- [Instructor] As you create digital learning content

or build a course, consider whether or not

the color choices you've made will help make your content

easy for your students to read.

In this video, we'll take a look

at options for color contrast

and how to effectively emphasize text.

The use of good color contrast makes text easier to see.

When considering contrast, compare the background color

with the text color.

A poor contrast between the two can make the content

difficult to read.

But pairing a dark color and a light color often works well.

For example, this document has a white background,

so I'll use the default font color, black, to type text.

But I could also use another color,

such as dark purple, or perhaps brown.

There's many colors that provide great contrast

against a white background, but I'll stick with the default

to make the document appear professional.

Let's see how this works in a presentation.

This slide has a dark background, but the text is also dark.

These colors don't provide very good contrast,

so I'll change the font color to white.

Difficulties can also arise when a pattern or gradient

is used as a background.

Ideally, the background should be a solid color.

It's important to note that some people have

Color Vision Deficiency, or color blindness,

which affects how they perceive color.

To them, red, green, or blue may appear muted

or appear as another color altogether,

so we'll need to avoid certain color combinations

such as red and black, green and black,

green and blue, or red and green.

We'll also make sure that we haven't used color alone

to convey meaning such as emphasis.

In my document, there's an important sentence

that I want to make sure stands out,

so I'll format it in red, but I'll also need to make it

stand out in a way that doesn't rely on the red.

So I'll also apply the bold font variation.

There we go.

One last thing I'll check for is whether or not

large amounts of text have been underlined.

Underlining is usually reserved for hyperlinks,

and we'll also want to make sure that bold and italics

are used sparingly.

So I'll have this block of text stand out

by highlighting it and adjusting the margins a bit.

That looks good.

Taking a few minutes to make sure

you've made accessible color selections

will help ensure that color won't be a barrier

for anyone reading your content.