Kavita George
Senior Web Specialist, CTLI
What is a barrier to learning that you have experienced or are aware of that you’d like to see eliminated?
What is something you’ve done in your work (as an instructor, course developer, administrator, etc.) to improve accessibility in your area?
While my heart, spirit, and soul live young, my vision cannot keep up with my young heart. Age is catching up to me. This is my barrier to learning and I am more vocal about not being able to read smaller font sizes or not being able to read PowerPoint slides from the projector. It sometimes becomes embarrassing; at that moment, I would like to hide behind people or rely solely on my listening skills to consume the content.
Fonts sizes are essential to making content accessible for people with disabilities and for people regardless of their age. It is simple and easily achievable.
- Use accessible fonts such as Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Times New Roman, Tahoma and Verdana to name a few
- Use font size 12 points or higher for body text in word documents.
- Use the font size of 9 for footnotes and end notes in word documents.
- Use font size 24pt for projected PowerPoint slides.
- Avoid asterisks and dashes for bulleted lists. Instead, use built-in lists, including ordered (numbered) and unordered (bullets). Use numbered lists if it is a set of step-by-step tasks). Use bullets for an unordered list, for example, a grocery list).
- Use the inbuilt table feature in Word by choosing the Insert menu and clicking on Table. Make sure to give headings to columns and rows as needed.
This excerpt is taken from Kavita’s full article Empathy to Mindfulness – A Beginner’s Guide to Creating Accessible Documents.
Email Kavita at kgeorge@jibc.ca to chat more.