Many conferences, both on-site and online, offer opportunities for researchers and practitioners to present their work. There are steps you can take to make your poster accessible to conference participants who have disabilities. The following tips apply to both on-site and online posters.

  • Use clear,聽consistent layouts and organization schemes to present content.
  • Provide information in multiple ways (e.g., use a combination of text, images, graphs, and聽tables).
  • Use plain English,聽spell out acronyms, define terms, avoid or define聽jargon.聽
  • Use color聽combinations that are high contrast and can be distinguished by those who聽are colorblind.
  • Keep text聽concise and graphics and tables simple.
  • Use large, bold, sans serif fonts聽on plain backgrounds.
  • Provide adequate white聽space, avoid clutter, and visually highlight sections with borders, colored headings, and聽white space.
  • Share with participants a concise description of the major points in the content of the poster.
  • Feature聽a tiny聽url聽or QR code that links to more information on the research being presented聽and an accessible, downloadable version of the poster.
  • Caption or title images.
  • Consider suggesting questions that people might want to ask (e.g., "Ask me about ...").

If your poster session is only electronic, there are additional tips for making your presentation accessible聽to people with disabilities.

  • Use聽accessibility tools and guidelines within the creation product you are using (e.g., PowerPoint)聽to develop the poster.
  • Use a text-based聽format and structure hierarchical headings, lists, and tables using聽style and formatting features of the creation product聽you are using;聽use built-in page layouts when available.
  • Provide concise聽alternative text descriptions of content presented within images, graphs, and tables.
  • Avoid creating聽PDF documents, unless you invest the time to learn how to design聽them in an accessible manner.
  • If a video presentation is available along with the poster, be sure that it is captioned and that all key content is spoken aloud.