Making Your Content Accessible - Tables and Color
Tables
In addition to making sure your web content has captions, transcripts, and alt tags, another item you might use in your course is a table. There is no actual problem with using tables, you just need to make sure that your tables can be read in a horizontal manner. All tables need to be set up so that when a screen reader encounters one, a blind student will understand what it contains. An example from the WebAIM site Links to an external site. demonstrates what a screen reader would "say" if a table is not set up properly. This example pertains to a student who goes to a web site to find out where his Biology 205 class is going to be held.
Table with 10 columns and 7 rows. Department Code, Class Number, Section, Max Enrollment, Current Enrollment, Room Number, Days, Start Time, End Time, Instructor, BIO, 100, 1, 15, 13, 5, Mon,Wed,Fri, 10:00, 11:00, Magde, 100, 2, 15, 7, 5, Tue,Thu, 11:00, 12:30, Indge, 205, 1, 15, 9, 6, Tue,Thu, 09:00, 10:30, Magde, 315, 1, 12, 3, 6, Mon,Wed,Fri, 13:00, 14:00, Indge, BUS, 150, 1, 15, 15, 13, Mon,Wed,Fri, 09:00, 10:00, Roberts, 210, 1, 10, 9, 13, Mon,Wed,Fri, 08:00, 09:00, Rasid.
Does this make sense? Of course not. The order in which data is presented in a table can actually affect its meaning. When a person reads a table, he/she can refer to all areas of the table. However, a screen reader looks at a table in a linear mode. It reads left to right starting at the top and continuing down to the bottom. If a blind student gets "lost', he/she must start back at the top and listen to the table being read again...and again...and again. The key here is to keep your tables as simple as possible and to imagine reading the table as a screen reader would. There are actually many considerations for tables, but if you keep your tables simple, provide column "headers" (indicate what will be included in the column), and ask yourself if the table you created can be understood by reading it in a linear fashion, then you should be fine.
Using Color to Convey Meaning
One more area to be wary of when developing your content for your course is the use of color to convey meaning. If you say "the items listed below in red indicate the most important aspects of the reading" and a student is color blind, then the student may have no idea what is important. To correct this, simply use symbols instead or symbols in addition to the colors. For instance, instead of the above sentence, you could say "the items listed below with an asterisk (*) indicate the most important aspects of the reading" or "the items listed below in red and having an asterisk (*) indicate the most important aspects of the reading". Here is an example of what I mean.
The mandatory books for this course are listed in red. The books listed in green are optional.
- Paper Daughter, A Memoir by M. Elaine Mar
- Colors of the Mountain by Da Chen
- Half Half with a introduction by Claudine Chiawei O'Hearn
- The Open Boat, Poems from Asian America, with an introduction by Garrett Hongo
- The Big Aiiieeeee!, An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature
Rather than indicating the books by color, you should use something else (perhaps numbering) such as a symbol.
The mandatory books for this course are indicated by an asterisk (*). The books with a plus sign (+) are optional.
- Paper Daughter, A Memoir by M. Elaine Mar *
- Colors of the Mountain by Da Chen *
- Half Half with a introduction by Claudine Chiawei O'Hearn +
- The Open Boat, Poems from Asian America, with an introduction by Garrett Hongo +
- The Big Aiiieeeee!, An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature +