Accessibility Training for Group Committees

Learning outcomes of this self-directed learning

To outline what we mean by accessibility and describe the justification for making sure your events and communications are accessible.
To recognise general good practices for accessibility and embed them into your role
To make social media posts more accessible.
To make written documents more accessible.
To make emails more accessible
To be able to access resources for further learning on the topic.

How to use this material

There is a lot of technical detail in here, especially in the parts where we look at making specific communication methods more accessible. Feel free to come back to this training material as and when you need these details. There is no expectation for you to memorise these technical details as part of completing this training.
Alongside this written content, we hope to produce videos that will cover the same topic but in different formats.

1. What do we mean by accessibility and why is it important?

The Oxford Dictionary defines accessibility as "the quality of being easy to obtain or use" or "the quality of being easily understood or appreciated". It is important to note the words easy and easily. This means that to make things accessible it is not enough to only make them accessible in a more consistent way and aim to make things accessible without considerable extra effort from the user’s part. It means making your content and design clear and simple enough so that most people can use it without needing to adapt it, while supporting those who do need to adapt things.

Accessibility is not only about disability. It is also strongly linked to inclusivity; if a student does not feel welcome and included in a space, their feelings about the space may become a barrier and they may decide not to access it again.

The goal is something that can be used by as many people as possible regardless of their protected characteristics, environment, device, cultural background, first language, etc.

Students whose needs differ from the perceived ‘average’ (see the OU’s statement on students with different needs and circumstances suffer the most severe exclusion due to the consequences of poor accessibility standards. Given that most of your members will fall into one (or more) of these categories, it is even more essential that you create a welcoming space that is easy to navigate by all your members.

In the academic year 2022/23, out of the total number of 124,411 students

31,653 students declared a disability.
13,134 students identified being part of a minoritised ethnic group.
19,062 students declared their sexuality as gay, lesbian or bisexual.
15,229 students were carers.
23,176 students had low socio-economic status.
1,033 students had a different gender identity to that assigned at birth.

The chances are that many of your members have intersectional identities and as a result, may face multiple barriers when it comes to accessibility.

As we seek feedback and learn more about our users’ preferences, our practices relating to accessibility will evolve. It is important that you also ask for feedback from your Group members and continuously improve your Group spaces and communications based on what you learn.

2. General good practice

Use simple language (think of your audience, be concise, organise information well).

Please note, this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to ‘dumb down’ your language. In our context, you will be talking to university students who will have extensive knowledge of some subjects. However, removing unnecessary information and avoiding complicated ways of saying things will benefit everyone.

You can find more information on using simple language on the plainlanguage.gov website.

Acronyms, jargon and idioms/expressions.

We are particularly bad with this at the OU (an acronym straight away! But one that is in global use and well-known). Be mindful of different levels of familiarity with expressions used in a certain context. Good practice is to always explain or spell things out first in a text, and then put the acronym in brackets afterwards, e.g. Open University Students Association (OUSA)."

Use or offer as many ways to communicate as possible (email, FB message, recorded voice mail or video, online catch-up in groups or 1:1, etc.).

We all have different preferences in how we best process information and where we feel most comfortable communicating. Some people are very happy to post a question to a group on Facebook whilst others prefer to send direct messages. Also, whilst some find it easy to put their thoughts in writing, for others it is easier to talk things over.

Adding your pronouns.

Providing your pronouns helps others to know your gender and avoid having to make assumptions about it. Helping to create a culture where this is more common and normalised, can be particularly helpful for people who may not fit the prevailing gender stereotype in terms of their physical presentation or name. However, decisions to not display pronouns should also be respected as people can have many reasons for not feeling comfortable doing so. For example, a transitioning person may no longer feel comfortable with their pronouns assigned at birth but are not quite ready to come out with their actual pronouns.

If you every accidentally misgender a student, correct yourself, apologise and move on, don't dwell on the mistake and draw too much attention to it.

Use inclusive language and images.

If a student doesn’t see themselves in a space or they are actively omitted from it, they may not trust it and won’t engage with it as much. Examples of good practice include:

Not using colloquial expressions when talking to an audience who may not be familiar with them, such as non-native speakers of English.
Avoiding using gendered language such as evoking unhelpful stereotypes and biases about gender or making gendered assumptions about someone's family make-up.
Making sure that your visual representations show the variety of students you support and aid the disruption of stereotypes.

