Creating Accessible Materials

The Disability Resource Centre (DRC) provides guidance for making teaching and learning materials more accessible:

https://www.disability.admin.cam.ac.uk/staff-supporting-disabled-students/teaching-disabled-students/accessible-materials

Here are some useful tips for making materials more accessible quickly.

For handouts:

  • Provide the option of an electronic format as this means the student can manipulate the document to suit, and may find it easier to keep track of the document.
  • Materials should be available in advance through Moodle, as many disabled students find it hard to read quickly.
  • Use a sans serif font such as Tahoma or Arial, with a minimum font size of 12, where the text is left side justified.
  • Use bold to add emphasis rather than italics or UPPERCASE.

For Presentation Slides:

  • Use a sans serif font such as Tahoma or Arial, with a minimum font size of 12, where the text is left side justified.
  • Use bold to add emphasis rather than italics or UPPERCASE.
  • On presentation slides use a high contrast colour scheme, e.g. dark text on an off-white background. Have no more than 6 lines of text per slide.
  • If you are using images, remember to describe the image

For Moodle:

Any teaching materials that you put on Moodle from September 2019 onwards need to be accessible to people with impairments. 

It is relatively easy to make teaching materials accessible, especially if you use Microsoft Office. Jen Pollard has written an excellent training manual to help you assess different types of teaching material and make quick changes to them in order to meet accessibility standards: https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/computing/

Microsoft Office provides guidance on how to use its in built tools to make documents more accessible.