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[READY FOR REVIEW] Adding the accessible-content-guidance to the Guide for Accessibility #3602

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64 changes: 64 additions & 0 deletions book/website/accessibility/accessible-content-guidance.md
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# Accessible Content Guidance for Inclusive Events
A critical part of running an inclusive event is ensuring that the content at your event is both inclusive and accessible.
This section outlines guidance, requirements, and considerations for ensuring that both your promotional content, and your event's presentation content is as accessible as possible for a diverse and inclusive audience.

# Content Accessibility Guidance
Ensuring that event communications, including printed content, are accessible to all attendees is critical.
Please review the following recommendations and ensure that any material you have designed for your event meets the appropriate accessibility practices of your attendees.

### Use a size 14 (or larger) font for both digital and printed content.
A size 14 font is the recommended size to make text information legible for a broad audience and support people with lived experience of visual impairments, and other conditions that affect readability.

### Use a Sans Serif font.
"Sans Serif" refers to fonts that do not have embellishments or lines on the letters.
For example, Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica or Monserrat.

Using a "Serif" font such as Times New Roman can negatively impact readability and make it harder for people with dyslexia to read information.
Using a "Sans Serif" font is especially important for online content such as emails and websites.

### Provide appropriate line spacing in text.
When there is either not enough, or too much, space between two lines of text it becomes more difficult to read.
Lines that are spaced too close together can cause eyestrain and lines that are too wide apart make it difficult for our eyes (and brain) to find the following line. Line spacing is especially important if your content involves large and unbroken paragraphs of text and can disproportionately affect people with reading difficulties, visual impairments, or who are reading your content in their non-native language.

The best practice is to use 1.5 line spacing.

### Use high-contrast colours in all content.
The best example of high-contrast colours is using dark text on a light background.

If you are planning on using different colour palettes to create content and make communication more visually appealing, please keep in mind that a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 is recommended for small text (12 point) and a ratio of 3:1 for large type (18 or 14 point bold).
You can check if contrast is being used correctly with these free resources: Contrast checker and Deque University Contrast.

You may want to consider giving speakers and presenters a guide on how to make their posters and presentations accessible if your event hosts a poster session.

### Avoid backgrounds that have an excessive amount of colors, shapes, or graphics.
In this manner, reading becomes more enjoyable since the text won't be overwhelmed by an overly busy background.

### Do not embed essential information in an image.
This includes the information about the name, date, time and location of the event, and any accessibility information.

Images do not just mean images on a page, but also using a PNG or JPEG file type for flyers, presentations, or other content.

Images cannot be ‘read’ by screen readers that are being used by a person with a visual impairment.
Consider using plain text for emails and providing flyers or images as attachments that are accompanied by Alternative Text Descriptions.

### Provide Alt-text (Alternative Text) descriptions for online images in your content.
Always include alternative text descriptions that accurately describe images and contain information relevant to the text.
Alt-text descriptions are helpful for people with visual impairments who use screen readers and for people with low bandwidth internet where images may not load on a page.
They provide information that the image is used to convey and can help explain the content and context of any information referenced in the image.

Images include pictures, gifs, tables, graphs, diagraphs, and illustrations and other graphics.
Any images used in your event's content (including those of the speakers and presenters) should be accompanied by a basic alternative text description to avoid including unnecessary information that could make it harder to understand the content.

### Avoid blinking or flashing content that could cause seizures.
Some people find certain motions or animations to be highly distracting, and some people may even become sick from them. Therefore, consider if the motion is necessary and if it will make the material easier to understand.

### Use the style and formatting tool in text editors for headings.
Font size by itself is not detectable by screen readers.
Instead use the heading and title style tools in programs such as Microsoft Word, and Google Docs.

### Working with Speakers
You may want to consider sending guidance or recommendations to any speakers or session facilitators who will be presenting content at your event.
Consider if you and your team are able to review material submitted by speakers for your event, and what resources you have to support them in making their session content accessible.
If your event is hosted online, please note that many screen sharing and video conferencing tools are not accessible to screen reading software.

Ensure that you provide any content that may be presented via screen sharing to attendees before the start of your event in a plain text format accompanied by alternative text descriptions of any images, graphs, or other figures.