By Sarah Mulhall
Throughout all of our studies, it is likely that most students will attend many workshops and seminars aimed at developing our written and verbal communication skills. For those of us in graduate research, competitions such as 3 Minute Thesis can be great opportunities for learning how to communicate our research to broad audiences by crafting a narrative and adapting our language. Whether you are writing an essay, delivering a presentation, or applying for a job, the ability to communicate effectively is undeniably important. Yet, imagine if you spent days or weeks creating an engaging presentation or research paper, only to realise that the colours or formatting you chose inadvertently made your work inaccessible to part of your audience.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, around 1 in 6 people in Australia (or 4.4 million people!) have a disability or chronic illness. Disability is wide ranging, and affects communication differently for different people. Furthermore, disability is often ‘invisible’, so you may not be aware of the access needs of the people around you. Thinking about accessibility and inclusion as you develop your work is an important way of both widening your audience, and making sure that everyone in your tutorial, workplace, or industry is able to access, understand, and engage with your message.
A quick internet search can uncover a ton of resources and best practise guides on improving accessibility. However, as these may be a little overwhelming for beginners, here are 6 tips to get you started:
Use colour-blind friendly colour schemes
While colour is often an important aspect of data visualisation, around 4.5% of the population are colourblind and perceive colour differently. By using a colour-blind friendly palette you are helping to ensure that your graphs, maps and diagrams can be understood by a wider audience. Many resources are available online, but some of my favourites include Venngage’s Accessible Color Palette Generator, the Colbis Color Blindness Simulator, and ColorBrewer. For programmers, there is also the RColourBrewer package that allows you to use ColorBrewer’s palettes to create graphs and maps in R.
Use high contrast colours for text
Colour schemes with low contrast are not only difficult to read but can also be a trigger for things such as migraine, nausea, and blurred vision. Whether it’s a presentation, a social media post, or a website, using high contrast colours allows your audience to read your text without creating additional eye strain. Recommended colour schemes include black text on a white or pale coloured background or yellow text on a black or blue background, rather than pink on white, or green on yellow.
Add captions videos, events and meetings
If you make videos or include video content in your presentations, add captions (aka ‘subtitles’) to your videos or simply turn the captions on! This makes your content more accessible to the d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing community, as well as people with auditory processing issues, and non-native speakers. Video sharing platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok all have software that automatically converts speech to text.
Transcribe audio content
If you are making a podcast or other audio content, consider transcribing it, or providing a written summary of the content. There are many transcription services to choose from, including Rev, Otter.ai, and the Google Live Transcribe app.
Add image descriptions and alt-text
Image descriptions and alt-text (or ‘alternative text’) are two ways of providing meaningful written descriptions of images, including photos, graphs, gifs and videos, as well as text that has been saved as an image. They are used by people with a range of disabilities, including people experiencing blindness, low vision, photosensitivity, and learning disabilities such as dyslexia. Alt-text is written text that briefly describes a picture on a website or presentation. It is read aloud by screen readers (assistive technology that converts digital content to speech or braille), and will also appear if an image fails to load. Alt-text is easy to add to Instagram posts and Microsoft documents and presentations, and WebAIM provides a great guide to creating alt-text (including examples). Image descriptions are different from alt-text, as they provide more full, detailed descriptions of images. Unlike alt-text which sits behind your picture, image descriptions are written captions that go alongside an image and can be accessed by anyone, including those without screen readers.
Learn about ableist language
Ableist language refers to words and phrases that discriminate against or devalue disabled people. Unfortunately, ableist language is all around us, and often takes the form of using words that were originally used to describe disabilities or mental health conditions as insults. While they often used without the intention to cause harm, these words can be hurtful and stigmatising, and detract from the message that you are trying to communicate. An excellent guide on language to avoid, as well as better alternatives, can be found on this blog post from September 2022 written by disability activist Lydia X. Z. Brown.
Bonus tip!
Whether you’re studying STEMM, humanities, arts, or commerce, there are many talented disabled people working in your field and sharing their experiences online. Most of what I’ve learned about accessibility over the past few years has come from following amazing disability activists, creators, and educators like Carly Findlay, Nina Tame, Pacing Pixie, and Higher Priestess. Following hashtags such as #DisabledInSTEM or #DisabledInHigherEd is a great way to find disabled students and academics, and understand how you can become a better ally to your colleagues.