At ChemBAM we feel passionately that everyone should be able to learn about and engage with chemistry. As such we are working hard to make our website and activities accessible to all. Our work so far has focused on accessibility for people with vision impairment. 

Below are some useful practices to follow when designing an accessible webpage/document;

Hints & tips for accessibility;

• Don’t use long drawn-out sentences, need commas & correct punctuation! 
• Make sure hyphenated words have a hyphen (e.g. co-factor) to allow dictation to correctly interpret words.
• If using chemical formulas, also state name of molecule/compound to allow dictation.
• Refrain from using only colour to separate groups etc, also use labels or if graphical lines, use line styles to distinguish lines. 
• On word documents, use the style pane to identify titles/headings etc and for emphasising words etc to allow Braille printers to correctly format the document. 
• Make sure you use the correct symbols instead of shortcuts that look the same (for example don’t use an upper case “o” instead of a degrees symbol or an “x” instead of multiply sign)

Media files;

• Include alternative text for images.
• For video content; have link to transcript of audio as well as subtitles. Also, some partially deaf people prefer being able to see the narrator talking throughout the video. 
• If practical, include links to audio description of page as some people may not have the software to dictate the webpage to them. 

For people who would like to be able to download and use a FREE screen reader, here is a link to NV access. A charity set up to try and allow everyone access to using a computer.

If you have any suggestions or comments about how we can improve the accessibility of our site please get in touch.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.