What Makes a Word Document Accessible?
A document is accessible if it has been designed and structured to be used by people who use assisted technology. Assistive technology devices and software allow people to interact with and access documents effectively if they are accessible. These instructions focus on improving accessibility for people using screen readers or other assistive technology.
Document Styles and Structured Formatting
A Style is a set of predetermined formatting characteristics for text in a document. This includes font type, font size, spacing, indentation, borders, bullets or numbers for lists, color, etc. Word offers several styles to “mark up” titles, headings, subheadings, paragraphs, numbered and bulleted lists and much more. You can modify these built-in styles or make your own.
- Open your Word document and go to the Home Tab.
- Windows users: locate the "Styles" Group and from lower right corner of the Styles Group, click the Styles Task Pane launcher button.
- Mac users: Locate the Styles pane and select it.
- The Styles Task Pane will display on your Screen. By default, this Styles pane will list some styles but not all.
- Windows users: To open All Styles, click the Options link on the Styles Task Pane. The Style Pane Options window displays. Under "Select Styles to Show" select the drop-down button and choose "All Styles". Click OK button to save options.
- Mac users: On the Styles pane, select “All Styles” from List drop down menu.
- Back on the Styles Task Pane you will be able to scroll through all available styles in Word. Styles include Headings, Lists, Paragraph, and other formatting. To modify a style, click on the drop-down arrow to the right of Style name and select Modify. The Modify Style window will appear; you can change the formatting from this window. You may wish to preset fonts and formatting for your styles when you start your document.
- Select the text in your document or click in front or behind the text that you wish to apply a heading style.
- From the styles task pane, click on the style you want to apply to that text. In this example, I have highlighted the document's main title and selected Heading 1 style from the Style pane. The text will have the style applied.
- You can verify that your content has the Heading applied by clicking next to the text and see the style menu. The style that was applied to your content, will be highlighted in the Styles menu.
- Use the navigation pane to review all headings currently in the document. If something is missing go back to the section of text and reapply styles as needed.
- To open the navigation pane: Click the View Tab (view menu on Mac) and select "view navigation pane" from options.
- To modify a style, click on the drop-down arrow to the right of Style name and select Modify. The Modify Style window will appear; you can change the formatting from this window.
Note: Heading 1 is reserved exclusively for the title of your document and should only be used 1x (once). Subsequent mentions of the title should be in Normal or Body text as these do not need to be identified as headings.
Spacing & Indents
Adding unnecessary carriage returns to create blank spaces between lines of text, paragraphs, or pages, or adding unnecessary spaces to indent lines of text negatively affects accessibility. These "invisible" formatting choices will be interpreted by assistive technologies as meaningful, and be read aloud to the person using the assistive device as "blank."
Instead, use the native (i.e., built-in) formatting functions available in Word when spacing, indenting, or creating page breaks. To begin, enable paragraph markers by pressing CTRL + * (on PC) or select the P icon from the menu options; this will also show other hidden formatting symbols. Enable the page ruler under View > Show > Ruler.
Common functions:
- Rather than tabbing to indent a paragraph, use the First line indent marker to move the first line of the paragraph to the right 0.5" from the margin; use the left indent marker to move succeeding lines of text.
- Use the increase/decrease indent options to change the size of the indent, for example for changing the indentation for alpha/numeric or bulleted lists
- To start a new page (when text is not continuing from the previous page), enter a page break after the final character on the page preceding the break: Insert > Pages > Page break
- Use the increase/decrease spacing option to adjust spacing between lines of text, for example to double space the title of your work. You can also use this option to change the spacing before and after paragraphs
Creating Figures and Tables
Figures include images, charts, graphs, and any other visual element embedded in your document. Best practices for setting up Tables and Figures are available through the APA Style webpage:
Part of creating an accessible figure or table includes choosing high contrast colors, and using line styles to further differentiate data (example below). The APA Style webpage provides guidelines for the Accessible Use of Color in Figures.
Alternate Text for Figures
Figures, including images, charts, graphs, logos, and any other visual content, need an Alternative Text description so that individuals using a screen reader can detect the figure and understand its purpose in the document. Alt Text descriptions should be concise and provides contextual information about the image (example: who, what, when, where). To add alternative text in a word document:
- Locate image on your document and right click on image (ctrl + click on Mac)
- Depending on the type of image you have selected choose to "format picture” or "format object"
- A Format panel will display to the right of you document.
- Select the "Layout and Properties" icon/tab and expand the "Alt Text" area.
- Type in your alternative text description into the Description box. If you see existing image file name information in the description field, please delete that information and replace it with a new description. The Description field is the only field that assistive devices use to obtain the descriptive information to read aloud to users. You can enter a title or leave it blank.
- Do not start your alternative text description with "image of". Screen readers will already announce that it is an image followed by your alt text description.
- Once you have entered your alt text, click outside of the alt text area and continue to edit your document and/or use the File > Save as option to save changes. There is no "apply" button in the alt text area; once you enter an alternative text description it is saved on the image.
Please see WebAIM's Alternative Text webpage for more information on creating alt text, especially for complex figures.
Run the Accessibility Checker in Word
When you have completed your document, run the Accessibility checker. The checker will provide a summary of the issues found and categorizes these as "issues", "warnings" or "tips" along with recommendations about how to fix the issue.
- Windows Users: Locate the Accessibility Checker from the File tab in the Info group under the Check for Issues option.
- Mac Users: Select the Review tab and click Check Accessibility.
A common problem is the prevalence of blank characters. Rather than pressing the Enter key to move to a new page, insert a page break to continue your text on the following page. If you do need to include customized spacing between paragraphs in your document, press CTRL+Shift+Enter to add blank lines to your document. While these may still come up as issues in the Accessibility report, screen readers will actually ignore those blank lines. Adding customized space by pressing Enter alone will prompt a screen reader or assistive device to verbally read "blank" for every unnecessary paragraph break.
Additional information
For more detailed instructions and explanations please see the following resources:
