. If you find any issues with the accessibility of course materials, please notify [your email address] as soon as possible. We welcome feedback from students, if you have suggestions for enhancing accessibility in this course, please share them with your tutor. Further information about learning technology related accessibility s can be found on the Learning Technology Website: Student Guide: Accessibility. 

Is there a template available for me to use? 

The Teaching and Learning Academy have developed an accessible template for you to use in your course. You can import it from ‘Canvas Commons’. It’s titled ‘Accessibility Homepage Template‘. The template is designed to work alongside the ‘Modules’ section of your course. Add and organise your learning materials into the ‘Modules’ section and use this template as a home page. This allows for easier access to Learning Materials on various devices. 

To add the Accessible template to your course, use the ‘Import Existing Content’ button from your course homepage. The item should be listed at the top of the page, but if you can’t find it, search for ‘Accessibility Homepage Template’ in Canvas Commons. 

Add your own image, but don’t forget to mark the image as ‘decorative’. Further information about making images accessible can be found in our blog post: Blog Post: Accessibility – Just do one thing [2. Alt Text] 

Change the text and remove any references that aren’t relevant to your course. 

Accessibility Homepage Template 

Accessibility in Digital Education Design Project (AiDED)  

The Teaching and Learning Academy’s AiDED vision is to use the digital learning environment to help all our students improve their life chances. Find out more about accessibility and the AiDED project over on our AiDED Project page.

Within a Canvas course you can use discussion boards to create a space where students can communicate around a theme, topic or question. Discussion boards allow students enrolled on that course to engage by posting and viewing comments and replies. 

However, if you would like to provide a shared space for communication and collaboration between students enrolled on different Canvas courses, at different cohort levels, or for interprofessional learning, then Microsoft Teams can provide this option. 

MS Teams allows students to chat, share files, and create impromptu and scheduled online meetings, and can also facilitate external guests. 

You can request a new team from the IT services at their Creating a New Team page and it should be ready to use within the hour. 

More details on Teams can be found at the Getting Started with Microsoft Teams at LJMU. 

If you would like to discuss any of this with the TEL team, please raise a helpdesk ticket at helpme.ljmu.ac.uk. 

For new students, university is an unfamiliar environment and many will not fully understand what it means to be a University student.  The purpose of induction is to help new students make a successful transition into undergraduate or postgraduate study.  Effective, early induction is important to ensure that students are supported in University.  Induction in the first week should be seen as part of a longer term process that lasts well into the first semester and beyond. 

To support staff in preparing for student induction for 2023/24 guidance is available:

Induction Canvas Sites

As in previous years, Canvas induction sites are available to support induction activities. So that teams can develop sites that meet their specific needs, induction courses are not pre-populated with any content. They are unpublished, meaning that students will not have access to sites if teams opt not to use them. Induction modules will display using the following naming convention: Induction (2023-24) <Programme name>.  You will need to add yourself to any relevant induction site using the My Canvas Admin tool.  This is located in your Account area. Search for site by programme code, taking the above naming convention into account when adding the course.

For more information about Canvas Induction sites, please see:

Study for Success at LJMU Course

The Teaching and Learning Academy in partnership with Academic Achievement team have launched a short online course to support induction of level 3 and 4 students. The course introduces students to Canvas, with some simple exercises to help them feel more confident using the system.  It also provides advice and guidance on key study skills associated with higher education.  In addition, it signposts new students to some of the information that they might need as they progress through the early stages of their university journey. 

We have designed the course to be self-paced so that new students can engage with it as and when they see fit.  It is light touch and easily accessible to avoid them feeling overwhelmed at what can be a stressful time.  There is no expectation for any academic input, although we could appreciate it if you could remind students to engage with the course in pre-induction communication and early induction activities.  You can share this link to the Study for Success at LJMU course.

All NEW level 3 and 4 students should be automatically enrolled onto the course.  

If you have any questions, please contact the Teaching and Learning Academy.

Re-induction

To support returning students to make the transition to their next level of study, programme teams should consider offering formal transition activities at the start of level 5 and 6 (and level 7 for integrated masters programmes).  The please see the following link for ideas that teams can consider:

The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion. The Teaching and Learning Academy (TLA) and the Web Content team have been working on a number of projects to help improve access to Canvas, the LJMU website and other technologies.

“Every user deserves a first-rate digital experience on the web. Someone with a disability must be able to experience web-based services, content and other digital products with the same successful outcome as those without disabilities.” www.Accessibility.day

The following digital accessibility regulations became law in September 2018:

Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

LJMU is committed to providing an inclusive digital environment for everyone. Did you know there are some simple things you can do to help improve accessibility when submitting your coursework (students) or designing your course (staff)?

