SCULPT for Accessibility is a beginner's guide to help you apply basic accessibility principles to websites and digital documents. The principles work for websites (including LibGuides), Word documents, pdfs and Powerpoint.
The six SCULPT principles are:
The SCULPT website has clear and simple explanations of these principles with links to further information and videos.
SCULPT by Helen Wilson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence. Based on work at Worcestershire County Council.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of detailed shared standards which define how to make the web more accessible to disabled people. They are produced by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) through extensive consultation.
WCAG is organised around four principles, using the POUR acronym:
It is just as important to create accessible emails, documents and presentations as it is to create accessible websites.
This is easy to achieve if you keep things simple and follow Microsoft's own accessibility guidance.
Make your Outlook email accessible to disabled people
Make your Word documents accessible to disabled people
Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to disabled people
Make your content accessible to everyone with the Microsoft Accessibility Checker
Library staff use a range of tools in their work to produce digital content. Some popular non-Microsoft tools include Canva and Shorthand. When choosing a tool to create content you should check for accessibility information on the tool's website. Good accessibility information will help you to decide if the tool can produce accessible documents and guide you to any features to use or avoid.
Remember to apply the SCULPT principles to any content you create, no matter the tool.
The following short articles have appeared in the Cambridge Libraries Community Newsletter: