Tips for Microsoft Word Document Accessibility

When creating documents to use for a class, it is important to consider its accessibility to all students.Some students may use assistive technologiesto access the document rather than just by sight, therefore the formatting of the document can be crucial for access for these students. Technologies to consider when creating documents may be screen readers, which read the layout and text to a user who is blind or visually impaired, and text-to-speech software, which reads just the text in a document. The most significant impact that the use of the listed assistive technologies make is that formatting (such as color and italics) are lost in the translation from text to audio, which may hinder your students’ ability to access course information.

Accessibility Checker: The Wonders of Built-in Tools

There is a wonderful built in tool to help walk you through making most all of these changes called “Check Accessibility”. This is a toolbar pane that shows which different parts of the document need work and ranks them as Errors, Warnings or Tips according to inaccessibility. Errors you must change to have your document be accessible, Warnings are things that should change to make even more accessible and Tips are for full accessibility. Keep an eye out for things the checker can’t catch, such as color contrast. To run Check Accessibility:

  • Select File, then “Inspect Document” which is the second option under “Info” on the right side.
  • Select “Check Accessibility” in the drop down menu, second option under “Inspect Document”.
  • The toolbar pane will appear on the right side of the screen.

Simple Changes to Improve Accessibility

  • Make sure that color and formatting are not the only means of conveying information.
  • Use Styles and Headings.Styles are listed under the Hometab, and can be applied by highlighting the text to label or change, then select the Style option to apply.
  • Use standard and sans serif fonts (Ariel, Verdana, or Calibri), preferably at 12point or larger.
  • Make your text with high color contrast (i.e. black and white, or dark navy and light grey).
  • Write alternative text for images, tables and equations. To do so right click on the image to get the drop down menu, and select the bottom most option “Format Picture’’. This will pop up a tool pane on the right side, select the icon that is third from the left. There will be arrows to expand the content beside each option, select Alt Text. In the title, put the title of the image, such as SAS Logo.In the description text box, put the more detailed description of the object. Anything typed in the text boxes will be automatically saved. There will be no change to the image, as long as the text is still there when you navigate back, it will be accessible to a screen reader.
  • Use bullet points or numbers for lists.
  • Only use tables for data or comparisons, not for formatting text.
  • Make hyperlinked text descriptive when other context is removed (i.e. avoid ‘click here’ instead say ‘accessibility web form’).
  • Place images in line with text rather than wrap text.Avoid using watermarks.

By using the Accessibility Checker and applying these tips, your documents will start out as accessible, enabling more users to access the information you created!

Student Accessibility Services

(617) 627-4539 Kristen Dabney, April 2017