Best Practice Configurations for Accessibility (A11y)

Designing courses with accessibility in mind helps ensure all learners can navigate, understand, and complete content effectively, regardless of ability, device, or learning preference. The following best practices focus on improving usability, clarity, and cognitive accessibility within Bridge courses.

Visual Accessibility and Display Settings

Where available, consider whether dark mode improves the learner experience. Dark mode can reduce eye strain and improve readability for learners with light sensitivity or those accessing content in low-light environments.

Best practice recommendations:

  • Ensure sufficient contrast between text, backgrounds, and interactive elements.
  • Avoid using colour alone to convey meaning.
  • Preview content in both light and dark modes to confirm readability and consistency.

Manage Course Length to Support Cognitive Accessibility

To support accessibility best practices and ensure an inclusive learning experience for all learners, course length should be carefully managed. Long or overly dense courses can increase cognitive load and make it harder for learners to maintain focus, navigate content, and return to specific information, particularly for learners with attention, memory, or information-processing challenges.

Keeping courses concise helps to:

  • Reduce cognitive overload for learners using screen readers or other assistive technologies
  • Improve focus and comprehension for neurodiverse learners
  • Make content easier to navigate for keyboard-only users
  • Support learners who need to pause, resume, or repeat sections

Best practice recommendations:

  • Aim to keep individual courses to around 20 slides or fewer wherever possible.
  • Bridge supports a maximum of 24 slides per course, which helps ensure content remains manageable and accessible.
  • If a topic requires more than 24 slides, split the content into multiple shorter, clearly titled courses or modules.
  • Design each course around a single learning objective to improve comprehension and recall.

Shorter, more focused courses are easier to navigate, easier to revisit, and more accessible for a wider range of learners, supporting both usability and WCAG-aligned accessibility standards.

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