Resource
Practical and visual guidelines for creating teaching materials and interactive systems that are flexible, legible and multisensory.
Recommendation
It is recommended to present to every student, including those with a visual impairment, every visual resource, such as figures, charts and video, using descriptive language and precise terms, accompanied by audio description, in order to guarantee understanding with autonomy.
The recommendations were formulated in Brazilian Portuguese. This is a faithful working translation; the Portuguese version is the canonical one. Read the original in Portuguese
Responsibility
Every teacher, tutor, content author and instructional designer.
- Teacher
- Tutor
- Content author
- Instructional designer
Opportunity
Every teacher and tutor has the opportunity to describe, and to provide a detailed description of, the figure, chart or video used in the teaching material, system or resource, setting out the intended use and the characteristics of the content.
Applicability
Do
Provide visible alternative texts or full audio descriptions below visual diagrams, explaining in narrative form and in detail the essential data and the purpose of that image in the context of the lesson.
Don’t
Insert charts, tables or maps with generic, insufficient text (such as "Chart 1" or "Image of a map"), leaving the interpretation of the data inaccessible to those who use screen reader software or rely on audio.
Examples
Place the audio description, or a dense descriptive text, directly in the body of the material (e.g. "bar chart showing 20% growth in year X compared with year Y…"). The visual content becomes understandable to everyone.
Presenting the image with nothing but a hollow caption such as "Figure 01: Results Chart". This hides the vital pedagogical information from the student with a visual impairment.