A light purple white gradient background. Dark purple graphics on the 7 topics covered each day. Text reads: International Day of People with Disability. One small thing.

#OneSmallThing - Day 1 (Monday 27 November): Digital communication

Think image descriptions on social media posts, checking colour contrasts on your designs, and creating accessible documents. When it comes to accessible digital communication, we've got you!

“So I can see a little bit. I do have my font enlarged on my iPad. And it needs to have a black background and white font. When my iPad is set up like that, if I take my time and read slowly enough, I can read.” – Steven Hellier, who is deafblind

While this section is about digital communication, it might help to understand that there is a wide spectrum of communication needs and how you can better connect with people who have different ways of communicating and interacting with the world. For more information, watch our video about Demystifying Diverse Communication.

Top Digital Communication Tips

Make your website accessible - whenever possible, aim for AAA accessibility.
Make your social media accessible by choosing the right colours, adding image and video descriptions, and adding captions and voiceover to video.
Make your documents accessible by utilising Microsoft's built-in accessibility features, structuring your documents correctly, and adding alt text to images and graphs.

Build accessibility into your website

Aim for AAA WCAG accessibility standards
Around 18% of Australia’s population lives with disability^[i]. This accounts for nearly one in five Australians.
If the company that you work for has a website, how well does it stack up for accessibility?

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2 provide a technical standard for online accessibility. The highest level of accessibility that you can aim for when building a website is AAA.

By aiming for AAA accessibility whenever possible, you’ll make it easier for more than 4 million Australians to navigate and understand the information on your website.

Where to start with website accessibility

For introductory resources including videos and courses: See Accessibility Fundamentals Overview.
Alt text for images, keyboard input and transcripts: See examples of Web Accessibility.
Web accessibility principles and guidelines: See Accessibility Principles.
WCAG 2: Start with the WCAG Overview.

Make your social media accessible
How do people navigate and interpret the world of social media when they have impaired vision or hearing loss? What can each of us do to improve people’s access to the information that we share online?

From tips on getting the right colour contrast to effective captioning, Vision Australia has a wealth of information and resources on making your social media more accessible.

Here are a few small things you can do easily to make your social media more accessible:

1. Choose the right colours to convey your information.

Consider colour contrast and how colour is used to represent information. If you have a high colour contrast and you use more than just colour to convey information, you’ll be ahead of the curve when it comes to accessibility. WCAG 2.1 specifies a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 and WebAIM has an easy-to-use contrast checker to help you get this right!

2. Add image and video descriptions to your social media captions.
Screen readers can only convey the information they’re provided so if an image doesn’t have alt text or a description in the caption, people with vision impairment can miss the “full picture”, quite literally. Add an image description at the bottom of your captions or use the method that each social media platform offers for adding alt text.

3. Add captions and voiceover to videos.
If anyone in your audience has difficulty hearing or reading, adding captions and voiceover audio to your videos can go a long way towards making your videos more accessible.

> Visit Vision Australia for more detail about each of these three tips

> When in doubt, you can refer to Vision Australia’s handy infographic for social media accessibility tips

> Use this helpful Social Media Accessibility Checklist before posting to social media

Create accessible documents

Did you know that Microsoft programs such as Word, Powerpoint, Excel and even Outlook, contain a host of fantastic features to help you create accessible documents?

Here are a few top tips on enhancing the accessibility of your Microsoft documents:

Top 5 Tips for Accessible Documents

Start each document by turning the “Accessibility Checker” on by selecting “Check Accessibility” under the “Review” tab in main navigation.
To start a new page insert a page break, press Control + Enter on PC or Command + Return on Mac. Do not start a new page by repeatedly pressing “Return” or “Enter”.
Use Alt Text, found by right-clicking on an image or graph, to describe all images that have meaningful impact to your document. If the image is decorative, click the “Mark as Decorative” button.
If you are using graphs, include a table next to the graph or in an appendix to give the exact numbers for non-visual learners and blind users and mark the graph as decorative. Also describe what you want the graph to convey.
Use colour and words together to convey information rather than colour alone.

Visit the Centre for Inclusive Design website which offers a range of great services and training to help you on your journey to more accessible communication.

Where can I get more information?

Got #OneSmallThing you'd like to share on any of the topics above? We'd love to hear from you!

Simply send us an email at media@juliafarr.org.au or message us on socials with your #OneSmallThing - it can be a quick mobile video, something in writing, an audio file, a drawing, or any other medium that works for you!