Word accessibility guide

1. Use the built-in accessibility assistant
2. Use headings correctly
3. Make the right choices for your text
4. Use the built-in content list
5. Add alt text, or mark images decorative
6. Keep your tables simple
7. Check the colour contrast and colour use
8. Don’t clutter the layout
9. Clearly and uniquely identify your links

1. Use the built-in accessibility assistant

This tool is a built-in algorithm that checks your work against digital accessibility standards. You can turn this on, and have it alert you to common accessibility issues that arise while you are working – or you can run it once you are done, to find anything you may have missed.

The checker can be found in the navigation ribbon under ‘Review’ > ‘Check Accessibility’. From the five options in the drop-down menu, select ‘Check Accessibility’ and it will run an automatic check for you.

The results of this check will open in the Accessibility Assistant pane usually to the right-hand side of the screen. It will list any issues it finds, such as missing alt text, poor colour contrast, and missing titles and headings. All you need to do is select each issue and follow the instructions provided to fix it.

This checker is not perfect, though, so you should always do a manual check of your document as well.

We encourage you to use this every time you create a document, as default.

Microsoft Support: Improve accessibility in your documents with the Accessibility Assistant

Microsoft Support: Make your Word documents accessible to people with disabilities

2. Use headings correctly

When created correctly the headings in a Word document will help a screen reader (or other assistive technology) user navigate the document more easily.

To do this, you should use the built-in Styles for your headings, as these are already correctly formatted for assistive technologies to use. You will find these in the navigation ribbon under ‘Home’ > ‘Styles’.

You should use them in a logical manner, (heading 1, heading 2, heading 3…) without skipping any levels. You can change the point size of the headings once you have set the style, if you wish to.

Headings used correctly will read like:

• Heading 1
  • Heading 2
    • Heading 3
  • Heading 2
    • Heading 3
    • Heading 3

Bad headings will read like:

• Heading 2
• Heading 1
• Heading 3
• Heading 5
• Heading 2
• Heading 4

Microsoft Support: Add a heading in a Word document

3. Make the right choices for your text

A Word document is typically going to be read on a computer or tablet screen, or in print. People reading the document digitally will be able to make changes for their personal preferences, but those reading a print version will not. So, you will need to aim for the accessibility basics:

• Body text should be 12pt or larger
• Body text should be in a Sans Serif typeface, preferably a common one like, Arial, Calibri, or Verdana
• Avoid Serif, Script, and Decorative fonts, as these are hard for many readers to access
• Always align your main text content to the left, as this will avoid common issues for dyslexic readers
• Avoid using bold and italics too much, you should use these only to emphasise specific words or short phrases
• Avoid using ALL CAPS and Strikethrough (Strikethrough), as these are very hard to read
• Avoid using Underline, as underlines are used to identify links
• Set the line spacing to 1.5, and the paragraph spacing to 2, this will allow for enough space between lines and paragraphs to aid readability

Additionally, don’t use images of text, as doing this renders the text inaccessible for assistive technology users.

Microsoft Support: Format your Word document

4. Use the built-in content list

Long documents (typically, documents longer than 3 or 5 pages, or that contain multiple distinct sections and sub-sections) will always need a content list to aid navigation, and not only for assistive technology users!

If you have correctly used the Styles for your headings, a content page can be created automatically by going to the navigation ribbon and opening ‘References’ > ‘Table of Contents’ and selecting an appropriate style from the menu.

This will automatically capture the headings and subheadings in your document and create a content page. This list can be used to help users understand the whole document, and know which sections contain the information they are looking for. These content lists will also be automatically linked to the headings, making them especially useful for assistive technology users to navigate the document.

Microsoft Support: Format or customize a table of contents in Word

5. Add alt text, or mark images decorative

Alt text should be a single sentence around 150 characters long (including the spaces between words) and provide the most necessary information for those who can’t see the image to still fully understand it.

There are three types of images:

• Necessary/Informative
• Decorative
• Complex

Necessary

Every image deemed necessary/informative must be given a text alternative (alt text).

To add alt text, simply right click on the image, and select ‘View/Edit Alt Text’. The alt text editor pane will open to the right of the screen. In the text box in the edit pane, add your short description.

The alt text box may already have an AI Generated sample text description in it. These are often incorrect or unhelpful; it is best to delete it and write your own. Generally, it is better for the content creator/author to write the alt text, as they will understand what the image is meant to be expressing.

