Digital Accessibility Essentials: Text

What Is Text Accessibility?

Text accessibility means formatting text in a way that makes it easy for everyone to read and understand the meaning. Headings and link text are related to text accessibility.

To create accessible text, it is necessary to pay attention to font choice, size, spacing, visual style, and proper use of lists and tables.

On the left, a green checkmark with example text formatted in a legible sans serif font. On the right, a red X with example text formatted in a difficult to read serif font.

Why Accessible Text Matters

Accessible text can be perceived, understood, and navigated by everyone, including people with disabilities who use assistive technology. Applying best practices for text accessibility makes your content easier to read, reduces cognitive load, and improves usability.

How To Make Text Accessible

Fonts

Use clear, legible fonts with a minimum size of 14pt and recommended line spacing of 1.5 for readability. Remember to follow CU Anschutz Brand Standards for font selection.

The following are CU Anschutz standards for minimum font sizes based on content type:

Content TypeMinimum Font Size
Documents, eComms, PDFs, Print14pt
University Websites (Sitefinity)16px
Presentations (e.g., PowerPoint)18pt body text, 24pt title text
Regular Emails11-12pt

Visual Style

Visual style includes italics, bolding, and underlines. Using visual style can enhance readability for sighted people but never rely on visual style alone to convey meaning.

  • Do: Pair visual styling with descriptive text. For example: Important Reminder: Register by the end of today
  • Don't: Use underlines for emphasis. Underlines should be reserved for hyperlinked text to avoid confusion.

Lists

Lists group related items and are either ordered (numbered or lettered; the order matters) or unordered (bulleted; the order does not matter).

To be accessible, lists must be properly formatted using the list feature in your content editing tool (e.g. Canvas, Microsoft Word). Lists should not be manually created using punctuation (like hyphens) or other symbols.

Accessible List Example:

  • cats
  • dogs
  • bears

Inaccessible List Example:

*cats

*dogs

*bears

Tables

Accessible tables present data in a way that can be navigated and understood by everyone, including those using assistive technology like screen readers.

Example Table:

Growth in Economics Enrollment, 2010-2020

YearEnrollmentPercentage
20105025%
20157035%
20208040%

Guidelines for Table Accessibility:

  • Include column headers (and row headers when appropriate).
    • “Year”, “Enrollment”, and “Percentage” are column headers in the example table.
  • Describe the table in surrounding text or include a table caption.
    • “Growth in Economics Enrollment, 2010-2020" is the table caption.
  • Do not use tables solely for layout purposes.
    • The table is used purposefully to present and organize data, not just to arrange the visual layout of content.

Practical Application

The following scenario demonstrates how the visual styling of text can create accessibility barriers.

Inaccessible Practice: You provide students with a passage that includes highlighted vocabulary words. Your instructions are to define the words highlighted in the passage.

Accessible Practice: In addition to providing the passage with highlighted vocabulary words, you provide students with a list of the words they need to define. This removes potential accessibility barriers for students with color-blindness, neurodiversity, vision impairments, and/or those using assistive technologies.

Additional Resources

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