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Accessibility

Last updated:
18 August 2025

A man in a checkered shirt and white gloves reaches for a book on a tall shelf in a library archive.
Damilola Ayo-Vaughan conducting archive research, 2020 BA (Hons) Culture, Criticism and Curation, Central Saint Martins, UAL | Photograph: Alys Tomlinson

Text and copy

Italics

  • Do not use italics as they can be difficult to read by users with dyslexia and visual impairments.
  • There are exceptions, such as titles of publications (magazines, books and journals), films, performances and artworks.

Capitalisation

  • Do not use all caps, unless writing acronyms (e.g. UAL, CSM, etc.). Capital letters are all at the same height making them harder to read for visually impaired readers, who can more easily distinguish the strokes above the body and below the baseline of a character.
  • If you want to convey shouting or excitement, use an exclamation mark as screen readers will change inflection.

Underline

  • Only use underlined text for links such as webpages and email addresses. Underlining text can hide character strokes that fall below the baseline.

Alignment

  • Align text to the left as this ensures consistent gaps between words and makes it easy to find each new line.
  • Right aligned and justified text can be difficult for dyslexic and partially sighted people to read.

Line spacing and length

  • Use 1.0, 1.5 or 2.0 line spacing. More space between letters and words may help someone with dyslexia or low vision read slightly faster.
  • Use 60-70 characters per line and do not split words over 2 lines.

Our colour palette was developed with accessibility in mind.

Use typography with a high contrast against its background. Readers who have low vision or with colour blindness could encounter difficulty distinguishing text from a background colour if the contrast is insufficient.

When using our brand elements digitally, especially when combining colours from our palette, use the WCAG contrast checker to test the contrast for on-screen applications.

This shows whether our 8 mid-tone colours work best with black or white, our 2 primary colours:

A set of colour cards showcasing colour accessibility and whether the colour is most legible with black or white. They also contain the colour's RGB code and HEX code.
UAL colour contrast checker

Use images to enhance what you are writing about. This can be helpful for learners with strong visual learning styles, those with dyslexia, readers with poor English skills or for whom English is a second language.

Use images that are relevant, engaging and, above all, accessible:

  • Set wrapping style of non-text elements to be 'In line with text' when using a word processor like Microsoft Words.
  • Add images to the right hand side of text.
  • Do not insert text as an image or put text over an image.
  • Ensure all text is readable and accessible.
  • Add alternative text (alt text) description to images and other non-text elements. This makes visual information available to users with screen readers.
  • Any image information that is relevant to all students can be added in a caption or in the notes. Don’t duplicate the same information in the body of the document/slide and the alt text.

Providing subtitles, captions and audio description makes videos more accessible for users.

Audio description

Videos that are produced or paid for by UAL and are embedded on the website need to be audio described to adhere to WCAG accessibility regulations. Audio descriptions are usually a separate audio track that describes the action taking place on the screen.
UAL Staff can access guidance on how to create audio descriptions on Canvas (UAL staff login required).
It is the responsibility of the team or content owner creating the video to pay for the audio description service. The Digital Public Platforms Team will only cover the cost for corporate video content on key pages of the site on an ongoing basis.
If you want to add an audio described video to the main UAL website, you need to use the 3PlayMedia Video Component in Matrix. Contact Matt Heselden, Digital Content Design Manager on m.heselden@arts.ac.uk to have your 3Play project added to component.
Read more guidance on audio description on Canvas (UAL login required).

Preferred supplier

Video platforms such as YouTube do not currently support audio descriptions, so we need to use a third-party supplier to generate the audio description for us.

UAL’s preferred supplier is 3Play Media. They offer the following services:

  • Transcription.
  • Audio description (machine generated).
  • Translation.
  • Live captioning.

3Play has been set up as a UAL approved supplier and we have negotiated the following rates:

  • English Captioning and Transcription: $2.45 / minute.
  • English Standard Audio Description: $8.82 / minute.
  • Other services are available at standard rates.

If you need any services offered you should contact 3Play Media directly for a quote and then raise a requisition via Agresso Business World (ABW) to generate a purchase order number.

Captions

All UAL videos should have accurate captions regardless of whether or not they need audio description. Auto-captions tend to have errors and won't accurately reflect the action in the video.

Captions can be edited and added to videos on platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, Panopto and Microsoft Stream.