Vision

- [Instructor] In this chapter, we'll take a look at some of the types of disabilities or limitations that need to be considered when creating content accessible for everyone. In this video, we'll start with vision. Now there are three main considerations related to vision. They are blindness, low vision and color blindness. You need to consider these when creating resources and determining whether your learning is accessible. The first and most severe is blindness. Someone who is blind is unable to see visual representations or nonverbal cues in the physical environment. And it's also difficult for them to access information online. Difficult, but definitely not impossible. The use of screen readers and other assistive technologies do make it possible to navigate online. As long as the content is created with accessibility in mind. I recommend learning more about screen readers and how they work. You can learn more about this stuff in some of the courses in our library, including UX Foundations for Accessibility and Accessibility for Web Design. Screen readers help someone who is unable to see access information online. Let's take a quick look at a screen reader. I'm currently using a Mac computer, and there's a free screen reader built in called VoiceOver. But no matter what type of computer you have, there are free screen readers out there. I'm on a page right now, and I'm going to turn on the screen reader to navigate this page and be able to find out what is on it. I'll turn this on. - [Computer] Voiceover on Chrome. Toolbar, chapter four, working with text. Web content in chapter four, working with text. Web content, heading level one, chapter four, working with text, in heading, text is found in many places on your computer, such as in windows and dialogues. In content areas like webpages and help files. Heading level two. Voice, as you, to read text using VoiceOver commands. You are, VoiceOver off. - [Instructor] So that was just a quick run through of a screen reader showing you how that screen reader will explain to someone who can't see what it is that's on the screen. Another consideration related to vision is low vision accommodations. Don't assume that everyone can see well. Quality of vision is on a spectrum. And even if someone isn't blind, they may have difficulty seeing. You'll want to consider some things such as optimized seating, if it's in person. Using large text, as well as images. Using an easy to read font, as well as high contrast between colors. Let's take a look at some Google slides and documents that I created to illustrate some of these. I'm not even going to go into the presentation, but we'll be able to see what's happening here. Now, this first slide, you know what? It's kind of small. It says make learning accessible, but that might be hard for some people to make out. I would like that to be bigger and bolder. So I'll do that. And here it is. Definitely bigger. It stands out more. But what is up with that font? It's so hard to see. Think of someone who's already not familiar with the language and then trying to make out what these letters are. In order to make it better, let's use a straightforward, easy to read font, but keep it bold and keep high contrast. There it is. Make learning accessible. Easy for everyone to read. And here are a few fonts that are good to use when creating content, because they're very easy to read. You can see here several of them, and I even put them in the actual font. So you can see that each of those is really easy to make out. Next, I have that same thing. It's big, it's bold, but you can tell that it doesn't have contrast. This is very low contrast, making it difficult to read. I can hardly even make out the make learning accessible. Now I see this problem all the time with people being creative with colors and putting a color on a background that makes it very difficult to see. Instead, we want to go back to this where it's dark letters on a light background. Or we could do the opposite. If we have a dark background, then we want light-colored letters. Finally, a common consideration related to vision that's often overlooked is colorblindness. One misconception about colorblindness is that someone who's colorblind cannot see any colors. This usually isn't the case. Rather, they're unable to distinguish between certain colors. Depending on which type of colorblindness they have. So how does this impact learning? Well another reason that it's extremely important to use contrasting colors when creating resources so that the text is easy to read for everyone. And that the text stands out. I'm going to navigate back to my documents and I want to show you one other example. And it's right here. I'm even going to go ahead and play this slide so it gets a little bit bigger. Make sure that you don't use color as the sole indicator of things. Instead, use symbols or text so everyone can interpret it. This innocently happens all the time. On the left, you may say that green ones are positive and the red ones are negative. But what if someone can't distinguish between those colors? The example on the right clearly shows the pluses and the minuses. And using ones like this will make it easier for everyone to know what you're talking about. So when creating your learning content, make sure to consider whether it's accessible to everyone, including those with vision issues. Doing this will not only make it accessible to those who need it, but it will make it easier to access and understand for everyone.