Our goal has always been to empower students of all abilities. We want to partner with you to help make your Boom Cards more accessible for all students. By making your Boom Cards more accessible, you will expand your resources to new audiences.


More and more states are requiring that educational content meet certain accessibility requirements. Recently, Colorado and Maryland’s DOE reached out to inform us that their legislature is requiring educational content used in their schools to adhere to the WGAC 2.2 standards. In order to continue offering your Boom Cards in those states and others who will be adopting those requirements, we are providing new tools so you can have a leading edge to make your Boom Cards accessible for a wider audience. 


Here is a List of Best Practices to make accessible decks: 

  • Add accessibility text to all relevant Sounds and Images
  • Use Proper Z order
  • Use Proper Color Contrast
  • Use On-Screen Keyboards when appropriate

5 Tips when Creating Boom Cards from Lisha Yoch, M.Ed., from Pathways to Literacy, who is a TVI (Teacher of the Visually Impaired): 

  1.  Use a Universal Design Model – Ask yourself will most learns be able to use these cards? 
  2.  Reduce clutter and unnecessary pictures and objects on your slides, using real life pictures when possible.
  3.  Make fonts and materials that are simple, clear, and high contrast.
  4.  Use solid colors that contrast each other and avoid designs on your borders and backgrounds.
  5.  Be consistent in your slides by using the same format, location of content, wording using alt. text for simple explanations of relevant visual content.

 

AND…Yes, slides can still be fun and exciting by following best practices for students with special needs!! These tips help more students than you will realize.

This article will cover Accessibility text, for more information about other ways you can make your decks accessible please visit the Making your Self-Made Boom Decks Accessible Article.


TABLE OF CONTENTS


Using Alt Text (Alternative Text) / Accessibility Text


ALT text, also known as alternative text, or ALT attributes, are snippets of text that describe the content of an image or a sound. You should add ALT text to each image and sound in your deck to help with accessibility.


Your ALT text should offer a descriptive explanation of any required image or sound. It will be read by accessibility programs or screen readers, so it should accurately describe the image or sound to a person with impaired vision or is deaf/hard of hearing. If content that is necessary to understand the card is present in an image or a sound, it must be in the Alt text. Check out this video:



Adding Alt Text to your Deck


You can add A text to your images or sounds using the image/sound properties panel by clicking on "Accessibility Text." If there is missing text, a red "MISSING" message will appear. Once Accessibility Text is added this will no longer show. 


Missing Accessibility Text will also be called out in the Selectable List with red text, shown below. 



It is imperative that you do NOT leave the alt text blank. If you leave it blank, your deck will NOT be considered accessible, it will NOT be found in accessible-filtered searches, and it will NOT score as high in our search algorithms. We may guess and try to invent alt text if you leave it blank. If you do not want to provide a text equivalent for a sound/image, enter "none" in the "Accessibility Text" field.


NOTE: If you DO NOT WANT the screen reader or sound interpreter to read or display a text representation of your image or sound (b/c it is a background or decorative image/sound) that is NOT constructive to the learning content of the card, then enter "none" in the "Accessibility Text" field. 


Sounds


The Accessibility text for sounds is intended for learners who required auditory accommodations which can include but is not limited to learners who are deaf/hard of hearing, have auditory processing disorders, or are in an environment where they cannot listen to sounds. 


You can add alt text to your sounds using the Sound properties panel or the selectable list by clicking on "Accessibility Text."


If you added an image background to your sound, you should include accessibility text describing the image in the second line, shown below. The description for the image is only required if you have provided your own custom image.

Our Player allows student to enable "Sound to Text" in their sound settings.

 


When this is turned on the Accessibility text will display on the screen when the sound is played, shown below, allowing the student to understand the sound's content or it's context in the card. 



Without ALT text, Accessibility tools may skip the sound altogether or offer a notice to the user that no description is offered.


Images

Accessibility text for images that are required for user comprehension should be short snippets of text that describe the image in as few words as possible.


Here is an example of accessibility text entered into the Accessibility Text modal:



Here is another example with a more complex image with content that is necessary to understand the card:


Screen readers will read the ALT text of the image, allowing the student to understand the image's content or its context in the card. Without descriptive text, the program may skip the image altogether or offer a notice to the user that no description is offered.


Optional Accessibility Text

There are a few places where Accessibility text can be added but is not required. 


Card Accessibility text

The Card accessibility text can be used to describe flattened background images or offer a description of the general concept of the card to help explain to visually impaired learners what the Card is. 


If the card has a busy background image that can help give context to the card, the "card" accessibility text should describe the background image. 


Fill-In-The-Blank 

You can add Accessibility text to a Fill-in-the-Blank answer in the Fill-in-the-Blank Properties box, shown below. 

The best use of this optional field is to restate the question you want the student to type. But you can also use it to "describe" the part of the answer you are looking for.

For example: the alt text for an FiB could be, "What is the third planet from our sun called?" to restate a question. Or, in a math problem you might have 2 different FiBs with text: "What is the numerator?", "What is the denominator?"


Sound Background Image

If you added an image background to your sound, please include accessibility text describing the image in the second line, shown below. 



Adding Accessibility Text to Flattened Background Images

We have seen many users who have made portions of their cards on external platforms and added the image as the background image. The problem with that is that Background images cannot have accessibility text. 


To get around this you can use the optional Card Associability text to describe Background image as well as use empty Text elements including text boxes and buttons to "Circle" elements in the background image that requires accessibility text. 


Using Text Elements to add Accessibility Text


First you will need to drag over a new Text element to your card. A text element is any element in a Boom Card that supports Text including Text boxes and Buttons. 


Accessibility text can only be added to Blank Text Elements. This means you will need to remove the Template text, for Text boxes, you will need to remove "Click to edit text." and for Buttons you will need to remove "Button". So you are left with an empty box, shown below. 

Once the text element is empty, click away to unselect the element and click back on it and the Optional Accessibility Text will appear in the Text Properties box. 



In the example below the Number line is apart of the background image. We chose to use a Text Box to circle the Number line and add the accessibility text "A number line with 5, 10, blank, 20, and 25 listed" to give context for a visually impaired user. 


If you have elements in your Background image that you want to be selectable, you can use a Button to add accessibility text and have it marked as a correct/incorrect answer. 


Adding Accessibility Text to Your Decks from the Image and Sound Library

You can add Accessibility text directly from your Studio for your self-created or self-uploaded Sounds and Images by clicking edit details. 


The Accessibility text added from your Library will be applied to all NEW decks that use that sound or image file from here on out! If you want to add the accessibility text from your Library, you now can! 


By clicking the Import from Library button, you will be importing all accessibility text added in your image and sound Library to your deck! 




Please Note: If you have uploaded the same image or sound files multiple times... those have all been duplicated. Each file copy will refer to its own accessibility text.