An example of good alt text is: ‘The Mona Lisa, an oil portrait of a gently smiling woman sitting before a dusky landscape.’

Decorative

If the image is purely decorative, or ‘eye candy’, or it’s an element such as shapes, arrows, or icons, then it should be marked as decorative. To do this, you simply select the ‘mark as decorative’ check box that sits underneath the text box.

It is worth giving some thought to whether a decorative image might need alt text anyway, so screen reader users get an equal experience to sighted viewers – like joke images/memes.

Complex

Complex images, such as images of diagrams, charts, and graphs, will need what is called a ‘long description’. For PowerPoint this means you should put the image on a slide of its own, and include the long description next to, or beneath it.

A long description should be a clear, concise, no-frills relaying of the most important information/data from the diagram, graph, or chart. If the information can be put into a table format, then consider doing this and placing the table on the same slide as the diagram, graph, or chart instead of a long description.

Microsoft Support: Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object

Microsoft Support: Everything you need to know to write effective alt text

6. Keep your tables simple

Data tables are typically difficult for assistive technologies, so you need to be very careful when making them. 

Data tables must:

• be created using the ‘Insert’ tool (do not ‘draw’ them!)
• be correctly labelled, including title, headers, and a description (this is similar to alt text)
• be correctly formatted
• be restricted to the page width
• have only one header column
• have only one header row

Data Tables must not:

• include nested tables
• include split cells
• include merged cells
• include blank cells
• include blank rows or columns

When making your tables, you should consider using Bookmarks to aid findability for assistive technology users, and if you are using colours in the table, make sure they are well contrasted

If your table is getting complicated, the best thing to do is to step back and consider whether it is worth separating the data and using two, or more, tables instead of trying to fit it all into one table.

Microsoft Support: Insert a table

Microsoft Support: Set or change table properties

7. Check the colour contrast and colour use

Colour contrast is especially important for people who are colour blind, or who have poor vision. The wrong contrast could make an otherwise well-made document very hard or even impossible for someone to read.

Essentially, make sure that all your text is dark, and your backgrounds are light, so the contrast is strong. Black text on a white background might be too strong for some viewers, so try using dark blue text or dark grey text instead.

Layering text over an image can cause issues for readers as well, as the shapes, colours, and patterns in the image can make the text hard to see and so hard to read. You should avoid doing this unless strictly necessary, and if you do, place a colour block between the image and the text.

Think about the colours you use in your graphs and charts, as these especially need to have good contrast so they can be understood by everyone. You should also label each part clearly and not rely on colour alone to identify anything. For example, using ‘red’ to mean ‘wrong’ and ‘green’ to mean ‘correct’ without also adding text labels will mean nothing to a red/green colour-blind viewer.

The Accessibility Checker will pick up on colour contrast issues, so make sure that you use it, but it is not very good at picking up text-over-images, so you need to keep an eye on that yourself.

Microsoft Support: Add, change, or delete the background color in Word

Microsoft Support: Change the font color in a Word document

8. Don’t clutter the layout

For typical Word documents, this is less of a concern, as the content is most likely to be text with the occasional illustrative image or graph. However, even if that is the case, it is best to keep in mind these tips:

• Always align your main text content to the left, as this will avoid common issues for dyslexic readers
• Set the line spacing to 1.5, and the paragraph breaks to 2, as this will allow for enough space between lines and paragraphs to aid readability
• If using columns, stick to using only 2, as any more than this will make things very hard to read
• Keep things clean and simple

If you are going to do things like use pull quotes, use the quote setting in the Styles. Pull quotes can have a little more leeway for using centred text and italics, but you should still make sure there is space between the quote and the previous/following paragraphs.

Microsoft Support: Format your Word document

9. Clearly and uniquely identify your links

When adding links to your document, you should make sure that the purpose and destination of the link is immediately clear. This should be done whether you are listing links in a source or resources section, or if you are adding a link within the text content itself.

To prevent confusion and give readers a clear understanding of what the link is for:

• Links should be informative: 
  • Do not use ‘Read More’ or ‘Here’ or ‘Link’, as these do not tell the user what the link is, or where it will take them.
• Links should be unique: 
  • Do not use the same text for a link more than once in a document, unless each link goes to the same place.
  • Using the same text for multiple links can confuse screen reader users, who will not know which link they should activate or jump to.

Microsoft Support: Create or edit a hyperlink

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