Design accessible digital content
Accessible content helps more people understand and use what you create.
Lesson overview
What you'll learn in this lesson
Create accessible digital content for a real audience
Key learning points
- • Structure and contrast
- • Media alternatives
This lesson at a glance
- 25 minutes
- 9 parts to scroll through
- 3 quick checks
- Marked quiz at the end
- Gentle pace: short sittings with pauses
Words to know
Scroll down — the lesson carries on below
Watch & discover
Part 1 of 9
Watch first
Design accessible digital content
An English teaching video on this topic from BBC Learning English. Watch it, then scroll down for the lesson.
In a nutshell
Create accessible digital content for a real audience
Explore the idea
Part 2 of 9
Learn
Structure and contrast
Use meaningful headings, readable contrast, concise link labels and a logical reading order rather than relying on colour alone.
Explore the idea
Part 3 of 9
Learn
Media alternatives
Add useful alt text to informative images, captions or transcripts to video, and labels to form controls. Test keyboard navigation.
Quick check
Part 4 of 9
Quick check
What should headings provide?
Quick check
Part 5 of 9
Quick check
What helps a video user who cannot hear it?
Quick check
Part 6 of 9
Quick check
Should meaning rely on colour alone?
Challenge round
Part 7 of 9
Game · Sort it
Which of these are true?
Drag each card into the right column. Tap a card first if dragging is fiddly.
True
Not true
Mastery quiz
Part 8 of 9
Marked quiz
End of lesson quiz: Design accessible digital content
3 questions, marked with the reasoning shown. No timer.
1. What should headings provide?
2. What helps a video user who cannot hear it?
3. Should meaning rely on colour alone?
Lesson round-up
Part 9 of 9
Lesson round-up
Ready when you are
Quiz score
Not sat
Games
Not played
Points this lesson
0
Best run
0 in a row
Luna: 0 out of 3 on the practice checks. Only if you feel up to it — one more?
Ask LunaDo the work
Your written work for this lesson
This is the part you'd do in your book at school. Pick the pieces below, write here or on paper, and photograph anything you draw or work out.
How a supermarket checkout knows the price
When a barcode is scanned, the checkout does not store the price itself. It sends the barcode number to a database and reads back a record: product name, price, whether it needs an age check. The record is the single place the price lives, so changing one row changes every till in the shop at once.
Problems come from bad data, not bad scanners. If two products share a barcode, or a price update reaches the shop overnight but the till holds an old copy in its cache, customers are charged the wrong amount. Shops check this with test transactions: scan a known item, expect a known price, record what actually happened.
Good systems also log every scan. If a customer complains, the log shows exactly which record was used and when.
Written for Good Learning Co.
Reading questions
- Write in your own words what the checkout sends and what it receives back.
- Explain one way bad data could cause a wrong price, and how logging helps find it.
- Design a test table with four tests for a new checkout, with expected and actual results.
Reading and notes
ReadingRead the lesson text again and note the key terms and how each one is used, in your own words — as you would for revision.
Half a page of notes
Extended writing
WritingExplain a real system that uses this idea — how it works, where it can go wrong, and how you would make it safer or better.
250–350 words
Algorithm on paper
DiagramWrite your steps out as pseudocode or a flowchart before you type anything, then photograph it.
1 flowchart or 10 lines
Code write-up
WritingCopy your code in, then explain underneath what each part does and what you had to fix.
Code + 5 sentences
Test table
Working outMake a test table: what you tried, what you expected, what actually happened.
4–6 tests
Saved as you type.
Part 1 of 9 · Watch & discover