Do’s and Don’ts for developing online courses

Do’s

• Use high-contrast colors (4.5 to 1 for level AA) and test your color scheme by using the high contrast setting of your computer
• Include videos and audio captions, and a basic or descriptive transcript
• Use talking head videos and videos that include audio descriptions of what’s happening in the video. Provide full playback control to users
• Use a combination of colour, shapes and text to convey meaningful information. Use the Window settings, accessibility feature - colour filters, and select grayscale to make sure that course elements can be understood even without color
• In PowerPoint, use the templates provided and approved by your agency. Ensure objects will be read in the correct order by placing them on the slide from left to right, top to bottom, in the order in which you want them to be read
• Use a variety of assessments, and give learners all the time they need to complete them
• Write in plain language
• Use simple sentences and bullets
• Make button labels descriptive and consistent
• Write descriptive link and heading text
• Build simple and consistent layouts
• Follow a linear, logical layout
• Align text to the left and maintain a consistent layout
• Use words or the strong style to emphasize key words and important text. Links are naturally underlined.
• Publish all information on web pages

Don’ts

• Don’t use bright contrasting colours.
• Don’t rely solely on visuals in a video to convey information. And don't assume that the screen reader will announce every element that appears on a slide.
• Don’t automatically start videos and audio
• Don’t rely solely on colour to convey meaning
• Don’t create custom slides using textboxes. Don't include timers or other persistent objects (such as side menus or playback tabs) that a screen reader will read on every slide
• Don’t include timed tests
• Don’t use figures of speech and idioms
• Don’t create large blocks of text with few or no paragraph breaks
• Don’t make buttons vague and unpredictable (for example: click here)
• Don’t write uninformative link and heading text (for example: click here)
• Don’t build complex and cluttered layouts
• Don’t spread content all over the page
• Don’t centre or justify text
• Don't italicize, underline, or capitalize to emphasize text. Don't use strong style for complete sentences.
• Don’t bury information in downloads