Introduction

As you work on your outlines, you may notice a little icon in the bottom right corner of the editing interface. It looks like a person with their arms stretched to the side. This is the Accessibility Checker.

If the accessibility checker notices any issues with the accessibility of your outline, you will see a little numbered badge appear at the top of the checker. This number indicates how many issues there are with your outline. You can then click on the checker to see what those issues are and how the system suggests that you resolve them.

In order to ensure AODA compliance, you are not able to submit your outlines until there are no outstanding accessibility issues with them. This guide will walk you through some of the most common issues and how you can address them easily.

Formatting Tables

For a full explanation of how to format tables for accessibility, see our guide here.

The two most commonly reported problems with tables in the Course Outline Library are needing a table header and needing a caption for a table. Fortunately, it is simple add either one. We will start with table headers:

1. Click into any cell in your table. You should see a menu pop up with a series of formatting options for tables.
2. Click on the icon in the top left corner of the menu. This will insert a table header in the form of an additional row on top of the table.
3. The row will have the same number of columns as the rest of your table, but the background will be light grey in colour and any text you type will be bolded by default. You can use this for any headings in your table.

The other common issue is needing a table caption. The steps for creating a caption are very similar to those used in creating a header.

1. Click into any cell in your table. You should see a menu pop up with a series of formatting options for tables.
2. Click on the icon in the bottom right corner of the menu. This will insert a caption for your table at the very top.
3. The caption will appear at the very top of the table, outside of the table itself. It is comparable to a title.

If you receive a notification that multiple cells within the same table require headings or captions, please check your table. That message usually indicates that you have inserted another table within your table, rather than adding additional rows, columns, or cells. You only need one caption and header per table.

Colour Contrast

If you are planning to use different colours for fonts or backgrounds in your outline, please ensure that the colour contrast between your background and text meets accessibility standards. WCAG 2.0 requires contrast of at least 4.5:1 for small text (defined as under 12-point font) and 3:1 for large text (defined as 14-point or bigger).

To test your font and background choices ahead of time, use an online colour contrast checker. This one from WebAIM does a good job of showing what your chosen colours will look like together. It also tells you whether or not they pass a contrast check and provides the hex codes for your colours.

Should the accessibility checker find that your colour choices do not pass the contrast test, it will give you a notification about it. The notification will include a colour selector you can use to change the improper font or background. This selector includes a field for entering a hex code if you have a specific colour in mind.

Lists

Using lists can be a quick and effective way to communicate sets of information. You can use lists in an accessible outline; the important thing is that the lists are formatted correctly.

Unordered lists are those which do not necessarily follow a specific, obvious order. These are usually formatted with dashes, dots, arrows, or other shapes before each entry. These are also fairly flexible in terms of you how write them out. You can keep them as simple as using a dash and then typing out your information, such as:

– Like this

– And like this

And that can work. Or you can click on the unordered list button (pictured below) to get one that is indented, like this:

• This one is indented
• As is this

If you decide to use the button, you can choose between a dot, a circle, a disc, or a square to start each entry.

Ordered lists are those which follow a very specific order. Usually these are numeric (1, 2, 3…) or alphabetic (a, b, c…). Ordered lists must be formatted as ordered lists. If you just enter a number and then start typing, as seen below, the accessibility checker will ask that you format it as a list.

1. This is unformatted

2. And harder for screen readers to understand

Like with unordered lists, you can press a button to format your list.

1. So that it looks like this
2. And is easier to read

In the Course Outline Library, you can choose between using numbers, lowercase or uppercase letters, lowercase Greek characters, and lowercase or uppercase Roman numerals.

One other note on lists: the accessibility checker will recognize short strings of characters ending with a period as the possible start of a list. We have seen this most clearly in outlines where users have abbreviated the days of the week or months by using the first few letters and then a period, such as:

Days of the week: Mon., Tues., Wed., etc.

Months: Jan., Feb., Mar., etc.

This can lead to a large number of notifications from the accessibility checker. If this happens to you, simply remove the period from your abbreviations (e.g. Mon. -> Mon) and the system will stop seeing it as the start of a list.

Conclusion

We hope this has been helpful in navigating the accessibility checker. It has some quirks, but is worth following for the sake of keeping all outlines accessible to the largest number of people possible.

If you come across other accessibility issues, please feel free to email us at course@mcmaster.ca and we will happily investigate for you!