Tokenism: don't only seem diverse, be diverse.

Although most Committees possess a wealth of lived experiences combined, they simply cannot be representative of all students they support. Some may feel anxious about being labelled as tokenistic when making efforts to create a more inclusive space for those less represented in a Group. The Oxford definition of tokenistic says it is something that is only done to try to show that you are including people from minority groups, but not in a way that is sincere. The fear of being tokenistic can put barriers up to more inclusive space. If your intention is to be truly listening and sharing the table with those less represented, you are not being tokenistic.

In general, don’t make assumptions.

Making assumptions about someone can not only make the other person feel unseen but it also limits our ability to connect with them. If you feel a piece of information is relevant and you don’t want to make assumptions, you can always ask for it in a polite, not intruding way. Most people are happy to share information if there is genuine care and kindness behind the question.

3. Social media posts

The desire to create something engaging and eye-catching for social media posts can bring about a conflict between design and accessibility.

Colours

Busy, vibrant images and posters can be distracting (or even distressing) for some neurodivergent students whilst having colours that are too toned down, can make processing hard for those with visual impairments. In order to find the “middle ground”, the most accessible colours, you can look on Sussex University’s webpage that offers an online accessible colour palette finder.

contrast checker on Webaim's website.

Videos

Flashing images, like vibrant colours, can cause a sensory overload for neurodivergent people and can make processing difficult. Flashing lights can also cause seizures in some people which is why we often see a warning message before images with flashing lights are shown. It is best to avoid using such images and effects all together.

It is also important that you make your videos accessible for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. You can use captions for this. Captions in videos describe all audio in the video (simultaneously with the audio) for someone who can’t hear or because of background noise, speaker differentiation, and any other reason that prevents full participation.

Transcripts are a way to convey the message of the video in a written form for people who may not want to or can’t watch your video. It converts spoken content into written, plain text and it should be available as a separate document without having to watch the video.

Subtitles assume the viewer can hear the audio, but they may not speak the language in the video.

Emojis and hashtags

When creating texts, be mindful of emojis and hashtags. Someone with a screen reader will have the emoji’s short name read out. If you only rely on the visual appearance of the emoji you might miss the actual name and the meaning of your text will be altered. Always check the actual name of the emoji to avoid misunderstanding.

Also, do not overuse them. They are read out as many times as they appear in the text.

Hashtags are useful to label your post as belonging to a specific topic for searches and algorithms, but they often have little relevance to the reader. Make sure to put them at the end of your message and don’t overuse them. This will also help your message look less cramped for those who see it.

Capitalising the first letters of each word in the hashtag will make it more likely for screen readers to read the hashtag as intended and it will also help those who have issues with seeing the words as separate entities.

Alt-texts and / or image descriptions

An alt-text contains the key details of an image as a hidden written text attached to the image. An image description is similar, but it is meant to give a more detailed description. However, the two terms are often used interchangeably.

When someone using a screen reader comes across the image, the software will read out the text that was saved for the image. Alt-text is meant to convey the ‘why’ of the image as it relates to the content of a document or webpage. It is important to make sure that you add to the person’s understanding rather than confuse them. Describe the information, not the picture. For example, if it’s a logo of Twitter don’t say it’s a blue bird.

You can add alt-text to Facebook posts by clicking on the ‘Edit’ button and selecting ‘Alternative text’ at the bottom:

Avoid posting images of texts. All important information should be contained in the description of the post.

Find out more about how to write a good alt-text in this guide.

4. Written documents

Font

Choose fonts that are easier to read such as Verdana, Calibri or Arial (also called Sans Serif fonts). Some other commonly used fonts such as New Times Roman (a Serif font) can contain decorative stokes that add distracting detail to the words.

Hyperlinks

When using a hyperlink make sure it is clear where the link is taking the audience. Give the link a descriptive name. For example, say: ‘Learn more about hyperlinks in this article by Scope: How to write hyperlink text for better web accessibility ’, instead of ‘Find out more here ’.

A window will come up on the right had side to tell you what the check had picked up. This screenshot is from a PowerPoint slide deck:

It tells you if you missed an image description or if there are any other object that a screen reader would struggle with. If an object is purely decorative, you can mark them as such (instead of writing ‘decorative image’ in the alt-text box, as this could be annoying when there are lots of these decorative images).

