ACCESSIBILITY SERIES
Looking to make your videos and webinars more accessible, inclusive, and user-friendly? You’ve come to the right place. These tips will help make your content accessible to a broader audience and comply with accessibility standards.
By integrating accessibility into the planning of webinars and videos, you’re setting projects up for time and cost savings. Universal design is design that is usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. It ensures you’re thinking about accessibility from the very beginning of the process.
What does this look like in practice? Closed captioning is an important part of making accessible digital content. For example, if you’re designing captioning for an instructional video, you’ll want to make sure to choose a color-contrast compliant background for caption text. Designing a beautiful video and then realizing low-vision users won’t be able to see your captions is a costly oversight to go back and fix.
Let’s talk more about how you can plan accessibility into your webinars and videos.
Webinars are a great example of content that requires accessibility considerations from start to finish. You’ll need to think about accessibility from the very beginning — your registration process — until the very end, when you distribute the video and its accompanying materials.
While reasonable accommodations must be provided regardless of when they are requested, you’ll want to ensure the registration process asks about accommodations and allows plenty of time for you to respond to and implement the request. Accommodations might include but are not limited to large-print documents, sign language interpreters, or live captioning. Here are some tips for building accessibility into webinars:
Co-workers in workplace including person with low vision disability using laptop computer to join a webinar.
Perhaps you offer standalone instructional videos for your partners or are sharing a recording of a webinar or other virtual event. Regardless of the content, there are several ways to make videos more accessible.
By incorporating these accessibility features into your webinars and online videos, you’re ensuring your products reach the widest possible audience.
Do you need a partner in evaluating your accessibility practices or helping make your content accessible to all audiences? Reach out to lrc@trimetrix-inc.com to learn more about how we can help.
Video with a color-contrast compliant background for caption text.
This resource was written by TriMetrix’s Center of Excellence for Learning Resources and Communication (LRC) staffer Heidi Freymiller. The LRC works with subject matter experts to make content and messaging come alive for audiences through print and digital content and innovative learning solutions.
Unsure of where to start or need support in improving your organization’s disability practices?
The LRC’s accessibility and design experts can work with your team to ensure all aspects of accessibility are addressed. Reach out to us at lrc@wrma.com to get started.
