"Fast Five" Essentials to Preparing Materials

Owned by Jen Moore
Last updated: Jul 17, 2024
6 min read

Most employees and students can take advantage of these tools in order to create materials for all constituents—employees, alumni, and students—to work and learn with confidence.

Table of Contents: Select the link to be taken directly to that section of the article.

In-program Styles

Using appropriate headings in the appropriate order in your current program is necessary. They add structure and create consistency in documents and allow screen readers to easily—audibly—scan the information. Additionally, authors can easily create such things as a Table of Contents or view an Outline.

Title or Subtitle

It is an extremely rare instance that you will use the style "Title" or "Subtitle" found in the Styles Gallery, Pane, or Pulldown. If you have questions, please reach out to accessibility@swarthmore.edu.

Apple

Google

HTML

In HTML, titles should exist within the <title> tag. There should only be one, and it should also be somehow related—and maybe even exactly the same—as the <h1>. Use headings to establish structure.

LaTeX

In LaTeX, title is again metadata. Insert the title in the preamble metadata: \title{_}.

Styles that are important to structure in a LaTeX file are:

  • Insert sections in document body: \section{_}, \subsection{_}, etc.

  • Numbered lists in use: \enumerate{_} \item \item ... \end{enumerate}

  • Bulleted list use: \itemize{_} \item \item ... \end{itemize}

See also:

Markdown

In Markdown, your title exists after a singular hashtag, # Title. Hashtags give markdown structure. The relationship between Markdown and HTML shows us that <h1> and <title> are often the similar or the same.

HTML, LaTeX, and Markdown to PDF

It is not accessible to move .tex, .mdz, and .html files to PDF. If you give folks the source document, they can render or convert it to whatever preferred file extension they'd like to read from.

Microsoft

Moodle

Atto Editor

TinyMCE Editor

Heading 1

You will only ever use Heading 1 or <h1> once in your materials. It will and should usually coincide with "Title" in Microsoft's document properties or <title> in an HTML file. If you have questions, please reach out to accessibility@swarthmore.edu.

Screen Reader Demo With Headings [YouTube]

Convey Meaning with Words

When providing a link somewhere within your text, be sure to provide context. Screen readers provide users the opportunity to scroll through links, so links such as "click here" and "more" do not make sense to screen readers. You can see examples below:

Color

Sometimes the text needs to stand out. Ask a question as to how one might do that. Color is not read aloud, so consider also calling attention to important text with words. For instance:

  • Important: Paper due on April 15th. All late papers will be deducted one grade per day late.

  • Note: All applicants must sign on line 11 and line 15 in order to have their pay direct deposited.

  • Urgent: Pay attention to all directions before handing in this form.

When using color, always consider the contrast between the background and the text. Use WebAIM's Contrast Checker or Lea Verou's Contrast Ratio Checker to ensure all users who have sight can see the information.

Alt-Text, Captions, Image Descriptions, etc.

When someone is accessing material with a screen reader, they may not see an image. They will not know the content of an image unless there is some sort of descriptive text in the form of alternative text (commonly referred to as "alt-text"), a caption, an image description, or other form of text that their screen reader has access to. Providing this is necessary for all users to understand the meaning of the material and why an image is being included.

A best practice is to include a description somewhere in the text so that everyone can see it. This can be very difficult to do. Below are a few resources we have found to be useful:

"This project reframes alt text as a type of poetry and creates opportunities to practice writing it."

In-program Accessibility Checkers

Adobe Accessibility Checker

See also:

Google

Install and run Grackle for each program (Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc)

Microsoft Office: How to use Accessibility Review KB article

Review → Check Accessibility

Moodle

Atto Editor

  1. Expand the editor's menu by clicking the down arrow, which is the first button on the left-hand side and top row of the editor. A screen tip will indicate "Show/hide advanced buttons."

  2. Click on the first item in the sixth section, which looks like a stick figure of a person in a circle.

TinyMCE Editor

Go to Tools → Accessibility Checker in the editor.

Captioning

Google Slides

Microsoft Office 365 PowerPoint

Please see our article on installing and accessing Microsoft Office 365 if you have questions about the program itself.

Panopto

YouTube

Zoom

Setting a Language

Many programs in most operating systems (OS) follow the overall system settings for language. To view your system's settings:

Adobe Acrobat

  1. Navigate to Fix accessibility issues (Acrobat Pro)

  2. Scroll down to Document Language or use Ctrl+f to find "Document Language."

  3. Follow the instructions to set document-wide language or the language of a part of a document, if it's different from the overall language of the document. 

See also: Changing the global language of an Adobe PDF | Swarthmore ITS Solutions

Microsoft Office | Add an editing or authoring language or set language preferences in Office

Google Docs | Translate documents or write in a different language

HTML

Additional Resources

Ways you can contact ITS or find information:

ITS Support Portal: https://support.swarthmore.edu
Email: support@swarthmore.edu
Phone: x4357 (HELP) or 610-328-8513
Check out our remote resources at https://swatkb.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/remote/overview
Check our homepage at https://swarthmore.edu/its