Teacher
Pedagogical practices and strategies for adapting methods, mediating knowledge and creating an inclusive, empathetic learning environment.
Recommendation
It is recommended to present to every student, including those with a visual impairment, every task, activity or interaction using descriptive language, precise terms and progressive steps, accompanied by audio description, so as to guarantee participation 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 narrate their actions while presenting any task, content, activity or interaction, remembering to avoid generic terms and demonstrative pronouns such as this, that, those.
Applicability
Do
Replace phrases such as "click here" or "look at this chart" with literal, narrative instructions: "open the ‘Submit’ button in the bottom right corner", or "the bar chart on screen shows a 10% increase".
Don’t
Present purely visual slides (charts and maps with no alternative text) and deliver the explanation by pointing with a finger or a laser at the projection screen.
Examples
An example of an accessible task slide. Beyond large type and high contrast, there is a block of text that states explicitly what is being asked, doing away with vague pointing and making screen reading straightforward.
An example of instructions using the classic "click here" hyperlink. People using screen readers navigate by lists of links; a link named only "click here" carries no semantic context about its destination or its task.