When adding text or images to a slide, the reading order will be determined by the order you added them. However, this may not be the correct reading order. The checker will remind you to review the correct reading order and make amendments if needed.

It is also important to use the ‘Title’ text box for slide titles. When this is done correctly, it makes it easier to navigate between slides by only having to read the titles and jumping to the part that you are looking for. You can see this structure of your text by going on the ‘Review’ tab and choosing ‘Outline view’, as seen below.

4a. Written documents - Pros and Cons of different document formats

Unfortunately, there isn’t really an all-around, perfectly adequate, and accessible document format. Instead, we can offer you a summary of pros and cons of the different types commonly available. It will be down to your own judgment which most suits the situation you want to use the document in.

Power Point

Pros

It is easy to structure by adding the correct title boxes making it easily navigable.
Easy to add alt-text.
Content can be made visually engaging.
The formatting can be personalised by the user: can change font type, font size, colours, etc.

Cons

Quite a large file size, especially if it contains many images. This could be problematic for people with limited internet access or storage.

Note: avoid putting too much text on your slides. This can be difficult to process. Also, in a session context, make sure you describe everything in your slide, not leaving elements out that are important but may not be accessible for all.

PDF

Pros

Small file size, easy to share and download.

Cons

When converting to PDFs from Word documents, often the formatting will not transfer correctly. This means that important information such as alt-text and headings structure may be lost.
The above issue can be corrected only with an enhanced licence to Acrobat Reader, the software that enables editing of PDFs. Access to this is not widely available and specialist training may be required to obtain editing skills.
The formatting can’t be easily personalised by the user: font types, sizes and colours are fixed.

Word

Pros

Easy to structure by using headings.
Easy to add alt-text.
Compatible with most devices and assistive technology.
The formatting can be personalised by the user: can change font type, font size, colours, etc.

Cons

Information is displayed in a linear way which does not suit everyone, and it is less engaging.
Quite a large file size, especially if it contains many images. This could be problematic for people with limited internet access or storage.

Note: always use Headings from under the “Styles” tab to structure your text, rather than using a different font size or the “bold” function. This way you can make sure that your document is easily navigable, someone using a screen reader doesn’t have to read through a lot of unnecessary information in ode rot find what they are looking for.

HTML

Pros

Can make the content look visually engaging.
Easy to structure by using headings.
Compatible with most devices and assistive technology.
The formatting can be personalised by the user to some extent: usually can change font type, font size, colours, etc.

Cons

Requires some level of specialist knowledge.

Requires permission to access and edit our website which is currently not available to volunteers. It requires more time, but you can always ask the staff team to put information on the website for you.

5. Emails

Here is a quick checklist to make your emails accessible to as wide an audience of recipients as possible:

Make sure your font is Sans Serif, as mentioned above in the Written documents section. We recommend Verdana, Calibri or Arial.
Font should be at 12pt, 14pt is better, and with paragraph spacing of 1.5 lines.
Keep it simple with no background colour, and a text colour at a good contrast.
Be considerate with your use of images, make sure you provide alt text or mark the image as decorative.
Keep your email signatures short, relevant and uncluttered.

You can change the default settings of your Outlook account to apply changes to all new emails. You can read the instructions on how to do this on the Microsoft website .

6. Online and face-to-face events

If you would like to organise and facilitate online or face-to-face events as part of your volunteer role, you will need to complete the Event and Meet-up host training module (review Resources in the Group Committee area of the Volunteer Zone). This training module will also explain to you how to make your events accessible.

7. Further resources

You can book onto a free accessibility course delivered by AbilityNet or watch recordings of past training sessions on topics such as:

How to do accessible social media
Don't disable me: How you can avoid creating barriers for disabled people
How to Run Accessible Online Meetings for disabled people working and studying from home
How to stay safe online

Scope has a lot of information on accessibility on their website, such as:

6 common accessibility issues on websites - Scope for Business

Video presentation on making Word documents accessible:

Word Document Accessibility 101 - YouTube

Overview of general accessibility considerations for websites:

Quick accessibility tests anyone can do - TetraLogical

Designing for users who are deaf and hard of hearing:

Short article: Understanding Assistive Technology for the deaf and Hard of Hearing | Level Access
In depth technical advice: Making Audio and Video Media Accessible | Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) | W3C

Inclusive language:

Open source online dictionary exploring the impact of certain words

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