Accessibility

Did You Know?

Over 40 million Americans — or 12.7 percent of the population — lived with a disability in 2017, according to the U.S. Census. Disabilities can include difficulties or impairments (temporary or permanent) with vision, hearing, cognition or mobility. People with disabilities often use assistive technology to access digital content in their preferred format.

Examples include:

• Screen readers or magnifiers
• Closed captioning
• Voice command
• Spelling and grammar tools
• Mind or site maps

What is Digital Accessibility?

Digital accessibility is the practice of ensuring that technology is usable and equitable to people with disabilities. The goal of digital accessibility is to keep the function and experience of technology as close to that of people without disabilities. Put simply, being accessible is to be inclusive of all people, including those with disabilities.

In order live up to Stanislaus State’s values of diversity, inclusion and access, our digital content — including social media posts — should be made accessible to all users.

Graphics & Color Contrast

When designing graphics, strive for designs that maintain a balanced color contrast and visibility in mind. Social media graphics should always have balanced color contrast where text is easy to read.

• Keep text legibility and color contrast a top priority.
• Avoid placing text over busy backgrounds.
• Lighter colored fonts will contrast best against dark backgrounds.
• Darker colored fonts will contrast best against bright backgrounds.
• Certain shades of colors are difficult for some people to view. You can use WebAIM's Color Contrast Checker Tool to check your color contrast.

Alternative Text

Alternative text (alt text) is a helpful text description provided for images, photos and other non-text content. Alt text is crucial as it helps describe images to low vision or visually-impaired users on assistive technologies such as screen readers and/or voiceover software. 

• Effective alt text provides a meaningful and useful description of an image.  
• Alt text provides additional context to an image.
• Alt text descriptions should be kept brief, usually under 15 words or under 125 characters.
• When images contain text, the alt text descriptions should contain the same information as written inside the graphic.
• For events, include date, time, location, description of event.

Fonts

When designing content, choose fonts that are legible and easy for your audience to read. Use sans-serif fonts, which are easiest to read. Avoid the temptation to use overly decorative and/or cursive fonts— these fonts are often difficult to read.

• Use appropriate and adequate sizing.
• Keep font sizes proportionate and consistent.
• Viewers should be able to read the text comfortably.
• Avoid using special Unicode fonts (special keyboard symbols) on your profile username— these special characters are read aloud by screen reads as mathematical formulas and can frustrate users.  
• Avoid spelling things through the use of emojis.