Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than one billion people in the world with disabilities/impairments.

In LCCOS, we are committed to removing barriers that may prevent students, staff or visitors from making the most of our services. Ensuring all content that you share is accessible with the people who will use it is vital. You should anticipate additional requirements to make content accessible.

There are a few small things you can do. Let us know in the comments if you have any further suggestions, questions or comments.

1. Make your Microsoft documents accessible

It’s relatively easy to make Word and PowerPoint documents accessible by following a few easy steps:

• Use appropriate document headers.
• Add meaningful hyperlink text.
• Give every slide a unique title.
• Make sure slide contents can be read in the correct order.
• Add alt text to images.
• Check font size and colour contrast.
• Ensure videos are accessible.

When finalising a document, you should use the Microsoft Accessibility Checker which reviews documents and offers an easy way to make improvements such as adding alt text to images and checking content order on slides.

This is especially important if you are uploading the document onto Moodle as Blackboard Ally, will automatically create accessible formats from Word and PowerPoints, but the original document must be accessible.

Read more

• Make your Word documents accessible (Microsoft Help Pages)
• Make your PowerPoint presentations (Microsoft Help Pages)
• Blackboard Ally (UCL news article from 2019)
• Blackboard Ally-What it is, why use it

2. Use alt text

Alt text or ‘alternative text’ explains what an image is showing. It is read by screen reader software

You can easily add alt text to images in MS documents, on webpages and on most social media platforms.

VPEE recommend the following for writing alt text:

• Keep it short – just describe the most relevant aspects.
• Mention colour if it’s relevant.
• Include keywords appropriately for improved SEO, if relevant.
• Use proper nouns and names, if relevant.
• Use plain language and spell out acronyms.
• Skip writing ‘photo of’ etc.

Read more

• UCL Accessibility on Social Media Guidelines

3. Colour contrast / Avoid using colour alone to convey meaning

Colour is a powerful way to communicate and we’re not saying you should avoid using it, but make sure that colour alone is not used to convey meaning. For example, if you use ‘traffic lights’ or ‘Green and Red’ for stop and go, make sure the words ‘Stop’ and ‘Go’ are also included.

If you are using colours other than black and white, check the colour contrast. UCL provides guidance when using the brand colours. There are several tools for checking contrast freely available online.

Read more

• UCL Colour Palette
• Contrast checker tool from Web Accessibility in Mind.

4. Videos and recordings

When creating videos or recordings, you should consider alternative ways for people to engage with the content. Does it have clear audio and captions so that people can follow along?

This could also help people who aren’t able to play the audio or similarly are listening to a recording while doing something else.

Several programmes now have automatic captions. As anyone with an accent can attest these are not always accurate, but they are definitely getting better all the time. If you are uploading a recording, I would recommend checking over the captions just in case.

Read more

• 5 reasons why you should caption your video content (UCL VPEE)
• Lecturecast and other multimedia (UCL Digital Accessibility)
• Present with real-time, automatic captions or subtitles in PowerPoint (Microsoft Help pages)
• Use live captions in Microsoft Teams meetings (Microsoft Help pages)

5. Avoid PDFs or at least make sure they are accessible

PDFs are not great in terms of accessibility. Screen readers cannot always read them and unlike most webpages they are not responsive, meaning users may struggle to read smaller text. I would encourage you to think carefully about whether you need to create a PDF. Often a web page or Word document will be more suitable for your purposes.

If you do need to create a PDF, then make sure it’s accessible. The easiest way to do this is to turn an accessible MS document into a PDF (making sure to check the ‘Document structure tags for accessibility’ option first).

It can be difficult to make a PDF accessible after this. You can add tags using tools like Adobe Acrobat Pro, but the more visual and complex the design, the harder this is to do. One solution is to share alternative file formats. UCL have done this on their strategy pages, providing a ‘glossy’ PDF and a plain text Word document of the same item.

Read more

• PDF documents (ISD guidance)
• Create accessible PDFs (Microsoft Help Pages)
• Creating accessible PDFs (Adobe Help pages). This is more advanced.
• Why GOV.UK content should be published in HTML and not PDF. An interesting blog post from the Government Digital Service outlining why PDFs are not great.

What support is available to staff and students at UCL?

• Digital Accessibility Services
• UCL Digital Champions Network
• UCL Library Services – Accessibility

Thanks to Paula Dale and Jonathan Fowles for contributing to this list. Please also check our social media accounts for related posts using #GAAD. 

