When using audience polling systems such as Poll Everywhere, it is important to create an environment that engages all students in your classroom.
Poll Everywhere Accessibility Standards
Accessibility standards in Poll Everywhere can be found on the Poll Everywhere Accessibility Standards page.
Best Practices in Accessibility when Using Poll Everywhere
Read questions out loud and describe the image(s)
Reading the questions and results out loud will help students who have difficulty seeing the displayed screen.
Tell students the number of multiple-choice options they can choose from
To avoid students missing reading multiple-choice options, it is helpful to tell students the number of options they have. This will help students read the questions fully without setting up any unintended barriers.
Describe the images
While alt-text image feature is available in some frequently used question types, it is not available in question titles. As a general best practice, it is helpful to describe the images to your students if you have them in the questions.
Use Alt-text
Alt-text for images feature is available in multiple choice, ranking, and clickable image activity types. Adding a descriptive caption to the added images is highly recommended. Currently, instructors cannot add alt-text to an image if the image is in the title of the question.
Color contrast
The default color of multiple-choice bar display color is set as #003B5C, as of July 2025. While you can change this color as well as other text display colors in the question, please be mindful that the color you choose has enough contrast with the background color.
You can leverage free online color contrast checkers such as WebAIM to check if your colors have enough contrast to meet accessibility standards.
Display questions on students' devices
In Poll Everywhere, you have the option of whether to display the launched questions on students’ devices. Allowing questions to be displayed on the students’ devices will improve accessibility.
OSU Digital Accessibility Community
Do you have questions about creating accessible course materials? Join the OSU Digital Accessibility Community Microsoft Team. This Team is a space for OSU faculty, staff and students to share resources and build community around digital accessibility, and is supported by UIT-Academic Technologies, Equal Opportunity and Access, Disability Access Services, Center for Teaching and Learning, and Ecampus. Share your questions or knowledge about accessibility in documents, images or video, and get support from the community.
To join the community from a computer:
- Open Microsoft Teams and click Teams (left navigation menu) > All Teams
- Click the “Join or create team” button in the upper right corner
- Select the OSU Digital Accessibility Team and click Join
Need help with Microsoft Teams? Contact the OSU Service Desk.