Adding Text and Titles
Elements are the building blocks of a site. All of your text, pictures, videos and other great content (aside from a few exceptions like header images, which we’ll cover later) are added via elements. Let’s take a look at some of these elements to get the hang of how they work.
Using Titles and Text elements properly is VERY important for accessibility reasons. Within People.ua.edu, the "Title" element is used for titles and headings. Screen Reader users skim the page to get an overall impression of a page's content and can jump from heading to heading. Users can hear an outline of the page's main ideas, then backtrack to read the parts they are most interested in. The main drawback to this technique is that too many pages lack titles. Without headings, this method of skimming through content is completely useless.
Authors should organize content with headings (titles). To the extent possible, the headings should represent an accurate outline of the content.
Authors should organize content with headings (titles). To the extent possible, the headings should represent an accurate outline of the content.
Adding an element to a site is as simple as clicking on that element and dragging it to the content area of a page. Let's drag the most basic element -- the Text element -- to this sample site.
The text element is exactly what it sounds like: an element for writing text. Click inside the element to start writing. You can also add a title using the Title element. Remember to keep titles and text separate for accessibility compliance.
You can write a word, a sentence, or multiple paragraphs in a single element.
As you write, take note of the black toolbar at the top of each element. This toolbar allows basic changes to the formatting of your text. It works much like any other such toolbar normally works: select the text you want to change and click the appropriate button to make that change.
From left to right, you can bold your text, italicize it, underline it, make it bigger, make it smaller, change the color, create a link, adjust the alignment of all text within the element, create bulleted and numbered lists, and remove formatting.
You may notice that one thing you cannot do is change the font family to a different style. That particular setting is controlled elsewhere by the site administrator in the Center for Instructional Technology.
To add more text to the page we could continue writing in this same element, or drag on another paragraph element.
Do not use text formatting, such as font size or bolding of text to give the visual appearance of headings - use actual titles for all content headings. Assistive technologies and other browsers rely upon the literal markup of the page to determine structure. Items that are bolded or display in a bigger font are not interpreted to be structural elements.
Likewise, do not use titles to achieve visual results only. For instance, if you want to highlight or emphasize an element within your content that is not a heading, do not use the title element to achieve the visual appearance you want. Instead, change the text by making it bold, increasing the size slightly, or italicize it.
You may notice that one thing you cannot do is change the font family to a different style. That particular setting is controlled elsewhere by the site administrator in the Center for Instructional Technology.
To add more text to the page we could continue writing in this same element, or drag on another paragraph element.
Do not use text formatting, such as font size or bolding of text to give the visual appearance of headings - use actual titles for all content headings. Assistive technologies and other browsers rely upon the literal markup of the page to determine structure. Items that are bolded or display in a bigger font are not interpreted to be structural elements.
Likewise, do not use titles to achieve visual results only. For instance, if you want to highlight or emphasize an element within your content that is not a heading, do not use the title element to achieve the visual appearance you want. Instead, change the text by making it bold, increasing the size slightly, or italicize it.
Adding text is easy enough, but how do you add images? Let's look at the next section, Adding Pictures to a Site, and find out.