August 2024
21 Day Accessibility Challenge – Empowered’s Top Takeaways
For the month of August, Empowered Nonprofits took on the #AccessibilityChallenge. Every day, for 21 days, we learned ways we can incorporate accessibility practices into our work and communications. We are sharing with you Empowered’s top takeaways that we have already been adapting into our mission-driven work. We encourage you to take on the challenge!
Write your own Self Description
Self-descriptions are like painting a picture with words, giving those who are blind, partially sighted, or dealing with low internet speeds a mental snapshot of the speaker.
They can be used for social media posts, video chats, webinars, or conferences. When creating a self-description, keep it brief and include your:
Name
Pronouns
Race
Disability (if you are comfortable to share)
Distinguishing physical characteristics (e.g., curly brown hair, green eyes)
Description of your clothing
Description of your background or physical location
Make Hashtags Accessible
Use capital letters to separate words in hashtags for screen readers to easily interpret them.
Before: #empowerednonprofits #nonprofitschangetheworld
After: #EmpoweredNonprofits #NonprofitsChangeTheWorld
Avoid Acronyms and Unnecessary Jargon
Keep your communication clear by avoiding terms that might confuse your audience. If you plan on using acronyms, define them first!
Don't: Please send this to me by EOD
Do: Please send this to be by the end of the day
Don't: ENP’s mission is to supercharge the organization and your team. Do: Empowered Nonprofits (ENP)
Add Stronger Descriptions to your Hyperlinks
Adding meaningful hyperlinks help screen readers, keyboard navigation, and voice recognition softwares by clearly communicating the function and purpose of a link, even out of context. Avoid using the terms: click here, see here – tell the reader what the link is aiming to accomplish.
Example: To learn more about how we're empowering nonprofits to make a difference, visit our website and explore the impactful work we do.
Incorporate Closed Captioning in your Videos
Provide text versions of spoken content in videos for those who cannot listen. These features are now available on zoom, youtube and social media!
Look and Feel Matter
San serif text and headings: Use sans-serif fonts and clear headings to ensure text is modern, clean, and easy to read.
Punctuation: Proper punctuation enhances readability and clarity, making your message more effective.
Color: Choose a color scheme that complements your content and improves visual appeal without distracting from the message.
Reading order: For documents or decks with multiple pages, include page numbers to help guide readers through the content seamlessly.
Rename and retitle: Giving a name to each element of your documents helps readers identify and locate items. For example, excel tabs and columns should be replaced with “Tab 1” or “Sheet 1” with a particular name.