Do’s and Don’ts for developing online courses

Do’s and don’ts for writing, designing and developing online courses.

Do’s

Use high-contrast colours (4.5 to 1 for level AA) and test your colour scheme by using the high contrast setting of your computer
Include videos and audio captions, and a basic or descriptive transcript
Use talking head videos and videos that include audio descriptions of what’s happening in the video
Provide full playback control to users
Use a combination of colour, shapes and text to convey meaningful information
Use the Windows settings’ accessibility features—colour filters, and select grayscale to make sure that course elements can be understood even without colour
In PowerPoint, use the templates provided and approved by your agency
Ensure objects are read in the correct order by placing them on the slide from left to right, top to bottom, in the order in which you want them to be read
Use a variety of assessments, and give learners all the time they need to complete them
Write in plain language
Use simple sentences and bullets
Make button labels descriptive and consistent
Write descriptive link text
Build simple and consistent layouts
Follow a linear, logical layout
Align text to the left
Maintain a consistent layout
Use the strong style (instead of bold formatting) to emphasize important key words
Links are naturally underlined
Publish all information on web pages

Don’t use bright contrasting colours
Don’t rely solely on visuals in a video to convey information
Don’t assume a screen reader will announce every element that appears on a slide.
Don’t automatically start videos and audios
Don’t rely solely on colour to convey meaning
Don’t create custom slides using textboxes
Don't include timers or other persistent objects (such as side menus or playback tabs) that a screen reader will read on every slide
Don’t include timed tests
Don’t use figures of speech and idioms
Don’t create large blocks of text with few or no paragraph breaks
Don’t make buttons vague and unpredictable (for example: click here)
Don’t write uninformative link and heading text (for example: click here)
Don’t build complex and cluttered layouts
Don’t spread content all over the page
Don’t centre or justify text
Don't italicize, underline, or capitalize to emphasize text
Don't use strong style for complete sentences.
Don’t bury information in downloads