Digital Accessibility Quick Tips

Plain Language & Readability: Write clearly and concisely; avoid jargon, define acronyms at first mention; and break complex information into manageable chunks.

Structure & Organization: Use descriptive titles, proper heading styles, and a logical reading order to make content easy to navigate. Use an outline format.

Visual Design: Use readable fonts and spacing.

Contrast: Ensure text and other visual elements have strong color contrast against the page background.

Color: Avoid relying on color alone. Check that the information conveyed by the color is paired with text or another visual indicator.

Text: Use text instead of images of text. Text is adjustable, searchable, selectable, and recognizable by a screen reader.

Alternative Text: Provide meaningful alt text for images, graphs, and charts, and ensure all visual information is available in text.

Links: Use descriptive link text and clear file names so users understand destinations without extra context.

Tables: Use tables only for data. Format and use simple tables with column and row headers with no merged or empty cells.

Forms: Label all fields clearly, identify required inputs with text, and provide helpful instructions and error messages.

Lists: Use bulleted or numbered list styles to format list structure.

Multimedia: Provide multiple access points for multimedia content, such as captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions.

Native Files: Provide documents in their native formats (DOC, PPTX, etc.) rather than converting them to PDF.

Movement and Flashing: Provide a way to pause any automatically moving, blinking, or scrolling content. Ensure content does not contain flashing elements.

Shape, Size, and Position: Present content so that it does not rely on references to shapes, size, or position.

For more information and training opportunities, visit the Virginia Tech ADA Title II Digital Accessibility website (https://accessibility.vt.edu/title-ii.html)