Blackboard

Content built in Blackboard should be done through the text editor. The text editor options allow you to format text, embed multimedia, create lists and tables, and adjust line spacing. Using the text editor preserves the accessibility of your content.

"San Serif" means "without decorative line" and is the preferred font style as Serif fonts, which contain decorative lines at the top and bottom of most letters can be distracting to some users. The smallest font size on any give slide should be 4pt. regardless of font style chosen.

To adjust spacing within text added directly to Blackboard, use the Text Editor versus the tab or enter keys.

Use the indent and outdent icons to adjust spacing within a single line. To add additional white space, use the Edit CSS Styles icon to adjust spacing to desired specifications.

The purpose of the contrast ratio is to ensure that users can read text over a background. The 7:1 contrast ratio is for solid color background and text letter size. There are numerous contrast ratio analyzers available online that can be used to ensure text has a contrast ratio of 7:1.

Download Paciello Color Contrast Analyzer (developer.paciellogroup.com/resources/contrastanalyser/)

Use WebAim Color Contrast Analyser online (webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/). If there is not an option to use the eyedropper to pick colors, try Chrome.

Install tota11y (khan.github.io/tota11y)

Color is often used to convey information to people who can see color by emphasizing important concepts, dates, to-do items, etc. If font color is used to convey information, be sure to add a second way to highlight meaning. For example, important information shouldn’t only be red font; instead pair the red font with italics or Strong style. Test your content by printing in black and white: does the instructions and or information make sense in the absence of color?

Assistive technology searches for underlined text when looking for hyperlinks. Users of assistive technology may assume that a link is missing when words or phrases are underlined for emphasis rather than linking to external content.

Hyperlinks should make sense when they are out of context of a sentence. Common link phrases such as “click here.” “more,” or “click for more details” are ambiguous when out of context. Similarly, if the phrase “click here” is used multiple times in the same document they do not provide users of assistive technology with enough information to use them. Use words or phrases that are unambiguous and that can be intuitively organized when grouped together. (e.g. various screen readers group links in a variety of orders: some may be by order of appearance in a document, and others might be grouped alphabetically. When creating hyperlinks:

> Text (or object)

> Insert/Edit Link icon

Copy and paste the URL into the dialogue box

> Insert

All objects require alternative text (alt text). If the object is decorative or does not add to the meaning of a document, it can be tagged as “decorative.” Alt text should convey the meaning of the object to the document and any words on the object must be included in the alt text.

Alt Text Rules:

1. Every image must have alt-text
2. Context over picture; focus on you want the image to convey
3. Active images must include information about the action
4. Information contained in the image must be included in the alt text

Alt Text Best Practices:

• Focus on function-use it as a guide
• Avoid redundancy
• Keep it succinct and grammatically correct
• Use Description vs Title dialogue boxes
• Include all text that appears in the image
• Alt text for links must include destination
• Charts, graphs, and tables must have alt text unless the same information is provided in a Table or Figure description

To set alt text in Blackboard when you are inserting the image using the text editor, add alt text in the Image Description text box at the point of upload.

To set alt text in Blackboard when you are using Build Content - Create Image, there is a dedicated text box for alt text.

If Blackboard Ally detects an image that does not have alt text, the indicator next to the image will be red. Click the indicator icon to reveal the accessibility score. To ad alt text, type it into the Add Image Description text box and click Add. Or if the image is decorative, you can simply select the Indicate image is decorative option and close out of the accessibility score screen.

Lists in Blackboard can be ordered (numbers) or unordered (bullets) and are created by selecting the desired text and clicking the appropriate icon for number list or bullet list. To adjust the spacing of the lists use the Edit CSS Style icon.

Avoid using tables to organize text; tables should be used for tabular data only and creating using the table editor. To add a table select the Insert/Edit Table icon and enter desired number of columns and rows. Table properties can be set on the General Tab (you can get back to it at any time by right-clicking the table).