Accessible Skills To Use
Headings and structure
- Use headings to organize your notes by topic or date.
- Headings provide a visual break in the content which makes scanning and finding relevant information easier.
- For people using assistive technologies, such as a screen reader, headings allow them to navigate the content via their keyboard. Without structure, there is no easy way to navigate a document because the document is read as a single long section.
- In Microsoft Word (Office 365):
- In a Google Doc:
- In Microsoft Word (Office 365):
Lists
- Use an ordered list to prioritize the items in your agenda
- Use check boxes for To Do items:
- Google Docs menu list options:
- Microsoft Office menu list options:
Links
- Embed links into meaningful text, & avoid pasting long urls into the document, and instead enclose them in text. For example:
- “Watch the UMD Hockey Introduction video!” is better than… “Watch this video here,” which is better than https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ruVN2-BMl0
- All three items link to the same awesome introduction, but the first is easiest to read for both sighted and non-sighted users.
- HINT: You can quickly create embedded links by Selecting your text and typing command+K (Mac) or Ctrl +K (Windows).
Do you still take handwritten notes? Consider getting a Rocketbook! Rocketbooks are reusable notebooks which have a feature to scan your handwritten notes into a digital file. Once the file is in a digital format, your notes can be transformed via OCR (Optical Character Recognition) into digital text. Save yourself the time of retyping all your handwritten notes.