Accessibility

Setting up a PDF with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) allows students that utilize text readers or mobile devices to have access to the PDF. Insuring that the PDF is converted to a OCR document allows better interaction with the text in that people can now Search within the document, Select text in the document, Highlight text for better note taking, and Listen to the text.    

You can convert a PDF into an OCR PDF through:

• Acrobat Pro DC
• Scanning the Document with an OCR enabled scanner

For all students readable text is important for comprehension. To provide readable texts to students it is best to supply good quality digital documents, in the place of scanned documents. You can find digital documents through the Armacost Library by searching the article databases that the University has access to or use the Interlibrary Loan program to retrieve sources from other Libraries.

If the document can not be found through the library or is only available through physical text here are some tips for creating a clean PDF scan.

• Scan directly as a PDF.
• Avoid wrinkled pages, pages with tears, smudges, excess notes, or distorted text.
• If possible, use an OCR feature on the scanner.
• Scan books and other documents one page at a time. Using the Book scanner in the library may help with this.
• When scanning pages side by side be mindful of the curve of the page. As the curve could create an unreadable document. Using the Book scanner in the library may help with this.
• Scan at a high resolution, 300 pixels or more.
• Crop the pages so that they can be easily printed on a 8.5 x 11 page without cropping text.
• Avoid handwritten notes or non-standard fonts as OCR readers will not be able to translate them, or students might not be able to read them.

Captioning and transcribing videos benefits viewers that are unable to hear the audio, in a noisy location, would like to search the videos text, and/or want to check the spelling of the words. With some limitations* Teams and Kaltura can help create machine generated captioning and transcriptions for your videos.

Teams

• Live Captioning. In a class meeting the Live Closed Captioning feature will allow individual users the ability to get machines generated captions during the meeting.
• Recorded Meetings. When you record a scheduled meeting the system automatically creates captions and a transcript of the meeting. A user could then edit the transcript using stream (where the videos are stored) so that spelling is accurate.

Kaltura

• When uploading or recording a video with Kaltura the system will automatically generate captions for the video. These captions can be edited by the user to insure spelling and the text is accurate.

* Limitations include English only captioning and inaccuracy of machine generated text.

A thoughtful statement on your website or Canvas initial page that describes your intention in making your online presence accessible is important.  

Here is an example from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock:

“Usability, Access and Design; I am committed to creating a course  that is inclusive and accessible. If you are encountering barriers, please let me know immediately so we can determine if a design adjustment can be made. I am glad to consider creative solutions as long as they do not compromise the learning goals.”

Simple and consistent navigation helps visitors move throughout your course and site. Here are some tips that can help.

• Provide a table of contents on the first page
• Be mindful of how people will navigate your course. With link descriptions clearly stated.
  • Good: Writing Good Link Descriptions
  • Bad: Click Here for information on link descriptions
• The fewer clicks needed to access content the better
• Pages should be simple, clean, consistent, and well-organized
• Make sure links can be controlled by keyboard navigation, or without the need of a mouse.

Clear and readable text assists users in understanding your documents and webpages.

• Use sans-serif fonts like Arial and Helvetica.
• Make sure the font size is large enough to read comfortably from a 15-inch distance.
• Limit the placing of text inside graphics as these images are difficult to read with various software.
• Use headings (ex. <h1>...</h1>) in sequential order to organize content. Do not select your heading level based on appearance as it impacts how screen readers present information to users. Headings get restyled over time, so the priority should be function over aesthetics. 
• When making a bulleted or numbered list, use the correct option in the text tools ribbon (as opposed to manually writing 1, 2, 3 or using dashes) (ex. <li>…</li>)

Color can affect readability. When changing background and font colors:

• Consider using a high color contrast ratio. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) recommend a 7:1 color contrast. You can check the color contrast ratio using built in accessibility checkers on most webpages, or by using websites like WebAIM.
  • Canvas Accessibility Checker
  • Microsoft Word Accessibility Checker
• Avoid overlaying text on patterned backgrounds, as it can be difficult to read.

Images, while useful in conveying information, may not be accessible to all users.

• Accessibility tools can't read text within pictures, so whenever possible, avoid text in pictures.
• When adding a image, provide a description (alt text) which can be read by assistive technologies such as screen readers. When making alt text provide a good description of the image including what you want the reader to understand about the image (ex. <img alt=“A woman sits on a park bench eating a sandwich while looking at ducks swimming in a pond.”>
  • Canvas
  • Office 365
  • Apple Suite
  • Google Suite