Simple tools and techniques are available that help University of Southampton staff make accessible colour choices when presenting text.
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How can we make accessible text colour choices at the University of Southampton?
What one thing can IT staff do to improve accessibility?
What’s one activity that everyone who works in an information technology related field could do to make a difference to digital accessibility? The answer could be right in front of you as you read this: your keyboard.
Read moreHow can we correct captions and create transcripts at the University of Southampton?
Captions on videos benefit everyone. It’s important that captions are accurate and follow good practice. Learn how to improve captions using University tools.
Read moreHow did we make the University’s Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) submission more accessible?
The process was a great learning exercise and provided hands-on experience for those involved in the principles of accessible documents.
Read moreiSolutions Digital Accessibility Community of Practice: what did we do in 2021 and what was the impact?
The iSolutions Digital Accessibility Community of Practice began in December 2020. It aims to share practices, provide peer support, and raise awareness of digital accessibility within the department. Using results from a survey of community members, this post reviews the past year and looks forward to the year to come.
Read moreAccessibility does not impede agility! Six ways that Digital Accessibility maps to Agile Practices
A common misconception is that Digital Accessibility slows down and impedes IT development process, making them less agile. In this post we cover six aspects we learned in our Agile training course and how they relate to accessibility.
Read moreOverview: three ways PowerPoint’s “Design Ideas” excludes your audience, and how to fix it.
PowerPoint’s Design Ideas feature helps us create attractive slides quickly. Unfortunately, some of its suggestions do not follow accessibility best practice, creating barriers that may exclude members of your audience. In this blog post we explain three issues and how to fix them.
Read moreThree ways PowerPoint’s “Design Ideas” excludes your audience, and how to fix it: Part 1 – Setting text in “all caps”.
Text in all caps can present a barrier to readers with dyslexia. Moreover, it slows down reading speed for all. Design Ideas will often set short bullet points in all caps. Find out how to fix this and more.
Read moreThree ways PowerPoint’s “Design Ideas” excludes your audience, and how to fix it: Part 2 – Centre alignment of longer text.
Centre-aligned text can be difficult to read if it spans more than one line in length. This can be a particular barrier to readers with dyslexia
When presented in this way your presentation appears less professional. Design Ideas often centre aligns text. In this article we explain why it’s important to fix this and how.
Three ways PowerPoint’s “Design Ideas” excludes your audience, and how to fix it: Part 3 – Insufficient colour contrast.
Too little contrast between colours will not only make your presentation disagreeable, it also presents a barrier to many. Design ideas will sometimes suggest designs that do not have sufficient contrast between colours. In this article we explain this in more detail and how to fix it.
Read moreHow can I use colour accessibly?
The University of Kent runs a successful series of Digitally Enhanced Education webinars. One of which was on the theme of Technology to Develop Inclusive Learning Experiences. I presented “Making it simple to ensure the use of colour is both
Read moreAn innovative new Blackboard structure for Arts and Humanities
The Digital Learning team worked on a major project last year with our Faculty of Humanities to implement new Blackboard course templates. This introduced new course menus, course menu colour schemes, and course redesign.
Read moreHow can I improve the accessibility of my emails?
I recently attended AbilityNet’s TechShare Pro 2020 conference. In this post, I’m going to share a top tip I learned from Microsoft. When creating an email in Outlook 365 you can check for any accessibility issues. Checking Email Accessibility Once
Read moreShould you use Significant Figures or Decimal Places when setting Answer Set options for Calculated Formula questions in Blackboard?
Blackboard tests are a hot topic at the moment. On the Digital Learning Connect Teams Area we recently received a question from Dr Gabriel Weymouth: I’m positive this is clearly documented somewhere, but I can’t find it. How do you
Read moreUsing the Blackboard ‘Self and Peer Assessment’ tool with groups
On the CHEP Community Team Dr Poshak Gandhi asked some questions about peer assessment: “My module has 170 students, split into 4 groups of about 42 students each. I want to create an assignment for peer assessment, with each group
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