Accessible Color Palette Generator | WCAG Compliant
A free tool for generating color palettes that meet WCAG AA contrast standards for normal text with either white or black text (and it notes which color text to use).
Free Closed Caption Converter
Convert files between closed captions and transcript formats: SRT, VTT, TXT, DOCX. While most LLMs can also do this reformatting, this tool is a secure option for those who can't use LLMs in their work.
When AI and Disability Rights Collide: A New Frontier in Workplace Accommodation 🤖♿
This article is about accessibility and AI tools in the workplace, but it's good to keep in mind as we experiment with and evaluate AI tools for training purposes too.
"5 Ways AI Tools Create New Barriers
1️⃣ Inaccessible interfaces – Not compatible with screen readers or voice recognition software.
2️⃣ Rigid productivity metrics – Penalize neurodiverse work patterns.
3️⃣ Communication analysis – Misreads communication styles tied to certain disabilities.
4️⃣ Cognitive assumptions – Built around neurotypical thinking.
5️⃣ Sensory requirements – Require inputs (voice/vision) not accessible to all. "
The Accessibility Icon Collection - The Noun Project Blog
25 public domain icons about accessibility, including icons for accessibility testing, inclusive design, neurodiversity, screen reader, and transcription.
Accessibility personas
This site from the UK government includes a series of personas of people with different access needs and required supports. In addition to the personas are simulations where you try to complete tasks on websites as these people with disabilities experience them. You can see how poor design affects their ability to complete tasks, as well as see an improved design that makes it easier for users with disabilities to use websites. Even though this is more about general web content, a lot of this applies to elearning as well.
Inclusive Learning Survey
Will Thalheimer and Ingeborg Kroese have developed survey questions to help measure how inclusive learning experiences are. You can read about the research, development, and pilot process on the website. The survey questions are available for free with a CC license.
ARC Toolkit - Page-Level Testing - TPGi
Free accessibility testing tool for websites. It would be interesting to test this with published elearning as well.
Accessible typography
Breaking down myths related to typography and accessibility. One space after a period improves accessibility.
Alt Text: What to Write
How do you write good alt text? What images need alt text? This article from the NN group answers both questions. I learned something new about adding periods to the end of alt text.
End alt text with a period, even if it isn’t a full sentence. The period ensures that the screen reader pauses after reading the alt text.
Summary: Images are decorative, functional, or informative. Skip alt text for decorative. Describe the action for functional. Convey the message for informative.
ViddyScribe
AI-generated audio descriptions for videos. This is a way to improve accessibility and make videos more available to blind and low-vision users. Audio descriptions are time-consuming to create manually, which means most orgs skip them. This could potentially be a way to improve accessibility quickly and cheaply.
Disabled And Here: free stock images (with attribution)
Free stock images of people with disabilities, emphasizing people of color. While AI images are already usable for many purposes, I find that images of people with disabilities are still hard to generate. Images of actual disabled people are still useful. These are mostly photos, plus a few illustrations.
#BasicDesign — Never Use Pure Black in Typography
Explanation of why to avoid using pure black for text for online reading (which applies to websites and elearning). This article talks about how to pick shades of dark gray that are both readable and align with the color scheme.
White with code #FFFFFF has more striking brightness compared to pure black with code #000000. The brightness polarity requires the eye to work harder to read pure black text on a white background.
Font colors for ui/ux design instead of pure black #000000
Pure black text or backgrounds can cause eye strain and decrease readability. For more usable designs, use an alternative to #000000 such as these options.
One thing often happens at keynotes and conferences. It surprised me….
Don Clark shares several ways that people with dyslexia are benefiting now from using AI tools. Text-to-Speech, transcription, grammar and spelling assistants, note-taking and summarizing, and other tools can all help people with dyslexia.
WordPress Page Builder Accessibility Comparison - Equalize Digital
Comparison of WordPress page builders in terms of accessibility for features like skip links, navigation, accordions, tabs, carousels, etc.
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Apple's New AI-Based Accessibility Features Are Pretty Wild
AI may be able to make technology more accessible to more people. AI-generated captions and transcripts are already making it easier to make audio and video content accessible (even with the inevitable errors). Allowing technology to be controlled with eye movements rather than a mouse or keyboard is a significant potential leap for accessibility.
Storyline Accessibility and Mayer's Principles - Scissortail Creative Services, LLC
Kayleen Holt shares tips for creating accessible courses in Storyline beyond just adding closed captions. This includes tips for adjusting the focus order when you have animated content, providing a "skip animation" button for screen reader users, and allowing users a choice to autoplay media or not.
10 Rules You Need to Create Great Captioned Videos – Meryl.net home
Meryl Evans shares rules for creating great closed captions. While these are described as rules for videos, this applies to other elearning too.
