Principles for Accessible Design
Why is accessible design important?
When you create documents and resources with accessibility in mind, you benefit your entire audience, but especially the elderly, children, people with visual impairments, and people with processing disorders. By using accessible design, also known as universal design, you maximize the chances of everyone being able to use your product properly.
General Guidelines
Text 
- Choose a legible font and size.
- Use boldface to create emphasis.
- Use a leading 150% of the font size.
- The color of your font should highly contrast the background.
Examples
Organization 
- Avoid large blocks of text.
- Align text only on one side.
- Split text into two columns when you have a large block of text.
- Provide visual variety and white space.
- Make sure any images you add are relevant and don’t place text on top of an image.
- Images should be places at an appropriate place on the page. They should not disrupt the flow of the writing.
Examples
Web 
- Utilize paragraph styles on website applications.
- Avoid long URLs. Use a short phrase as a label and link the website to it.
- Add descriptive captions or alt-text to images.
- Provide closed-captioning for any videos you imbed.
References
Hastings College. “Accessible Design.” Academic Affairs-Student Resources, sites.google.com/hastings.edu/academic-affairs-students/designing/accessible-design.