Poster guidance

Virtual posters will be displayed on digital screens at the venue. They will also be displayed in an online gallery, which will be available for registered attendees to view for 12 weeks after the conference/event has taken place.

• The orientation should be landscape (not portrait).
• Slide size should be widescreen (16:9) for the digital screens (and not standard 4:3).
• The top line(s) should give the title of your abstract. The next line(s) should indicate the author(s) and their affiliations. Continue with the introduction, methods, results and discussion as appropriate. The poster should end with conclusions.
• You can add illustrations, drawings, photographs and text.
• The poster should also include declaration of interest, statement of any funding, either ethics approval or approval as audit, if appropriate.
• Prepare your poster as above, and email the document in the requested file format to the team managing the event.

Posters can be attached to posterboards, and velcro fixings or other hanging methods will be provided.

• The orientation should be portrait (not landscape).
• For events hosted at 21 Prescot Street, London, E1 8BB, the size of the poster boards are 89x180cm (35x71 inches) - this is the maximum size available, and your physical poster can be smaller than this. For events hosted at an external venue, the event team will specify the dimensions required for your physical poster.
• The top line(s) should give the title of your abstract. The next line(s) should indicate the author(s) and their affiliations. Continue with the introduction, methods, results and discussion as appropriate. The poster should end with conclusions.
• You can include illustrations, drawings, photographs and text.
• The poster should also include declaration of interest; statement of any funding; either ethics approval or approval as audit, if appropriate.
• Prepare your poster as above, and bring it along with you on the day of the event.

Things you should do

• Remember that accessibility requirements can be long-term, temporary, or situational.
• Use headings on your page in a structured way, so similar level headings (in size/importance) should all be using the same underlying style.
• Add alternative text ('alt text') for images that contain useful information. For charts and graphs, you may need to use more description to convey what is in the image.
• Improve contrast by always using light text against a dark background, or dark text against a light background. Another time to consider this is when you're putting text on top of a photo/image.
• Use meaningful link text to clearly describe a link's destination. This helps everyone understand the destination before clicking, and is particular important for those using screen readers.

Things you shouldn't do

• Assume that everyone will be accessing your poster the same way you do. E.g. some users will:
  1. use assistive devices (such as screen reading devices),
  2. not be able to see images,
  3. use a keyboard to navigate rather than a mouse, or
  4. will be tapping on a touch screen device rather than clicking with a mouse.
• Include lots of important text as part of an image.
• Add 'alt text' to decorative images that do not contain useful information.
• Using light text against a light background, or dark text against a dark background.
• Use link text such as 'click here' or 'read more' (this is unhelpful for people using screen readers).

It's important to have a good contrast between the colour of your text and the background colour of your poster. This especially improves accessibility for people with visual access needs such as colour vision deficiencies/colour-blindness, but also helps with readability in general.

White on black and black on white provide the most contrast, but in general, light colour text should be used on a dark background, and vice versa. This can also vary based on the size of the text too, greater contrast is needed for smaller text. Also, avoid using similar shades of colour with your text and background, such as light blue text on a dark blue background.

There are a number of free tools online that can help you determine if a specific combination of colours is acceptable, such as AccessibleWeb Contrast Checker.

Another time to consider contrast is when putting text on top of an image or photo. Again, you'll want to use a dark area where you can place your light text, and vice versa.

'Alt text' is displayed or read aloud when an image fails to load or the user is using a non-graphical browser. The user may be using a screen reader, or they may have disabled images to save bandwidth.

In general:

• All images that convey useful information to the user should have alt text that concisely describes the image's content.
• Images used purely for aesthetic reasons that don't contain important information - are considered 'decorative' and should not have alt text.

Alt text should generally not be longer than a sentence or two. Extremely complex images, graphs and charts, may require more detail and information to convey their message.

Newer versions of PowerPoint do contain accessibility features and have options to add alt text to an image, which you can manually input, or ask it to generate it on your behalf. Be mindful of using AI generated alt text for images, as it may not convey exactly what your image is. It is always better to manually add alt text.

Headings

Using headings can make large amounts of text both easier to read and more accessible - they allow users to quickly navigate to specific information on your poster. Structure your headings by being consistent and using the same underlying styling for headings of the same importance. E.g. 'Introduction', 'Results', 'Conclusions' heading should use the same font and size, and if you make one of them bold, make all of them bold.

Font

For font style, there is no single best 'most accessible' font, although we'd recommend using a clean, widely available sans-serif font such as Ariel, Calibri, Verdana, as these work best for digital readability as they have simple and open letterforms.

Avoid using fonts that are decorative or heavy hairline fonts, as these can make it difficult for users with low vision or dyslexia to read your poster content.

A screen reader is an assistive technology tool that converts digital on-screen text, menus, and images into synthesised speech or refreshable braille output.

When creating a digital poster, or any digital content, it is always important to consider how a screen reader will navigate and interpret your content. Where you position your text box, if you use alt text for an image or chart (or don't), will all be read by a screen reader, and you can assist with this when creating your digital content.

If you're using Microsoft Office's PowerPoint to design your poster, the software has a built-in accessibility tool that'll help you make your content more accessible. This feature will also help you when it comes to assisting how a screen reader will read your content and in which order.

You can toggle the accessibility tool on the ribbon by selecting the option 'review' from the ribbon, and selecting the 'check accessibility' button. This will add the accessibility tab on your ribbon and it will automatically move to that tab. You'll find a button title 'reading order pane' which will list the reading order of your content. Then you can adjust this so that your content reads in the appropriate order. This will also flag if any of your images or charts/graphs are missing any alt text.

Below is an example of a poster with accessibility in mind, and the same poster that hasn't considered accessibility. Take a look at both posters and see the difference for yourself. 

• Poster with accessibility in mind.
• Poster that hasn't considered accessibility.

Were you able to identify the issues in the poster that hadn't considered accessibility? These issues were:

1. Contrast issues - title text was light blue on a dark blue background, the 'Results' and 'Method' text boxes had light text on a light background (for orange/yellow backgrounds, you should be using dark text colour), and the chart text colour was white which is also not ideal again the orange background.
2. Headings - there is no consistency across the heading titles as they all have different fonts, sizes, and some are bold and others aren't.
3. Font - Not only is there no consistency used across the whole poster in regards to the chosen font, certain font styles such as the title are quite ineligible and would be difficult for some users to read. In the 'Conclusions' text box, there is far too much text and it is far too small which would be difficult to read.
4. Alt text - this isn't fairly obvious unless you have a screen reader, but no alt text has been included in the chart image.

Hopefully, this has helped you to consider making your content accessible for all users. 

Do check out below our brief video tutorial on how to check if your content on PowerPoint is accessible.