Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Digital Teaching

Color, contrast and brightness all influence vision. Objects on screen appear often too little or blurred. This is a real barrier to people with visual impairments. Some people use a Screen Magnifier to read on screen, others use Screen Readers. 

Clear contrasts and the possibility to enlarge texts and photos are essential for people with visual impairments.

Make sure that you communicate all contents of your course not only visually (pictures, infografics, presentations using many pictures etc) but that you also communicate these contents in different forms (e.g. audio files, text files that can be read by Screen Readers etc). 

What you need to keep in mind:

• Use a high resolution for all photos, illustrations, tables and pictures
• Use white background and black font to create documents with good contrasts, do not use colors
• Keep your outlines and documents organized, so people using a mangnified screen can still orientate themselves while reading your enlargened websites and documents
• Prepare all your documents and PDFs so that they can be read automatically with a Screen Reader
• If you are planning to do a video conference for people with visual impairments, talk to your participants  beforehand, if possibly, to find out what they might need. We have put together some  general advice under the question “How can I include students with visual impairment in video conferences?”