Building eLearning content for visually impaired users
eLearning in a post-Covid world
As hybrid working models have become commonplace with more staff working from home than ever before, improving your organisation’s training approach is essential to ensure that staff understand and apply current company policies. Whether you are working within an industrial business, financial services organisation, a charity or creating eLearning for health, every sector has specific training requirements and will require tailored content. Training may include operational delivery, regulatory knowledge and also how to protect your organisation from cybersecurity threats such as phishing. With the reduction in face-to-face interactions and training, understanding and taking into account accessibility considerations has never been more important.
What is web accessibility, why is it important and how do I achieve it?
An inclusive team brings a variety of perspectives, which is a benefit to any organisation. This diversity should be as broad as possible, enabling any team member to participate as fully in a training process as anyone else.
When creating eLearning assets, web accessibility should be a core consideration from the start. While the drive to make digital learning as visual as possible is a welcome trend to make content more engaging, it should be complemented with approaches such as contrast options and non-visual material that can be read by tools such as screen readers. As much care should be taken in the creation of accessible learning content so that it is embedded at the start of the process rather than as an afterthought.
While accessibility should be a key part of any course, it is also possible to meet specific requirements - the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG - to give user’s greater confidence by showing that your eLearning content has passed the A, AA or AAA thresholds for web accessibility.
Using screen readers to assist the visually imparied
By using ‘alt-text’ within your content, a screen reader can allow a visually impaired user to understand what is on the page by listening to the content. While alt-text will include important information such as descriptions of text, images and videos, care should be taken with non-text items such as shapes when developing alt-text since it can also narrate unwanted areas such as the page structure or even hidden menu screens!
Building with web accessibility in mind
Embedding accessibility at the very start of the development process always yields the best result. In addition to using alt-text, carefully considering the order that your content should be read out in is crucial. This is called a focus order and is a key part of delivering an accessible experience for the visually impaired.
In addition, the use of colour contrast is essential for any course that meets the demands of WCAG to ensure that it is accessible to visually impaired and colour-blind users, whilst also ensuring that the colours used are easy to read.
When building a course, think carefully at the start of the process about accessibility when developing each part of the content. It’s much easier to take web accessibility requirements into consideration while developing rather than having to revisit the course to make amendments, particularly if you are seeking to make the course WCAG compliant.
How our team can help
The Konnektis team provides end-to-end solutions for eLearning clients, including concept creation, Instructional Design and storyboarding, graphic design, technical development, testing and auditing against WCAG standards.
If you are looking for an experienced team to help your organisation to build engaging, accessible content - or you simply want to understand more about eLearning development in general - then please get in touch by calling 0330 043 0096 or emailing us on team@konnektis.com.
