This post is the first in a series that looks at both general and specific ways to increase accessibility for diverse readers of our publications.
When creating a digital text, we often have a normative body in mind: a body imagined as medically sound and fully functioning, but we often do not think about how non-normative bodies experience our texts. We create buttons and links, place images here and there, and use background color as well as color and font to show off ideas or build arguments. Sometimes those design choices occur simply because it “looks good” to us. What we design, however, might make it difficult for some individuals who use assistive technologies to read or navigate our pages. How those technologies interface with our texts should be important to us in order to give as many individuals access to our ideas and thoughts as possible.
Universal Design is the phrase used to describe composing, or designing, in such a way that components that make up the design allow access to as many individuals as possible. Creating a book that is universally accessible can be overwhelming as you think of moving your text from written words on a page to a multimodal online environment. Whether it is a screen reader or closed captioning, your book is mediated through media, and the more you now about simple ways to make your book accessible before you put word to “page” online, the easier it will be to conceive of your book as being more than just written words transferred to an online space. Instead you will allow for a more immersive and bodily inclusive experience for all readers.
The information below attempts to help guide you in building your book and address the most common of problems; it is not exhaustive in scope. Instead, it is our hope that these sources provide a starting point for you to think about how to design a book that gives more individuals access to your ideas and thoughts.
Problem Solving
What does it mean to be accessible?
UC Berkeley has a helpful webpage that outlines some tips for making your website accessible. UC Berkeley for website accessibility tips
Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM) also outlines some design tips. WebAIM for design tips
How do I make my book screen reader friendly?
Blind Inspirationcast author Colleen Conner's video below would be helpful to watch, so you can see how a screen reader works and develop your own design with this assistive technology in mind.
Direct Link to Colleen Conner's Blind Inspirationcast video
Stanford University digs a bit deeper into the technical side of testing for accessibility. Stanford University to test accessibility
What do I do with images?
Because a screen reader cannot read an image, you will need to provide what is called alternative (alt) text for each image. WebAIM gives a thorough explanation of how to navigate alt text. WebAIM's explanation of alt text.
What do I do with videos?
Closed Captioning is one of the free services YouTube offers when you upload to their site, but if you do not want your video to be included in the YouTube database, you will need to create your own closed captioning, which may cost money. This video shows you step by step how you can add subtitles and closed captioning to your videos once you upload them to YouTube.
The University of Washington has a good website for closed captioning videos for free. University of Washington resources for closed captioning
If you are working with closed captioning of a foreign languages, Amara allows for some crowd sourcing of sorts that could help you with wording. It is listed on the University of Washington’s website, but the direct link is: Direct link to Amara .
If closed captioning seems too cumbersome or is not representing the spoken words as you wish it to, you can still create accessibility by sharing the transcript of the video. You can do that a couple of ways: 1. Label that there is a transcript of the video available and provide an appropriately labeled link to that transcript; or 2. place the full transcript on the webpage itself. Make sure transcripts are in a format that a screen reader can read; in other words they must be actual text or a TXT file not an image. A transcript could be put into a PDF form, but that places more responsibility on your reader to have to convert that PDF into something their screen reader can read. Why not save them a step and increase the ease of their accessibility? You could include PDF and TXT files.
Problem Solved? Let’s check.
WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool lets you type in a web page to diagnose possible accessibility issues.
WebAIM also can help with colors and whether there is enough contrast. WebAIM's contrast tracker
Another page to help you check what your page might function like with a screen reader is Control Alt Achieve: Chrome Web Extensions . This page allows you to check text to speech, readability of a screen reader, and navigation by showing you web extensions individuals may use. You may then download or use the extensions and run your pages through their system to experience just how your page is accessed.
It is our hope that these resources allow you to not only see how assistive technology may interface with your book but also open your eyes to the possibilities you have at your fingertips to make your book immersive and interactive. Happy designing!