Best practices and strategies in making complex documents accessible: a guide to adapting accessibility fundamentals for challenging content.
Many documents include material that can be challenging to make accessible. These documents may be in various formats, including handwritten notes in class that are later scanned to share with students, and contain multiple elements. This document discusses ways to adapt accessibility fundamentals to make even the most complex materials more accessible.
Complex documents include some or all of the following elements:
- Text, including non-English languages
- Math formulas and chemical equations
- Tables, charts, graphs, infographics, illustrations, and other text-heavy images
- Anything handwritten, including class notes
General Recommendations
There is no one-size-fit-all approach in making complex documents accessible due to different purposes the documents serve and learning experiences that instructors want students to have, and that instructors have different skill sets in using technology.
- Identify and break down the whole document into different elements such as equations and graphs
- Focus on the text on the document and convert any images of text into plain text
- Ensure math equations are formatted in an accessible way
- Always provide alt-text, and either long descriptions or original source data
- Split multi-part images into smaller pieces and address each image by adding alternative text or making decorative
Your accessible version of a document may look significantly different from the original.
Text
Text is the easiest element to make accessible in a complex document. Therefore, making sure the text in the document is accessible is a good first step to take in most situations.
There are five foundational areas to attend to:
Making text accessible is a fundamental step in ensuring that complex documents are usable by all readers. By focusing on clear headings, descriptive alternative text for images, properly formatted lists, accessible links, and thoughtful use of color, you lay the groundwork for an inclusive document experience. These practices not only enhance readability for everyone but also provide a strong foundation to build upon as you address more specialized elements.
Math & Chemistry Equations and Formulas
Math equations are most accessible when written in a format that can be both read with a screen reader and navigated by the end user. Writing equations in MathML is the most reliable method of writing accessible equations.
- Read with the screen reader: Screen readers can read text, not images. If an equation is provided as a picture, the screen reader will skip reading it. An equation written in MathML will be announced to the screen reader.
- Navigated by the end user: As math gets more complex, the more likely it is the student will need to work through it slowly, sometimes number by number. Writing alternative text for an equation forces a student to experience the equation as a solid block.
MathML can be written by several types of programs and finding the best option for your content may involve some exploration or experimentation.
Chemical notation includes chemical formulas, equations, ions, charges, and reaction expressions commonly used in chemistry and related disciplines. Many of the strategies in making math accessible apply to making chemical formulas and equations accessible.
Review general information on making math and chemistry more accessible or reach out to the Digital Accessibility community channel for additional support.
Charts That Represent Large Data Sets
Since charts and graphs are designed to visually represent data sets, the easiest approach to providing this same information in an accessible way is to provide the data in a tabular format.
If tabular data is not available, a long description of the chart should be provided. Long descriptions can be built directly into the content of the page where the chart is displayed or can be provided in a separate section e.g., an appendix or document. If the long description is provided in a separate section, navigational links should be provided for both getting to the separate section and back to the original chart.
Scanned Handwritten Notes
Walking through problems, diagrams, and complex topics is an excellent pedagogical strategy to support student learning. However, when instructors distribute a walk-through or notes in a digital format, those instructional materials are subject to digital accessibility standards. Scanned handwritten notes are a type of complex document, and remediating these files would follow the same process as described above to create a new, accessible format.
Since the remediation process for scanned handwritten notes is time-consuming, instructors are encouraged to consider, first, if it is important for students to have digital access to the walkthrough and/or handwritten notes. If yes, instructors are encouraged to consider one of the three alternative options described below. Importantly, these alternatives are not meant to replace the in-class activity of working through complex problems by hand; however, they represent less time-consuming approaches for creating a digital format to capture that content.
Create a Digital Version
Creating a digital version of the problems that will be worked through or used in the classroom is an excellent option for instructors who use the same lecture materials term after term. Accessible digital versions of the content are easy to update when an instructor wants to add, remove, or replace a problem from the lecture set.
Reference Existing Accessible Resources
If your course uses a textbook and you are working on the same or similar content from the textbook in the classroom, replace your scanned handwritten document with specific references to the related material found in the textbook.
Record Yourself
Instructors who are comfortable recording themselves can make a video recording that captures the in-class walkthrough of the problems or concepts. These recordings can be made either in the classroom or from the instructor’s office space. Importantly, instructors should be intentional about verbally describing what they are doing while recording the video, i.e., creating an audio description as they are recording. For example, rather than saying “if I do this,” which is vague and does not describe what is being done, an instructor would say “if I divide both sides by three” to verbally capture the handwritten step of dividing both sides of an equation by three.