Consider the diverse ways students will perceive, operate, understand and interpret your content. Design your online course materials and environment to ensure that all students can participate in the learning.
Factors to consider include use of colour, motor load, timing of activities, flash rate and flexibility for users to control how content is displayed.
To meet this guideline:
- Check that text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1.
- Use visual cues other than colour. For example, dotted and solid lines can be used to indicate differences in graphs, and bold text can be used to highlight key terms.
- Ensure that instructions to learners do not rely solely on sensory characteristics such as size, location, orientation and sound.
- Ensure all users have enough time to read and use the content.
- Remove time limits on activities, unless this would invalidate the activity.
- Allow users to save their activity progress and return at a later time, unless this would invalidate the activity.
- Enable printer-friendly versions of content.
- Enlarge target areas. For example, hyperlink a longer string of text, as opposed to a single character.
- Ensure that text can be resized up to 200% without loss of content.
- Ensure that content that moves, blinks or auto-updates has a mechanism for the user to pause, stop or hide it.
- Ensure that content does not contain anything that flashes more than three times per second.
WCAG 2.0 checkpoints
This guideline encompasses the following WCAG 2.0 checkpoints: