Content can be presented using a variety of methods without losing information or structure

When building a site or course it is helpful to think of the process as having two design formats: visual and structural (often called programmable). Visual building includes adding an image, making text bold or italic, or styling a page. Structural building (programmable) is creating a foundation of online elements, so the site can easily relay information to all users regardless of ability such as alternative text for images, strong or emphasis tags to a screen reader, or creating page headers.

A sighted user may associate and form relationships through visual style elements - images to convey meaning, assignments that are due are marked in red, links are bolded and underlined. On the other end, a screen reader user will perceive structure and relationships through an audial process (by utilizing an assistive technology) starting at the top of the screen and working horizontally and vertically. This person hears new pages and sections based on the creation of heading tags, and will associate emphasis (such as red text) by a strong tag, and will create associations with alt text in place of an icon or image cue.

Building both visual and structural components to a site or course is essential to the delivery of an equal platform for learning. For example, imagine you have an image or icon of an alarm clock to signify that an assignment is due and you add alt text that says what the image is. Next, image someone covers up the image so you can not see it, would you be able to gain the same information by reading the alt text as you would by seeing the image? If you are using images to convey meaning, examples of alt text should describe the purpose of those images. The proper method for writing alt text of an alarm clock for example, would be to indicate the meaning associated with including this image, possibly assignment due!, or don’t forget!. Remember not to use alt text that describes the image (such as alarm clock) but to illustrate your intended purpose of using this image.It is important to build structural elements such as headers and alt text into web content as well as visual components like images so that content can be presented in different ways and the purpose and meaning of the content remains the same.

Guideline 1.3