Accessibility Guidance
Design for Accessibility
Your OER marketing material is only as useful and impactful as it is accessible. Regardless of which marketing materials you are designing or using, follow these accessibility guidelines to ensure your messaging can be understood by as many people as possible.
Use Canva’s Accessibility Checker, but review manually too
In Canva, go to File > Accessibility > Check Design Accessibility. The checker can help identify issues with typography size, contrast, and missing alt text, but Canva’s own guidance notes that complex PDFs (which you may use to share your slide deck) may still need additional review.
Use readable font sizes
- For digital slide decks, use at least 24 points for body text and larger sizes for headings when possible.
- For printed materials, body text should generally be at least 12 points, with larger text for headings and callouts.
Use real headings and check reading order
A heading is not only text that looks bigger or bolder. In accessible documents, headings should be tagged or structured so assistive technologies can identify the organization of the page. In Canva’s Accessibility checker, use the text semantics [YouTube] to identify headings, subheadings, and body text, and check that content is read in a logical order: title first, then subtitle, body text, images, captions, and links. Keep heading levels consistent across the deck and review reading order manually, especially for more complex designs.
Check color contrast
Text should have enough contrast against the background. Canva’s Design Accessibility checker can flag contrast issues, and the free WebAIM Contrast Checker can help you test exact color combinations.
Add alt text to meaningful visuals
Add alt text to images, icons, charts, and screenshots that communicate information. Canva [Youtube] allows users to select an image or element, open the options menu, choose Alternative text, and enter a description. If the image is just serving a decorative purpose, it can be marked as decorative.
A note about PNG and JPG files
Though you can embed alt text in images in Canva, with PNG and JPG files, they do not carry over when downloaded. Therefore, if you plan to download your asset as a PNG or JPG, do not rely on Canva’s alt text to carry over to the platform in which you will place your asset. Instead, do one of the following:
- Add the alt text in the platform itself (if available)
- Include an image description (if the image needs more explanation than the alt text provides) and a transcript of any text that appears in the image, especially when the graphic includes important information.
Example
Let’s say you plan to send your OER postcard digitally. You would attach the postcard as an image to an email and include alt text and/or a 1–2 sentence image description in the email body.
Alt text example (Desert postcard): “Illustrated desert scene with Joshua tree at sunset and the tagline ‘Pack Light. Learn Freely.’”
Image description example (optional): “The front shows a warm desert landscape with a Joshua tree silhouette, boulders, and desert plants in golden light. The tagline reads, ‘Pack Light. Learn Freely.’”
Do not rely on color alone to convey meaning
Use labels, text, icons, or patterns in addition to color so meaning is not lost for people with color vision differences.
Limit motion
Avoid unnecessary animations and transitions. Canva’s Accessibility settings allow you to toggle on Reduce motion.
Caption audio and video
If the marketing material (such as a slide deck or video testimonial) includes spoken audio or video, include accurate captions and, when possible, a transcript. Canva has tools for generating and editing captions for video and audio.
Need more accessibility guidance?
The accessibility chapters in Open Voices, Just Choices focus on Pressbooks, but the same core principles can help you make Canva-based images or multimedia more accessible, too.
a short description of what the image shows that allows those using a screen reader to understand the visual image
a longer description (a few sentences) used when the details of the image matter. It gives extra context that doesn’t fit in alt text.
