Accessibility is crucial for ensuring that all users can interact with and benefit from online content regardless of their abilities. This feature makes your online school inclusive and compliant with legal requirements, enhancing the user experience. Accessible websites serve a broader audience and improve search engine optimization and user satisfaction.
In this article, we will explore how to enhance school accessibility using external tools and built-in features and discuss various methods to enhance the accessibility of your LearnWorlds school.
Integrating with an External Tool
You can also use other external tools to help your school and your courses' content be usable by people with disabilities of various types (vision, hearing, etc.). Αutomated accessibility tools alone do not make your school 100% accessible.
In general, accessibility tools can assist with the following:
- Text contrast: Ratio between text or images and background color.
- Dynamic font size: Option for users to increase the font size to fit their needs.
- Alternative texts: Text inserted on images to describe it in a written form.
- Keyboard navigation: Navigate the user interface without using a mouse.
- Screen reader: Converts text, buttons, images, and other screen elements into speech.
Integrate External Accessibility tools
To utilize an accessibility tool, you can opt for one of the listed apps or select any other app that meets your needs.
To integrate a third-party tool into your school's custom code, develop the code within the external tool. Then, refer to the support articles provided by the tool to determine where in your school's HTML it should be inserted. For detailed instructions, refer to this article.
- We recommend you create a page with instructions on how users who want to use the integrated Accessibility tools can enable those features (e.g., you could add instructions such as "Select "Yes" when asked if you will be using a screen reader).
Utilizing built-in features
1. Alt Text: You can use the built-in setting "Alternative-text" property, which can be allocated in all our available Image Widgets. Note that some images may have in the HTML structure the role="img" and aria-label ="alt-value" attributes because, by infrastructure, they are not image elements. However, the aria-label does not affect SEO, as it exists only for accessibility reasons.
For alternative texts that can be inserted into an ebook's image, you can contact us at support@learnworlds.com for further assistance.
2. Alternative files: All "non-text" content can include a text alternative to facilitate its accessibility. More specifically, for audio learning activities, you can add a digital download with their transcript. Otherwise, you can embed the audio file in an ebook by selecting the "Embed" template and then adding a "Text" template to provide the relevant context there.
3. Transcripts and Captions: For video learning activities, you can use our Transcript service and enable the captions feature. Otherwise, you can manually add subtitles to a video with external video software and upload it to your course as a whole.
4. Accessible Course Structure: Use clear headings, lists, and consistent navigation to make the course content easy to follow.
Best Practices for Accessibility
Consistent Layout: Maintain a consistent layout and design across all pages.
Readable Fonts: Use legible fonts and adequate font sizes.
Descriptive Links: Ensure that all hyperlinks have meaningful descriptions, rather than generic text like "click here."