‘Just do one thing’ online resources

Making small changes like using a heading structure or providing alternative text can be really beneficial. Take a look at the TLA’s series of ‘Just do one thing’ articles and help to make the digital environment better for everyone:

• Just do one thing [1. Headings]
• Just do one thing [2. Alt Text]
• Just do one thing [3. Accessibility Checkers]

Take a look at the website guidance for making web content accessible:

• LJMU online style guide – a comprehensive guide about writing for the web
• Making your content accessible – including different file formats and accessibility checkers

Student Help and Resources

Take a look at our Student Learning Technology Accessibility page for a comprehensive list of helpful guides and resources.

Staff Help and Resources

Training

We are running some training events where you can learn, discuss and share good practice for Canvas on Global Accessibility Awareness Day (19th of May).

Canvas Accessibility Course

This online course will help you understand digital accessibility and learn how to make improvements to your Canvas course to make it accessible.

Introduction to Accessibility Canvas Course

Further Resources

We have a dedicated page on our TLA site for all things Accessibility. There’s an accessibility help page for students too. There are lots of tools and information available for you to make informed decisions about the way we use and create content.

Digital Accessibility isn’t something that just works in the background, we all have to be considerate in the way we develop and create digital content. Our training will discuss some of the ways you can improve your digital content inside Canvas.

As staff, we all have an obligation to meet the 2018 regulations and the TLA have developed the Accessibility in Digital Education Design Project (AiDED) project to help meet these standards. AiDED’s vision is to use the digital learning environment to help all our students improve their life chances. Find out about some of the activities we have been engaging in on our AiDED Project page.

Canvas have recently enhanced the assessment offering in Canvas by developing some new assignment filters in the grades area and quick access to Speedgrader.

Contacting Students who haven’t submitted to an Anonymous assignment.

Establishing who has and hasn’t submitted after a deadline can be difficult for obvious reasons when marking work anonymously. Sometimes a friendly reminder, or reaching out to these students can be beneficial and provides an opportunity to put additional support measures in place. The new grades area filters allow you to contact students who have not submitted work (to an anonymous assignment) once the due date has passed.

For more information on how to use this new feature, take a look at our guide: Contacting Students Who Haven’t submitted when marking anonymously.

Improved Speedgrader Access

Canvas have also improved access to speedgrader by including quick links in the options menu for each assignment:

You can read more about this update on the Canvas Release notes.

Assessment Unpublish Icon

When assignments, discussions and quizzes have student submissions they cannot be unpublished. A muted green colour replaces the green published tick icon to show that these assignments have submissions and cannot be unpublished. For accessibility the icon also contains alternative explains that this item cannot be unpublished.

We’re committed to making digital content accessible to as many people as possible at Liverpool John Moores University. This article is one in a series of accessibility tips to help you improve the digital environment for everyone. We would like you to adopt these tips as part of your practice.  

There are some simple steps you can take in Word documents or web pages like those in Canvas to make your content accessible. 

Accessibility checkers are a great way of ensuring your digital content complies with accessibility regulations and guidelines. Whether you’re using Word or Canvas, these tools are easy to use; they highlight concerns and tell you how to fix them.  Using an accessibility checker only takes a few minutes and makes an enormous difference to someone using a Screen reader or other accessibility tool. 

Word Accessibility Checker 

You’ll find an accessibility checker in Word which allows you to double check your content is following best practice and accessibility guidelines. Ensure you use it before converting documents to PDFs or uploading it to Canvas. Canvas has an accessibility checker, but it checks your Canvas pages, not the content of the files you upload. It’s important you ensure your files are accessible before you upload them to Canvas. 

Both Office 365 (which works in the browser) and the desktop version of Word have an Accessibility Checker, but more information about why errors are reported and steps to help fix the error are available in the version on your desktop. The following images are from the desktop version of Word, and we would recommend you use this version to check your documents for accessibility issues. 

1. Select the Review tab in Word 

Review tab in Microsoft word contains the ‘check accessibility’ option

2. Select Check Accessibility – the Accessibility panel should appear. View each item listed in the ‘Inspection Results Panel’. Clicking on each item which will reveal instructions at the bottom of the screen as to ‘why fix’ and ‘steps to fix’ the issue. The below image shows that an image in Word has been identified as an error. To resolve the issue, Alternative text needs to be added to the image to ensure the image can be read out loud by screen readers. Instructions are provided at the bottom of the panel. 

Accessibility checker panel displays issues in the document and describes how they can be fixed.

3. Continue through the issues, fixing them as you go, until all issues are resolved. 

Canvas Accessibility Checker 

The Canvas Accessibility Checker has recently received a few updates. It’s a useful tool to ensure your Canvas pages adhere to accessibility regulations and guidelines. Canvas’s accessibility checker will not check any files you upload for accessibility issues, you will need to use the accessibility checker in the program where you created file e.g. Microsoft Word. 

When editing a Canvas page, take a look at the icons running along the bottom below the Rich Content Editor panel. 

Canvas accessibility checker appears underneath the visual text box editor.

The accessibility checker icon appears below the rich content editor and appears as a person in a circle: 

Accessibility Icon

The checker in this case has already identified three issues with the content.  

