LibGuides Best Practices
To reach our patrons most effectively, best practices are listed throughout this guide for you to follow as a LibGuide creator.
Make your guides accessible
Making your guides accessible ensures that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the internet, as well as contribute to it. It is essential we make our guides accessible to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities.
- Use alt-text to describe photos and videos. LibGuides has a place for this when you add images and media. This is for screen readers. Screen readers are software applications that enable people with visual impairments to use a computer through a text to speech feature, or by translating text into braille. Including alt-text enables a screen reader to read a description of your images to it's users.
- Include link information below the link. Don’t show the information in a “hover” option, this is unreadable to screen readers.
- Caption videos. This is required for accessibility for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Captioning also increases comprehension, especially if English is someone's second language.
- YouTube offers an automatic caption service, unfortunately it is not always accurate. Here are several instructions for how to create your own YouTube captions:
- Avoid relying on color to convey meaning. (i.e. green for good, red for bad.) Colorblind users may not be able to see the color difference and interpret your signal.
Additional Resources
- Springshare's Best Practices for Creating LibGuidesBest practices from the creators of LibGuides themselves.
- Getting Started With LibGuidesAdditional best practices and instructions in a LibGuide from the University of Illinois.
- Really Really Ridiculously Good-Looking: Best Practices for Creating LibGuides by Meghan DamourThis chapter greatly informed the guide you're viewing and contains many excellent suggestions for how to create quality LibGuides.
