LibGuides Accessibility

Text should be properly formatted

The built-in Rich Text Editor should be used to format and style text. You must also remove the formatting of text copy and pasted from other sources to avoid confusing assistive technologies.

Font, size, and color

The default guide font is Open Sans and should not be changed. This is a "sans serif" font which are considered best practice for accessibility. There should only one font should be used on a guide (do not mix fonts).

The default "Normal" (non-heading level) font size is 14px. Do not use anything smaller than 14px. If using a larger font size to organize text into sections, use paragraph formats (headings) instead.

Avoid using special colors and don't use color to indicate meaning. Any additional colors used should be consistent with the UC Irvine Brand Color Palette.

Styling best practices

• Use emphasis, bolding and italicizing, sparingly.
• Don't use all caps for emphasis. This can cause difficulty for users of screen readers.
• Don't use underlines for emphasis. Users will think an underline is a hyperlink.
• Don't use color for emphasis. 

Copying & pasting text

Content copied from Word or other websites often adds extra HTML formatting tags, which can confuse and cause strange behavior for assistive technology, such as screen readers, while also making it difficult for you to style the text yourself.

There are two ways to avoid this:

1. Paste as plain text (no formatting)
   • This will strip out all of the copied formatting, leaving only the text. You can then apply your own formatting using the Rich Text Editor.
   • In Chrome, Edge, or Firefox: press Ctrl + Shift + V (Windows) or Cmd + Shift + V (Mac).
   • In Safari, press Cmd + Option + Shift + V.
2. Use the "Remove Format" button
   • After pasting text with formatting, select (highlight) the text and use the Remove Format button (appears as an italic letter T followed by a subscript letter X) to clear the text's formatting and return it to its default formatting.