This article is the fifth in a series of six articles about accessibility issues in e-learning.

what font size (by Dani Lurie)

Students have different preferences around font size and colours which allow them to most easily read text.  Many staff will have experience in printing out handouts on non-white paper to meet some students’ needs. Transferring that experience, they want to know what font size and colour they should make the text and background on their Blackboard site so that students can most easily engage with it.  This article explains the equivalent best practice for online text and colours.

Why is this an issue?

Some students, such as those with visual impairments or dyslexia, need to modify the text and background colour to help them read the text more easily.  Other students increase font sizes when viewing pages to help with reading small text. 

Sometimes the colour preferences of students are in direct conflict with each other.  Some students might need softer colours such as a purple background with lilac text, while another needs the highest contrast ratio possible in order to read text.

What can you do?

This is one issue where you don’t need to do much when using technology compared to face-to-face.  In a face-to-face situation you may want to print on different colour paper to meet your students’ accessibility needs.  However, accessibility options on computers will allow your students to configure the colours and font sizes for Blackboard, Word documents and other programmes that they prefer.  This means you do not need to worry about changing your Blackboard site’s font sizes or colours to accommodate particular students.  Be sure to avoid using colour to differentiate between items and to not format text as images, or the user’s font size and colour preferences will not help them to understand the text.