Tips for accessibility in Microsoft Word.
Once you have an accessible document set up in Word, it's time to make the PDF! While this seems simple enough, it's still important to do it the correct way, or the final PDF may lose all of that accessibility information.
Microsoft Word has a built-in accessibility checker to help you make sure the documents you create meet accessibility guidelines. While no automated checker will catch everything, this is a simple and convenient way to keep accessibility in mind as you work. Checking accessibility as you work To keep the accessibility checker running so it can [...]
My presentation for this year's Professional Development Day on accessibility basics, including an overview of recent Title II changes, an NVDA screen reader demo, and how and why to properly set up alt text, headings, descriptive links, and other accessibility basics.
When adding links in documents that will be distributed electronically, the addresses (URLs) should be linked (clickable) and embedded with descriptive text instead of presented 'bare' (exposing the full URL).
Alternative text descriptions, often abbreviated as “alt text”, describe the content or purpose of an image so that users with visual disabilities can still understand the purpose of the image. Alt text can be very simple or quite complex, depending on the image and how it is being used.
Word is usually able to recognize when a list is being created and will automatically add the list formatting, but there may be times when this automatic formatting does not work properly. Be sure to check your lists to make sure they have been properly formatted.
Sighted users use visual clues such as text size, color, style, and font choice to recognize section headers in a document. Assistive technology users are also able to use section headers to navigate through a document, but only if the section headers have been set properly.