10 guidelines for accessible captions: Readable, accurate, synchronized, length, position, sound, credits, voice changes, speaker identification, and motion with one or two sentences describing each one.
Twine Screen Reader: A Browser Extension for Improving the Accessibility of Twine Stories for People with Visual Impairments | Interactive Storytelling
Twine exports stories to HTML, so in theory the content should be reasonably accessible to screen readers (as long as you add alt text for images etc.). In practice, some of the Twine-specific HTML elements don't always work well with screen readers. This paper discusses how the authors created a screen reader browser extension to improve the accessibility of Twine stories built with Harlowe and Sugarcube (the two most common story formats).
How to Add Closed Captions to Your Videos – Build Capable
Step-by-step directions on how to add CC to videos with Descript and Handbrake
Accurate AI Transcriptions in Minutes | Powered by Riverside
Free transcriptions and SRT closed captions of audio and video files. My quick test from a Zoom recording looked pretty accurate (maybe more accurate than Zoom's built-in transcription).
Transcripts | Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) | W3C
I have been creating both basic and descriptive transcripts for a project with animated microlearning videos with a lot of visual information. However, I didn't know the name for that descriptive transcript until now. Most people I have talked to have been unsure how to handle transcripts for animated videos, but this page explains it.
<p><strong><em>Descriptive transcripts</em></strong> for videos also include visual information needed to understand the content.</p>
<p><img src="/WAI/content-images/wai-media-guide/braille.jpg" alt="" class=" normal right"></p>
<p><em>Who:</em> Descriptive transcripts are needed to provide audio and video content to people who are both Deaf and blind. They are also used by people who process text information better than audio and visual/pictorial information.</p>
Standard or Extended Audio Description: Which Do You Need?
Explanation of the difference between standard and extended audio description for making videos accessible. Extended audio descriptions pause the original content to allow more time for description, extending the overall time of the video.
Videos that lack natural pauses or contain a lot of important visual information can be tricky to describe without interrupting the original audio. In these cases, extended audio description is necessary.
Verbit Smart Player - Verbit
Video player with interactive transcripts and accessibility features like high contrast and audio description tracks.
The Audio Issue
"Against Access" by John Lee Clark is a very different view of accessibility than you might find in more prominent channels like disability Twitter. The author is DeafBlind, and he talks about how many efforts at accessibility fall short of meaningful experiences. This article is worth reading just for the DeafBlind perspective, which isn't typically included in most accessibility discussions. For example, how would you make a version of the game UNO usable to DeafBlind players? Not just accessible with Braille that references colors they can't see--but an enjoyable game, tailored to their experiences?
WebAIM: Captioning and Sign Language Interpretation in Zoom: Features and Pitfalls
Thorough guide on using captions and sign language interpreters in Zoom. If you are moving beyond automatic captions to provide additional accessibility options in meetings and training with Zoom, read this article to find out what's possible and what pitfalls to watch for.
The Inclusive Learning Pledge - inclusiveLXD
Interested in making learning inclusive for everyone? Sign the Inclusive Learning Pledge. Worried you have to be perfect and 100% accessible and diverse in everything you create to sign it? See principle 9: "We won't let pursuit of perfection get in the way of progress."
Recordings - IDEAL22: The Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility for Learning Conference
All recordings from the IDEAL 2022 conference by the TLDC. Hear Bela Gaytan, Kayleen Holt, Bridget Brown, Devin Torres and others speak about inclusive learning. This was a free conference, and the recordings are available even if you didn't attend live.
Stark: The suite of integrated accessibility tools
Plugins for checking for accessibility. Check for color contrast, alt text, typography and more. The tools also include a vision simulator so you can see how a site will look to people with color blindness. h/t Tracy Parish
Does Text Alignment Matter for Accessibility and Usability?
Centering text makes it harder to read, especially for longer paragraphs. This hurts accessibility and usability.
The reason why center text alignment is horrible for user experience is that with each new line the user reads, there is a brief moment where the user has to find where the next line begins – decreasing the users reading speed.
In my opinion centered paragraphs are only acceptable up to a point, 3 lines of text to be specific. Anymore, it becomes too displeasing to read each line after.
Primary page titles should be okay centered as they tend to not have as many words and therefore lines of text. Most page titles aren’t long enough that text alignment becomes an issue with usability. However, with secondary titles (h2’s) and anything under should always be left-aligned to match its paragraph text.
Left text alignment should be used in 95% of cases to help your readers read at an optimal, undiminished reading speed.
You can use center alignment in small doses like main page headings without detracting from the user’s experience.
Only use justified text for mediums where its commonplace like material books or e-books.
The only commonplace acceptable use of right alignment is navigations on websites.