Universal Design checklist .doc

The concept of Universal Design was developed by people who worked on designing equipment and environments for people with a disability. They saw that it was more beneficial and cost-efficient to make original designs accessible, rather than adapt things later. They believed that these inclusive original designs would in fact benefit many people. The principles of Universal Design can be applied to learning materials and communications so that more people can use them, and most people can use them more easily. This checklist is a tool for vocational education and training providers for assessing materials and communications and enhancing accessibility for everyone. Accessible text documents Plan the design of the document: use sans serif fonts like Arial or Verdana use a font size at least as big as 12 point use bold to emphasise important points, rather than italics, underline or all capitals use left justification allow plenty of white space give adequate margins (at least 25mm) set line spacing at 25% greater than the text allow ample space on forms leave space between paragraphs use good contrast use headers when creating tables avoid breaking words at the end of a line. For printed documents: avoid shading with poor contrast and glossy paper use light coloured paper. For electronic documents: include alternative text for graphics. Write for your reader: identify your audience and the purpose of your document use question and answer format to engage your reader use you and other pronouns to speak directly to your readers use I in headings to pose readers questions, e.g. ‘How do I appeal an assessment decision?’ use we to refer to your organisation use the active voice use non-discriminatory language. Write clearly: use bulleted lists instead of long paragraphs use short sentences use the simplest tense that you can omit superfluous words, e.g. change ‘despite the fact’ to ‘although’ use must to convey