On Thursday 12^th February three members of the Main and Science library Issue Desk team Miranda Ostler, Spiros Philippas and Matthew Rains attended the Access Challenge Activity Day, run by UCLU, which took place at the Main Quad. The event was dedicated to raising awareness of the challenges that disabled students and staff can face when trying to access different areas within the central campus. The activities were conceived in such a way so as to provide a direct experience to the participants of some the obstacles that UCL disabled users face when trying to navigate UCL.

The Issue desk team members took part in three challenges:

Challenge 1

I can’t hear you:

Each team member took it in turns to try this challenge.

We were each tasked with putting on a large pair of headphones, with loud music playing, and trying to decipher the phrases the host of the task was dictating to us, with the only option being attempting to read his lips. After each of his statements and questions we then had to try to respond. These were our reactions:

“I was unable to hear what he was saying despite concentrating hard and trying to lip-read, and that was exactly what this activity was about – raising awareness of the difficulty some people with hearing loss have when trying to understand someone by lip-reading.” – Spiros

“This was a very difficult challenge indeed proven by the fact none of us could relate back even one question, giving us a degree of insight into the significant difficulties experienced by someone with hearing loss communicating without BSL, where lip reading may be the only viable option at that moment.” – Miranda

“I struggled immensely and could not even guess what the host was saying. This challenge highlighted the misconception some people have when they meet a person with hearing difficulties that they assume they will be able to lip read. If the person you are talking to can not lip read being able to find different ways of communicating is essential.” – Matthew

Challenge 2

Give it a go Challenge – Julius:

The “Give it a go” challenges involved navigating our way through the central campus from the perspective of a wheelchair user. We were tasked with marking out, on a map, the route we would take to arrive at each location, before physically attempting to reach our destination as if we were in their shoes and compare our findings with our original plan. We made observations of any obstacles we faced in doing so.

In the case of Julius, who wanted to go from the Main Quad to the Jeremy Bentham Room (JBR), we went up the disabled ramp by the Old Refectory; the disabled access door did not work despite pressing the button (which was not entirely to our surprise, however the automatic door on the other side of the quad was operational). We noted this potential obstacle and carried on with our route through to the Information Point and then to the JBR. On finding the room, we encountered another physical barrier as it appears accessible by steps only and signposting towards any lifts, although visible, was minimal and did not suggest what the lift gave access to.

After much puzzling as to how to proceed, and with the kind guidance of a member of JBR staff, we were advised that there is disabled lift access which takes you into the back of the JBR.

We struggled to locate the lift without a guided route as there was no obvious signage or route map to follow. We used our ingenuity and knowledge of the layout of the campus to figure out where to take the lift, taking us on a journey downstairs to the lower ground floor via the lift, past the UCL Shop, down the wheelchair ramp and out next to the bike racks. However we then took a wrong turning; left into the Wilkins building thinking, as steps lead from here up to the ground floor level next to the JBR, logically there may also be lift access. However, unfortunately we found no directions or signposting visible.

Undeterred, we proceeded down a series of corridors (with pipes running along the ceilings that would not have looked out of place in a horror film) and were once again saved by a kindly member of staff who pointed us towards the glass lift we had been seeking, by the previous refectory, after having almost attempted to enter a goods lift!

We entered the JBR twenty minutes after starting out.

“One of the issues that struck us the most was the almost complete lack of signage to help users locate certain facilities.” – Spiros

“Trying to find this lift was difficult without a map or guided route, and what appeared to be no signposting at all on the walls.” – Miranda

“This challenge highlighted the importance of clear, user-friendly signage.” – Matthew

Challenge 3

Give it a go Challenge – Sally:

Our second “Give it a go” challenge involved taking on the role of a student named Sally, a wheelchair user studying French who had decided to take a module from the Swedish department, therefore needing access to the Swedish collection in the Main Library

For this challenge, as library staff, we were naturally more familiar with the layout of the building yet for a new student in a wheelchair this may prove problematic to navigate the building to the required lifts and collections.

Being familiar with the Main library we thought this would be an easy task: take the disabled gate by the Information point, the lift to the second floor, and take the French corridor (currently home to the Museums staff) at the end of which is the Scandinavian section.

Upon arriving there we were faced with a set of stairs preventing direct access to the collection and the lift, located on the right hand side (which is currently under maintenance), was only for transporting goods as we were to find out later on.

Fortunately for Sally, although she was unable to obtain the items herself, there is an item fetching service in the Library run by Matthew Reynolds and his team, who can provide more information on the UCL Libraries disabled access.

Overall it was a very interesting and enjoyable day which enabled us to become more aware of some of the issues that disabled customers face when at UCL, and also to come up with some possible solutions/recommendations that could help to improve accessibility as well as the overall customer experience.

Matthew Rains, Miranda Ostler, Spiros Philippas