Reflections on Design Aspects in Educational Content
summary
The talk argues that visual styling in educational materials conveys meaning and can hinder accessibility when treated as mere decoration. It shows side-by-side examples comparing a tight serif Times layout with low contrast versus a sans-serif layout with wider letter/line spacing and bold headings, demonstrating improved skimming and comprehension. Practical guidance includes marking images decorative only when truly so, providing alt text, avoiding text-as-image and background images, choosing sans-serif fonts with adequate spacing and contrast, and preferring born-digital, well-structured content because OCR/screen-reader conversions are still imperfect.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Start
- 3:27Decorative aspects have value
- 5:09Decorative elements can become barriers
- 6:26The formal aspect
- 6:52Graphic elements
- 7:03Formal aspects: clues or distractors
- 9:33Reading and understanding
- 11:43Reading and comprehension
- 13:33Graphic aspects as facilitators
- 16:47Text with Times New Roman font
- 17:27Same text with Avenir font
- 17:59Textual indicators
- 18:42Use of images
- 21:25Between content and form
- 23:38Characteristics of a content (example 2)
- 31:51The graphic aspect has semantic value
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