Accessibility FAST
Text Equivalents
Text equivalents are essential to accessible content. Everyone benefits from clear links; blind and low vision users need alternative text; closed captions and transcripts are helpful to all users, but essential for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
As mentioned previously, don’t rely on color alone to convey meaning or importance.
Add text equivalents to color, for example:
- Use color, shapes, and text in charts and diagrams.
- Add text indicators to highlighted table cells.
- Include reminders like “important” or “remember” in addition to bolding emphasized text.
If you rely on color alone, readers with color vision deficiency, using screen readers or text-to-speech software, or those viewing in black and white will miss the meaning.
The following chapters will expand on descriptive link text, alternative text, closed captions, and transcripts.
Linked text to another document or part of document that the user can follow by selecting. Effective hyperlink text should make sense independent of the content around it.
Alternative text is a text equivalent of graphics in a document or webpage. Alternative text is coded to be hidden visually, but read to a screen reader user.
A text equivalent of audio content in a video, displayed synchronously. Closed captions are toggled on or off by viewers, as opposed to open captions that are burned into the video and always displayed.
Transcription is the process of converting audio into written text. A transcript is a written record of all audio in media. Captions are synced to the content.
