Accessibility

Structure

Using pre-set styles and structuring your website enables individuals using assistive technologies such as a screen reader to easily navigate your website. Pre-set styles tell people what text is a heading or a bulleted list.

Style

Colour

There are a number of important accessibility issues to be aware of when using colour. Colour choices can affect the accessibility of your Guide. Individuals who have low vision and those who are colour blind are most effected by lack of colour contrast.

  • Provide colour choices that have enough contrast between the font and the background to enable all individuals to use the page.The higher the contrast between text and background, the easier the website can be read.  A good example of high colour contrast is black and white. An example of poor colour contrast is light yellow and white.
  • Do not use colour alone to convey important information or to prompt a response. For example, don't ask individuals to fill in fields marked in blue.
  • When formatting for emphasis, use headings, bold or underline. Colour will not be recognized by a screen reader. 

Fonts

  • It is preferable to allow the LibGuide CSS to format the font type, size, and colour. Only change text appearance when there is a real need for something different.
  • Use sans-serif fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma.
  • Avoid font sizes smaller than 9pt as they are difficult to read.
  • Avoid italics and underlining text other than hyperlinks.

Resources