1. Click on the accessibility checker to open the side panel 

Canvas Accessibility Checker Side Panel highlights any issues with your page

2. Here the checker has identified adjacent links with the same URL. It offers a ‘Merge links’ option to resolve the issue. Click the ‘Apply’ button to save changes before proceeding to the next issue.  

3. The question mark that appears next to the identified issue allows you to read about the issue. It also contains additional links where you can find out more about the highlighted issue. 

A note about tables 

Tables can be used in a variety of ways; some tables are used to disseminate tabular information, such as a data set, or list information. Sometimes tables are used to change the layout of a page, allowing you to add hyperlinked text or images in each cell to create a fixed menu. You may find that your table has been flagged as an issue. 

Layout tables should be avoided where possible and content should be added in-line. It will make your content much more accessible, inclusive and responsive. Responsive is a term used to signify the adaptability of a page across all devices, tablets and smartphones. It’s much easier for a user to view a responsive page on any device and zoom in on content – which is a particular benefit for users with visual impairments. If you currently use tables to enhance the design of your course, you might want to rethink this strategy and use the structure within the ‘Modules’ section of your course to disseminate and navigate information. 

If you’re using a table for tabular data or a data set, accessibility regulations require ‘Header cells’ to be marked up and a caption to help identify the overall topic of a table. A header cell is the title for the column or row that helps identify the purpose of all the corresponding cells. Use the Canvas Accessibility checker ‘set table header’ tool to identify whether the row or column (or both) includes header information. 

Further Information 

Guide to using the Microsoft accessibility checker 

Guide to using the Canvas accessibility checker 

Tables Accessibility Information  

Accessibility in Digital Education Design Project (AiDED) 

The Teaching and Learning Academy’s AiDED vision is to use the digital learning environment to help all our students improve their life chances. Find out more about accessibility and the AiDED project over on our AiDED Project page.

We’re committed to making digital content accessible to as many people as possible at Liverpool John Moores University. This article is one in a series of accessibility tips to help you improve the digital environment for everyone. We would like you to adopt these tips as part of your practice.  

There are some simple steps you can take in Word documents or web pages like those in Canvas to make your content accessible. 

People with visual impairments sometimes use screen reader software to read your document or webpage out loud. Screen readers have no way of understanding an image without you telling it what it contains. This is where the Alternative Text or Alt Text field can help. Screen readers read out text in the ‘Alt Text’ field allowing users to understand the purpose of the image. If the image contains important information for the reader you need to ensure that you include this information in the Alt Text field. You can create Alt Text for shapes, pictures, charts, SmartArt graphics, or other objects.

How to Apply Alt Text 

Depending on whether you’re using Word or adding content to a web page like those in Canvas, the process may be slightly different. 

Word 

Once your image has been added, open the ‘Picture Format’ tab and then click on the ‘Alt Text’ option. 

The same principle applies in Canvas, simply select your text and use the ‘paragraph’ box to select an appropriate heading: 

The Alt Text Panel in word, contains a section where you can add Alternative Text, there’s also a ‘Generate Description for me’ button, but you will need to ensure that the information that you want to convey is accurate. Graphs and Charts can also be summarised here. 

Excluding Alt text or marking your image as decorative, ensures that the image is ignored by assistive technologies.  

Microsoft Guide: Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object 

Canvas 

You can also add Alt Text to your images in Canvas. Simply click on your image to view the ‘Image Options’ button. 

Similarly to MS Word, in Canvas a panel appears where you can add descriptive information about your image; or mark it as decorative to ensure that the image is ignored by assistive technologies. 

For more information on how to use Alt Text, please see the Microsoft article Everything you need to know to write effective alt text. 

Effective Alt Text

Now that you know how to add Alt Text, it’s equally important to understand how to write effective Alt Text. You should convey the purpose of the image in a sentence or two. Dont repeat the surrounding textual content in the Alt Text or include “an image of”. Diagrams and charts will require more detailed information, again conveying the purpose of diagram or chart.

Image Example

• A bad example of Alt Text for this image would be: Image of a dog.
• A good example of Alt Text for this image would be: My dog paddy half asleep.

Chart Example

• A bad example of a chart would be: A bar chart showing sales over time.
• A good example of a chart would include: A bar chart showing sales over time. In July, sales for brand A surpassed sales for brand B and kept increasing throughout the year.

When not to apply Alt Text

Not all images require Alt text, if you’re using an image purely for decorative purposes, and it does not convey information, then you can mark it as a ‘decorative image’. This ensures that screen readers skip this item of content and will continue to the next items of content. You do not need to add any alternative text for these images.

Further Resources

• What is alternative text? How do I write it for images, charts, and graphs?Links to an external site.
• Everything you need to know to write effective alt text.Links to an external site. 

Accessibility in Digital Education Design Project (AiDED) 

The Teaching and Learning Academy’s AiDED vision is to use the digital learning environment to help all our students improve their life chances. Find out more about accessibility and the AiDED project over on our AiDED Project page.