How to produce accessible digital content inside Atlas

One of the focus points of Atlas is to provide all of our customers with a highly accessible solution. An environment where everybody can profit from the advantages of our digital workspace.

New accessibility legislation came into law in autumn 2019, giving all public sector organisations the legal duty to ensure their websites and applications meet minimum accessibility requirements and ensuring they are WCAG 2.1 AA compliant.

Atlas provides you with the technical capabilities and now it's important you also put the effort into creating accessible digital content.

Here are some tips on how to do that and make your Atlas environment the number one digital workspace for all your employees and visitors, but if you have more questions or need to get more in-depth knowledge, don't hesitate to connect to Purple.

Headings and styles

Use headings and styles in a sensible hierarchy in both written documents and web pages. When
creating PDFs, it is good practice to create bookmarks and add document structure tags where
possible.

Descriptive alternative text

When adding a picture, whether on or offline, there should usually be the option to add a descriptive
alternative text to the image. This will help those who use screen readers to know what the image
displays. If the image is decorative only, Alt tags can be applied as an alternative.

Descriptive Hyperlinks

When adding hyperlinks to a document or webpage, instead of writing ‘click here’ or just passing
the link, set the hyperlink as contextual words, such ‘Learn about Atlas by ClearPeople’.

Bullet Points and numbered lists

Blocks of text can be difficult for some users to read and take in. Using bullet points or a numbered
lists can help break this down for the user and also make it much quicker to understand the context
of the text.

Fonts and Styling

Choosing the right font and styling is very important. Not only can a clear font choice make your
website and documents look clean and professional but if this is not executed correctly, many people
with visual impairments or learning difficulties may find your site difficult to read.
• Opt for a clear font such as Arial / Calibri
• Try not to use a font smaller than 12pt unless necessary
• Ensure everything is aligned consistently - where possible, this should be aligned to the left
• Refrain from underlining text as this can be easily confused with a hyperlink
• Use left justified paragraphs
• Increase your margins to reduce the width of text blocks

Colour choices

Have you considered that some of the colours / patterns you use together may not be easily
distinguishable to many people? Approximately 300 million people world wide have colour blindness.

• Colour combinations to avoid: red & green / green & brown / green & blue / blue & grey / blue &
  purple / green & grey / green & black
• Print documents / web pages in grey scale to see how strong the contrast is

Videos

Video content is the most rich for online social reach, which means ensuring your video content is
accessible is extremely important, and for deaf people, it is crucial. Recent studies have shown that
80% of all online users are more likely to watch a video with the sound turned off and subtitles/
captions turned on.

• Add clear subtitles / captions to all video content
• Ensure the text added to videos is clear to read throughout the video. This can be done by using
  contrasting colours.
• Consider adding audio description if applicable

Check accessibility tool

Run the ‘Check Accessibility’ tool on Microsoft Office to highlight suggested improvements to make. In the review menu of all applications you can find this icon

Don't forget that by making your files fully accessible to disabled people you'll also make them easier to use for everyone!

For further information on Digital Accessibility services just connect to Purple.