NCCPE Accessible Conference Activities Guide
Considerations for designing accessible conference materials and sessions.
2 minutes read
Posters and printed resources
Overall design
- Follow a linear, logical layout.
- Provide adequate white space, avoid clutter, and visually highlight sections with borders, coloured headings, and white space.
- Consider producing materials in other formats too – for example as an audio or video file.
- Consider suggesting questions that people might want to ask (e.g., "Ask me about ...").
- Prepare a concise description of the major points in the content of the poster or resource that you can share orally with delegates.
Colour
- Use simple, contrasting colours.
- Don’t only use colour to convey meaning.
Text
- Use plain language, rather than idioms or figures of speech.
- Use simple sentences and bullet points, rather than walls of text.
- Ensure your poster text legible from a distance of 3 to 6 feet (1 – 2 meters).
- Use large, sans serif fonts on plain backgrounds.
- Don’t underline words, use italics, or write in capitals.
- Align text to the left.
Slides and presentation resources
Overall design
- Provide information in multiple ways (e.g., use a combination of text, images, graphs, and tables).
- Follow a linear, logical layout.
- Provide adequate white space, avoid clutter, and visually highlight sections with borders, coloured headings, and white space.
- Run an accessibility checker – most pieces of software have this feature.
Colour
- Use simple, contrasting colours.
- Don’t only use colour to convey meaning.
Text
- Use plain language, rather than idioms or figures of speech.
- Use simple sentences and bullet points, rather than walls of text.
- Don’t underline words, use italics, or write in capitals.
- Use font size of 44 or more for titles.
- Use font size 32 for short, simple bullets.
- Include no more than six lines of text on each slide.
- Align text to the left.
Graphics
- Don’t only show information in an image or video.
- Use subtitles or provide transcripts for videos.
- Describe any graphics orally during your presentation.
- Caption or title images.
Session presenting and facilitation.
Presenting
- Use plain language rather than idioms or figures of speech.
- Describe out loud any images or diagrams in your slides.
- Use plain English, spell out acronyms, define terms, avoid or define jargon.
Facilitating
- Don’t force delegates to remember things from previously shown slides – give reminders and prompts.
- Break down any tasks or activities into clear steps.
- Don’t only use activities that require delegates to move around, for example, ice breakers that involve standing.
- Don’t rush delegates or set impractical time limits on activities – give everyone enough time to complete an action.
- Be clear in advance about how your session will run, and in what ways delegates will be interacting with the content and each other.
- Give options for delegates to reflect or think on their own, rather than only doing this as a group.
- Give other ways for people to respond/ask questions than speaking out to the group.
We are constantly learning about how to make our events more accessible and inclusive – we’d love to hear from you if you have any suggestions or insights. Please email maddy.foard@uwe.ac.uk.