Accessibility – Alternative formats

Alternative formats refer to a non-traditional way to access and consume information – other than by standard text or standard presentation. Providing options for access just makes sense, because it increases your audience by making information usable by more people.  

Reasons to provide alternative formats 

There are many reasons to have alternative formats of digital resources for consumers: 

• Alternative formats are ways of presenting printed, written, and visual material so people who do not read or see print can access it.  
• People who do not read print might be blind or visually impaired, have a learning disability that affects reading, have a physical disability with the inability to hold or turn pages, or be an auditory learner.   
• Alternative formats provide a greater opportunity for everyone to access information in the way they need or want it. 

Alternative formats are oftentimes provided as accommodations for students or others who may have disabilities which prevent them from fully accessing information. Keep in mind that alternative formats as accommodations must be provided to requesters at the same time the original format is provided to the rest of the class or group.

Common alternatives 

• Large print (size 16 point or greater) 
• Braille (printed tactile documents) 
• Captioning, transcripts, and audio description for multimedia (audio and video) 
• Translated version 
• Electronic resources/ePublications, and word processing files with accessible content (tagged PDFs and HTML)