Accessibility

for presentations and communications

Created by the Department of Chemistry and Biomoleclar Sciences Graduate Student Association (CBGSA) in collaboration with CWIC uOttawa

Why make our presentations more accessible?

It ensures that the widest possible audience can access and engage with your content
Create a more welcoming and inclusive environment

Want a "quick" intro with great tips and tools that you can share easily? Check out our quick-guide infographic:

The sections:

GRAPHICS AND FIGURES

1

Select colours that are high contrast.

and that if colours are converted to black and white, the information can still be conveyed.

If possible, select your colours for colourblind accessibility.

For documents, be sure to include alt text for all images.

for oral presentations, consider describing your images and figures verbally if they are not decorative and are important to the understanding of your presentation.

Four quick tips!

1. Start by creating your designs in grayscale - this puts the focus on useability and ease of navigation rather than getting the colour just right

2. The 60-30-10 proportion - If you use multiple colours on a page or figure, if possible you should balance your colours by using 60% of your dominant hue, 30% of your secondary colour, and only 10% of an accent colour.

3. Use no more than five colours - This helps limit distractions and is more comfortable for eyes to look at.

4. Nature is a great place for colour inspiration - Sunrises, sunsets, beaches, forests ... these have colour palettes that are naturally pleasing to the eye. Websites can be used to pull colour palettes directly from an image.

Additional resources:

for selecting colour palettes that have high contrast and are colourblind accessible: iwanthue.com

for exploring colour palettes: colorhunt.co

and paletton.com

for checking if a colour palette can be distinguished when converted to grayscale (also great for converting between colour code types!): hexcolorcodes.org

for randomly generating colour matching colour palattes: coolors.co

to learn about colour theory:

https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/choose-color-pallete/

and

https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ui-design/introduction-to-color-theory-and-color-palettes/