88 Creating Accessible Visuals

When designing graphics for your slides, it’s important to make sure everyone in your audience can understand and benefit from your message. This includes people with disabilities, who may face barriers if your visuals aren’t designed with accessibility in mind.

Karwai Pun, an interaction designer with Home Office Digital in the United Kingdom, developed a set of Dos and Don’ts on Designing for Accessibility posters to help designers create inclusive materials. Working with an accessibility team, she created these simple and practical guidelines to improve access for users with a range of needs. The full poster series can be found on the UK Government Digital Accessibility Blog.

Below is a summary of some of the most useful tips from these posters.

Designing for Users on the Autism Spectrum

Do:

• Use calm, simple colour schemes

• Write in plain English

• Use short sentences and bullet points

• Label buttons clearly (e.g., Attach files instead of Click here)

• Keep layout simple and consistent

Avoid:

• Bright or clashing colours

• Idioms, metaphors, or abstract language

• Large walls of text

• Confusing or vague links or buttons

• Busy, cluttered layouts

Designing for Users of Screen Readers

Do:

• Describe images using alt text; provide transcripts for video

• Use a clear, linear layout

• Organize headings properly (e.g., heading levels)

• Design slides that work with keyboard-only navigation

• Write meaningful link and section titles (e.g., Contact Us)

Avoid:

• Sharing important content only in images or videos

• Spreading related content across multiple locations

• Relying on visual formatting (e.g., text size) to show structure

• Requiring mouse use for interaction

• Writing vague links (e.g., Click here)

Designing for Users with Low Vision

Do:

• Use high-contrast colours and readable font sizes

• Publish content directly in HTML or on the slides (not hidden in files)

• Use a mix of colours, shapes, and text for meaning

• Ensure slides work when zoomed in to 200%

• Keep buttons and instructions near the related content

Avoid:

• Low-contrast colour schemes or small fonts

• Burying content in downloads

• Relying on colour alone to convey meaning

• Spreading content across multiple screen areas

• Separating actions from the information they relate to

Designing for Users with Physical or Motor Disabilities

Do:

• Make buttons and clickable elements large and spaced apart

• Provide enough space between form fields

• Support keyboard or voice-only navigation

• Make designs compatible with mobile and touchscreen use

• Offer shortcuts to reduce effort

Avoid:

• Requiring precise clicks or dragging

• Grouping many actions close together

• Creating dynamic content that needs lots of mouse movement

• Using short time limits that rush the user

• Requiring a lot of typing or scrolling

Designing for Users Who Are D/deaf or Hard of Hearing

Do:

• Use plain language

• Add subtitles or captions to videos

• Keep content organized and easy to follow

• Use subheadings and visuals to break up text

• Allow alternative communication options (e.g., email, text, online forms)

Avoid:

• Complicated vocabulary or figurative language

• Audio- or video-only content

• Complex layouts or menus

• Long unbroken blocks of text

• Making phone the only method of contact

Designing for Users with Dyslexia

Do:

• Use images and diagrams to support written content

• Align text to the left and use a consistent layout

• Offer content in audio or video formats when possible

• Keep sentences short and language clear

• Let users adjust contrast between text and background

Avoid:

• Heavy blocks of dense text

• Underlining, italics, or ALL CAPS

• Expecting users to remember content from earlier slides—offer reminders

• Requiring perfect spelling—offer spelling support

• Putting too much information in one place

Tip: These accessibility design practices not only help users with specific needs—they also make your presentation easier for everyone to understand. Good accessibility is good design.

The following is an example of one of the posters which provides tips for designing graphics for those with dyslexia.

Attribution

This section contains material taken from Chapter 13.3 “Types of Graphics” in Introduction to Professional Communication and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

References

References are at the end of this chapter.