Creating Accessible Word Documents

Overview

This page will cover making accessible Microsoft Word documents and how to use the MS Word Accessibility Checker.

You have a choice as to how to engage with the material in this lesson. Remember, the key concepts are always addressed in the text. If you need more info or learn by watching, the videos and resources are great supplements.

• Read About It
• Watch a Demo / Video
• Explore Resources on the Web

Read: Making Accessible Documents

Use the Latest Version of MS Office

It is very important that you always use the latest version of MS Office. If you are using a pre-2019 version of MS Office in your work computer, contact your IT help desk (UWB faculty contact uwbit@uw.edu) to upgrade to the latest version.

You can also upgrade your home computer for free using the Microsoft Office for Desktop option for faculty and staff. You have to sign in using your UW credentials to access your UW Microsoft account.

Use Heading Styles

Sighted viewers can scan a page and use visual cues like larger or bold text to find the section of a document that they want to read. However, for someone using a screen reader, these visual markups are useless $-$leaving them to navigate word by word from the start of the document or webpage until they find the section they want.

Using styles and headings will allow a screen reader to navigate from section to section, making for a more convenient experience for the user. Styles are located in the Home ribbon. You can select the style from the ribbon or can open the Styles Pane to see all the available styles on the side of the document.

Best practices for accessible Word documents:

1. Highlight document title, select Heading 1
2. Highlight section titles, select Heading 2
3. Highlight subsection titles, select Heading 3

If you need to change the default style in a document, right-click on the style and select Modify to open formatting options and apply them to the whole document.

Alt Text

Features in Office 2019 or Later

To mark an image as decorative in Office 2019 or later, check the small box in the Alt Text panel.

Another feature is machine-generated alt text. While this is an intriguing option, please remember that the alt text should provide brief description and function in its context, under 150 characters. Machine generated alt text is rarely accurate or appropriate.

Add Alt Text to Images in MS Word

Newer versions of MS Word have only one field to add alt text. Follow these steps:

1. Right click on the image.
2. Select Edit Alt Text...
3. Click on the Description field and type the meaning of the image in this context.
   If the image is purely decorative (does not convey any meaning) and you want a screen reader to skip over it, make sure to check the box to mark it as decorative.
   
   
   

   Alt Text Tips

   If the image contains numbers, acronyms or text, they should be included and spelled out with correct punctuation and grammar. For example:

   • "32" should be written as "thirty-two"
   • "UW" should be written as "University of Washington"
   • Image with the words, "Pay Attention", should also have them in the alt text.

   Check an Image for Alt Text

   When alt text is added to an image you will not see it. To check if an image has alt text follow the steps for adding alt text. If alt text is present it will be viewable in the description pane. From there you can edit it as needed.

   Use Formatted Lists

   Use bulleted or numbered lists by using Word's formatting tools (not by typing the numbers or dashes yourself). Using the list formatting tool allows assistive technology to determine the length of the list and the reader can understand how the content is organized and how many items are on the list.

   

   Format Tables Appropriately

   By default, assistive technology will read a table from left to right starting at the top. The relationship between the cells is not defined if it is not formatted correctly. Use MS Word's Table Tools editor to identify the different types of rows and columns.

   To create an accessible table

   Add a caption for your table

   • Right-click the four-arrow cursor
   • Select Insert Caption...
   • Enter the caption text and choose positioning (above or below table) if needed
   • Select the OK button. You'll be able to edit the text and font rignt after if needed.

   Set the header row

   • Highlight the row that includes the category titles.
   • With the table selected, go to the Table Design tab to check the Header Row box and if the first row also contains headers, then check the First Column box
   • Right-click the row and select Table Properties (you can also access the table properties from the Layout tab when the table is selected).
   • Click the Row tab, and check the checkbox that says “Repeat as header row at the top of each page” (unselect "Allow row to break across pages").

The capture in this section demonstrates how to add a table caption and set the table header following the instructions listed.

Spacing/Layout

Many people will use the tab key, space bar, and blank lines or text boxes to move text around and have it display just as they'd like. However, using these tools to format a document may cause accessibility problems. We'll look at some things to consider.

Columns

If you want to make columns, format as columns. Do not put text on one line and use the tab key to move it over (a screen reader will read it one full line at a time, not as columns).

The option is located under the Layout tab on the ribbon. To use, first select the content, then from the Columns drop-down options choose the number of columns you would like to use and Voilà! The video capture shown in this section demonstrates using the Column feature in a simple text example.

If you have other content in the same document that does not need to be in columns, you will need to add  a Section Break before and after the columns. The following LinkedIn Learning videos will walk you through adding breaks and creating columns in Microsoft Word. Please use this link to log in using your UW credentials Links to an external site. and then go to the video links provided on this page.

• Use page and section breaks to organize a document Links to an external site.

• Make Columns Links to an external site.

Extra Spaces

If there are a series of spaces in a document, someone may assume they've reached the end of a document (and it becomes a formatting nightmare if you add more text or change the font size). To avoid this, use the page break tool if you're trying to keep content on one page and use the increase and decrease indent tools to scoot text over (rather than tabbing or using multiple spaces).

The video in this section shows how to indent and outdent text by using the option in the Paragraph section on the Home ribbon  after selecting lines of a list or the start of a paragraph. Indenting works the same whether you are using lists or not.
Do this instead of tabbing content.

Extra spaces (white space) between paragraphs should be added by editing the Line Spacing Options or the Normal style in the Home ribbon.

Adding Paragraph Spacing in Word

Many people will use blank lines to create spaces between text. As we've already mentioned, it's better to avoid creating blank spaces when you can.

In MS Office you can adjust the paragraph spacing to increase or decrease the amount of space between paragraphs or between elements. You can also set the spacing for the different heading levels (for headings, we suggest adding 12-18 pt before to help create space between a heading and the previous section's body text). 

To add or subtract paragraph space, select the text and navigate to the Home tab. Click on the  the Line and Paragraph Spacing icon on the Ribbon and select "Line spacing options". A pop up will appear and you can designate more or less space to fall before or after the text. In this example capture, I added 6 pts of spacing after the first line to separate it from the image.

Document Properties

One last, quick step is to go into the document properties (File > Properties > Summary) and fill out the title, author, subject (short description), keywords, language, and copyright status. This allows users to have a bit of information about the document without needing to open it. For someone using assistive technology, this can help limit the necessity of opening a document in order to determine if it's the one they're looking for.

The Accessibility Checker

This is a great tool to check your document for accessibility issues. Do not rely on this as a crutch - it will not catch everything. Also, this checker only works on docs saved as .docx. 

PC and Mac Users (2016, 2019+ and Office 365)

1. In Word, select the Review tab.
2. Select Check Accessibility.
3. Any errors or warnings will appear in a panel to the right of the document. 
4. Click on the error or warning. The Additional Information box will explain why this is a problem and how to fix the problem. Yippee!
   
   
   
   

• Any errors or warnings will appear in a panel to the right of the document.
• Click on the error or warning. The area below the Inspection Results box will explain why this is a problem and how to fix it.

Watch: MS Word Demos

Explore: Web Guides for MS Word Accessibility