Accessibility guidelines for talks ¶

The Django Software Foundation (DSF) is committed to fostering an inclusive and accessible community, project, and ecosystem. You can read more about our commitment to accessibility in our Accessibility Statement. As part of this commitment, we want to encourage speakers at DSF-sponsored events to make their talks as accessible as possible. This document provides accessibility guidelines for speakers planning to give a talk or presentation at a Django event, such as DjangoCon.

Our guidelines ¶

Check your color contrast ¶

Ensure that there is high contrast between your background and foreground colors, avoiding color combinations that may be difficult to see for those with color blindness. There are a lot of online color contrast checkers you can use for this; we recommend whocanuse. You just input the hex codes of your colors, and it'll tell you the contrast ratio between them, as well as how people with different types of color blindness will see the colors.

Use dark text on a light background ¶

A light background with dark text is easiest to read. Projection screens are usually white, and can cause colors to look very different than in your computer screen. This will depend on the specific screen: the same colors might look very different in different projector screens. It's important to remember that colors that worked well in one projector screen might not work as well in another one.

This also applies to code blocks -- "light mode" code will tend to look better on a white projector screen. You should also make sure the syntax highlighting theme you use has high contrast as well. If your talk requires live coding or using the terminal, make sure your editor or terminal settings are readable. Dark text on a light background (high contrast) with a large font is best.

Use large font sizes and appropriate fonts ¶

Make text as large as possible, considering that everyone in the audience needs to be able to read it (including the people at the very back of the room). There is no one-size-fits-all ideal font size, as this will depend on the room where you're giving your talk. For example, if the room is very long and narrow, you'll need to use a larger font size than if the room is a small classroom. Be mindful of the space where you're giving the talk and adjust the font size as needed. If you have a lot of text that's preventing you from making the font larger, consider breaking it up into multiple slides. Choose fonts with adequate spacing between letters, and avoid thin or cursive fonts.

Optimize slides for readability ¶

Minimal slides are best and allow you to use larger font sizes. Avoid large walls of text and long lists of bullets; you can always add more details in your speaker notes if you need to. Try to leave the bottom 25% of your slides free of text to ensure nothing is obscured by other attendees' heads.

Avoid flashing visuals ¶

Avoid flashing visuals such as flashing videos or animations, as these may have negative effects for people with seizure disorders, migraines, or attention deficit disorder (ADD) / attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Describe images and other media ¶

Generally describe graphs, images, and other information for the audience. An example: instead of saying "here's a graph showing performance improvements with our new async code", say "here's a line graph showing our average response time that decreased from 450 milliseconds to 150 milliseconds after adding our new async code". Your talk should not depend on images or media being visible in order to be understood.

Other resources ¶

Below are some other resources that contain information about organizing and/or speaking at more accessible and inclusive events, in no particular order:

• The W3C checklist for making events accessible has insightful information both for organizers and speakers. For speakers, this includes information relating to planning your talk and slides , as well as things to keep in mind during your talk.
• The Less Obvious Conference Checklist contains a very thorough list of things that might be "less obvious" but that conference organizers should keep in mind to ensure an accessible and inclusive event.
• The DjangoCon US Accessibility & Inclusion Checklist is a very useful resource for any people organizing a DjangoCon or other Django events.

Thanks to the DjangoCon US Organizing Team for their amazing speaker resources, which helped write a large part of these guidelines!