Text Equivalents for Visual/Interactive Content
A key element of digital accessibility is ensuring that all users can access the information conveyed via visual or interactive content. We need to include visual and interactive elements in our course materials in order to improve student engagement. However, visual and interactive elements often introduce barriers for many students, as discussed earlier in the section Who uses accessibility features?. In order to determine how accessible any digital content is, you should review visual and interactive elements included in the resource to determine their level of accessibility.
Some accessibility features will be easy to identify as you scroll through a page in an OER and others will require the use of accessibility tools such as the WAVE Accessibility checker. Here are some questions you should ask yourself as you review visual content in OER. Learn more about each of these areas by reviewing the content under the related headings.
Questions to ask about visual content while reviewing
Images
- Does this image convey meaning, or is it decorative?
- Is this image composed primarily of text?
- Is this image complex?
Audio & Video
- Can the user turn the captions on/off?
- Are the captions accurate?
- Is a transcript provided for audio files such as podcasts?
Interactive Activities such as H5P
- Will you use the H5P in a published OER such as a Pressbook, or download/embed it within your course in a LMS?
- Is there a text version of the activity?
- How will offline users (PDF download or print) access this activity?
As you review a potential OER for inclusion in your course, consider the following issues around visual elements such as images, videos and interactive activities.
Accessibility Considerations: Images
Why is Alt-Text for Images Important?
Images without a text description will be inaccessible to those who are blind.
Images of text will also be inaccessible to blind users, and also potentially inaccessible to people with low vision, who may attempt to magnify the image resulting in the text often degrading to the point that it becomes unreadable. People with reading disabilities who use reading software may also have trouble with images of text as they cannot be read by the software.
There are occasions where images are strictly decorative or contain no useful information.
You can check for captions, transcripts, and description of images and video easily. Alt-text on images will not be visible as you look at the page, so you’ll need to use a tool such as the Wave accessibility checker to review.
Decorative Images
If your image does not add meaning and is included for decorative or design purposes only, the space for the alternative text description should still be included with your image, but it should be left empty or blank. Assistive technologies will detect the image, and by leaving the alternative text description blank, you will signal to the student that there isn’t any contextual content embedded. Including alternative text descriptions for decorative images “simply slows the process down with no benefit because the screen-reading software vocalizes the content of the [alternative text description], whether that alternative text adds value or not” (Berkley Web Access Group, 2012, section 4).
Images that Convey Meaning: Provide alt text & captions
No matter the subject of an image used in your content, you need to offer descriptive text. A screen reader will look for a contextual description of an image to share with readers, which should live in the text surrounding the image (title or caption) or as alternative (“alt”) text. This is one of the most commonly overlooked aspects of accessibility for instructional content, but most text editors include tools for adding alt text to images.
When adding alt text to an image, be sure to clearly and succinctly describe the most important elements for the student to know. Do not include extraneous detail. In some cases, you do not need to add alt text at all, as in the case of purely decorative images.
Examples of alt-text
- Necessary descriptive alt text: “Part a of the figure shows a container which has a gas of volume V subscript 1 on the left side and nothing on the right side. Part b shows a container which is completely filled with a gas of volume V subscript 2.”
- Too much descriptive alt text: “There is a figure with a white background and two squares labeled a and b. Part a has a rectangle (representing a container) with a shaded grey section on the left half of the container with dots representing a gas. The gas is labeled V subscript 1. Part b…”
- Unnecessary descriptive alt text: “An icon of a person smiling – I put this here as a cute picture to liven up the page!”
Considerations for Audio & Video captioning
Video and audio content needs descriptive text as well, but these usually take the form of captions or, in the case of podcast or audio recordings, transcripts. You can easily add captions to videos you create by using the built in features in your software, or YouTube’s built-in editor tools. For more help with this process, read through the excellent Captioning Videos guide from the University of Washington or reach out to an instructional designer at your institution.
Video with No Captions (Or Automatic Captions)
It is quite common nowadays for organizations to host their video collections with services like YouTube or Vimeo. It is important that any meaningful spoken dialogue in the videos be captioned so the content of the audio track is available to those who cannot hear it. Obviously this will include people who are Deaf, but it might also include people watching the video in a noisy environment, or watching with the sound turned down where quiet is necessary.
YouTube now provides automated captioning. It takes the audio track from the video and uses voice-recognition technology to convert the sound to text. This can be a handy feature to quickly caption a video, but video producers must not rely on automated caption to provide captions for their videos. The accuracy rate in many cases will be quite low, to the point where the captions make no sense.
The automated captions can be used as a starting point for manually-generated captions, but are not considered to be an acceptable alternative to the audio track in a video for accessibility purposes. There are a variety of free tools now available, such as YouTube’s caption editor or the Amara caption editor, that make it relatively easy for anyone to create captions.
Here’s an example of what can happen with automated captions.
Video: When YouTube Automatic Closed Captioning Goes Wrong (2 mins) on YouTube
Video source: McMaster Libraries. (2016, May 13). When YouTube automatic closed captioning goes wrong [Video]. YouTube.
Considerations for Interactive Activities (H5P)
Interactive activities are commonly added to OER using embed codes, and by uploading/adding H5P to Pressbooks. These activities provide a much needed break from paragraphs of text, and allow students to check their learning quickly. H5P activities can also be downloaded from Pressbooks or sources like the eCampus Ontario H5P studio, and added directly into your learning management system (LMS).
While these activities are a good example of how resources can be technically accessible, but may still present barriers for access. H5P maintains a list of H5P activity types that are technically accessible. Review the list and compare to make sure the OER you’re requesting is using accessible types, and consider the following suggestions:
Accessible H5P in an OER or Pressbook
- Check to make sure the activity type is technically accessible
- Look to see if a text version of the activity is provided
- If yes – fantastic!
- If no – remember that Print, PDF and assistive tech users may encounter barriers to this content
Accessible H5P imported into your course / LMS
- Check to make sure the activity type is technically accessible
- Consider creating and posting a text alternative for the H5P activity within the LMS as screenreaders and other reading tools, as well as options to download alternate formats will likely ignore the embedded H5P
Attribution & References
Except where otherwise noted, Text equivalents for Visual/Interactive Activities by Jen Booth is adapted from:
- Provide alt text & captions is adapted from Accessibility and Usability by Abbey Elder In The OER Starter Kit, CC BY 4.0.
- Decorative images is adapted from “Decorative Images” In OER Accessibility Toolkit by OpenUBC, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Why is alt-text for images important? is adapted from “Things to Watch for: Images without a Text description” In Professional Web Accessibility Auditing Made Easy by Digital Education Strategies, The Chang School, CC BY-SA 4.0
References cited in-text
Berkeley Web Access Group. (2012). Top ten tips for making your website accessible. Archived via WayBack Internet archive.
Adaptation notes
Source content was remixed into one guide and streamlined for effective reading. Questions to ask added. Considerations for interactive activities added.
