Word Accessibility Guide

Several problems regularly arise in MS Word documents that prevent them from being accessible:

1. Without using the Styles tool, MS Word documents lack headings making them difficult for screen-readers to navigate.
2. When screen-readers lack descriptive text that explains where the link leads, the document becomes difficult to navigate for screen-readers.
3. Images not only need to have alt text, but that text needs to be descriptive enough to convey to every learner what purpose the image serves.
4. Failure to have significant color contrast between text and background can make the text impossible to read.

Creating accessible MS Word documents ultimately provides a better learning experience to every student in your class as your documents are intentionally designed to be as easy to use as possible.

• Like a topic outline, heading levels should be organized hierarchically.
• Heading 1 is used for the document title (not the Title style) to ensure accessible organization.
• Heading 2 is used for all subtopics on the page, Heading 3 for sub-subtopics, and so on.

How to Add Headings

1. Select the text you want to make into a heading (e.g., Overview, Instructions, Grading).
2. From the Home tab, choose the appropriate heading level from the Styles group that fits the topical organization of your content (starting with Heading 1 for the title).
3. If you want the headings to be a certain size or format, you can modify the look of a style by right clicking on the style and selecting the Modify Style option in the Styles group.  

Additional Information

• Microsoft: Customize or create new styles
• Microsoft: Improve heading accessibility
• WebAIM: Headings

How to Create Lists in Word

1. Select the text you want to make into a list.
2. From the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, select the Bullets or Numbering list.

Points to Keep in Mind

• Use the built-in list tool rather than manually typing hyphens/bullets for list items.
• For lists in which order doesn’t matter (e.g., a list of recipe ingredients), use a bulleted list; if the list must be followed in order (e.g., recipe instructions), use a numbered (ordered) list.
• When lists are formatted correctly, numbered (ordered) lists and bulleted (unordered) lists help all learners understand how content is grouped and organized.   

How to Create Accessible Links

1. Use link text that clearly describes the link's destination. Avoid text like "Click here," "Visit," "More," or using a URL as the link text.
2. Select the text and open the submenu by right clicking or selecting the right click keyboard option. Then choose Link from the menu.
3. In the Insert Hyperlink window, enter a URL address in the Address field.
4. Use the OK button to save the link.

Points to Keep in Mind

• Links should be descriptive and make sense out of context. Link text such as “click here” or “more” does not give sufficient information about the link destination.
• Avoid using identical link text for different destinations on the same page.
• Using URLs as links is not a descriptive way of providing links, can be cumbersome for all users, and can pose problems for screen reader users and voice input users because URLs are often lengthy and difficult to read and understand out of context.

Additional Information

• To learn more about accessible links visit WebAIM’s Links and Hypertext.
• To watch a video about accessible links, see Microsoft’s Create Accessible Links in Word.

How to Create Alt Text in Word

1. Right-click on the intended image.
2. Bring up the Alt Text window by selecting View Alt Text from the dropdown menu, or selecting the image and then Review > Check Accessibility > Alt Text.
3. Fill in the Alt Text field.
   • If the image is decorative (e.g., a decorative border), check the Mark as decorative check box.
   • Do not use the AI-generated alt text tool to create alt text by activating the button "Generate alt text for me" or accepting the "Description automatically generated." While generated alt text does its best to guess what an image is, it is usually inaccurate and should not be used.

Points to Keep in Mind

When writing the description, remember that the learner you're writing it for will need to understand the image without being able to see it. What does the learner need to know about the image to understand its meaning in the context of the main text where it appears? This is especially important for images used in assessments; if the alt text does not provide enough information to answer assessment questions, it isn’t accessible alt text. 

If a graphic element is there simply for decorative purposes (e.g., a decorative border), it does not need alt text and can be marked “Decorative” to allow screen readers to skip over it. See Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object and scroll down to Mark Image as Decorative.

Additional Information

• WebAIM: Accessible Images for more on why accessible images are important to visually impaired users
• WebAIM: Alternative Text or Microsoft: Everything You Need to Know to Write Effective Alt Text for more about how to write effective alt text.

Tables should be used to represent tabular data, not for layout and positioning. Because many AT like screen readers process table data one table cell at a time, tables can be very difficult for some users to understand without semantic markup that clearly defines the relationships between table headers and their respective data cells.

The appropriate semantic markup can be added to any table by accessing the Table Properties window. Here you can identify column headers, edit or create the table title, and add a table description. All of these features contribute to table accessibility.

To access the Table Properties: right click on an existing table and select Table Properties from the mini toolbar.

How to Create Accessible Tables

Identify Column Headers:

1. Place the cursor in the top row of your data table and activate the Table Design tab.
2. In the Table Style Options group, select the Header Row check box.
3. Click the Layout tab.
4. In the Data group, activate the Repeat Header Rows button.

Add a Table Title:

1. Open the Table Properties window.
2. Select the Alt Text tab.
3. Enter a title that summarizes the content and purpose of the table.
4. Click OK.

Add a Table Description:

1. Open the Table Properties window.
2. Select the Alt Text tab.
3. Enter a description that elaborates on the table title. It may be useful to think of the table description as an opportunity to provide the information you would give in a live presentation. A description is a chance to give context for the data and draw the user’s attention to the most important parts of the table.
4. Click OK.  

Additional Information

• To learn more visit WebAIM’s Creating Accessible Tables.
• For a video demonstration see Microsoft’s Create Accessible Tables in Word.
• For more information on table properties, see Microsoft’s Set or Change Table Properties.

Using color alone to indicate information creates barriers for blind, low vision, and color blind people who may not perceive color or differentiate between specific colors. Insufficient color contrast between text and background can pose reading challenges for everyone and especially people with low vision.

General Color Guidelines

• Don’t rely on color alone to convey information. Use text as an additional indicator.
• When differentiating elements in charts and graphs, do not just change the color, also add textures, patterns or the like to provide some other visual differentiation. Where possible, provide direct segment labels.
  
• Use a tool like WebAIM's Contrast Checker to ensure the contrast between text and background is sufficient and meets web content accessibility guidelines.
• Use the checker's dropper tools to select the foreground and background colors.
• The checker's results indicate whether selected colors meet accessibility standards.
• The checkers slider tool can be used to adjust colors as needed.
• Avoid combinations known to be problematic for colorblind users (e.g., red/green). 

Screen reader applications support multiple languages, and, with the proper markup, can switch between languages within a document seamlessly. For screen readers to appropriately pronounce page content, the default language must be set in the Document Properties. Passages in another language must be defined within the document so the screen reader adjusts to the pronunciation and reading order of that language.

To define the Authoring Language:

The default authoring language is chosen on installation and if you are a native English speaker is probably set to English. If you would like to set the document’s primary authoring language to another language. Go to the Review tab and select Language.

1. Choose Language Preferences.
2. Under Office authoring languages and proofing select Add a language.
3. Choose the language from the menu and click Add.
4. Then select the new language and select Set as preferred.

To define a short passage in another language:

1. Highlight the selected passage.
2. Under Review select Language and then click Set Proofing Language.
3. Choose the language from the menu and select OK.

Additional Information

• For more information, on installing languages that are not default in word, see Microsoft’s support article “Add an editing or authoring language or set language preferences in Office.”

Embedding Accessible Video

All videos require properly synced captions to be accessible. Captions must be at least 99% accessible to meet accessibility requirements.

Auto-generated captions are a great way to start the captioning process, but auto-generated captions often misspell key terminology and proper names, which greatly impedes student comprehension. After captions have been generated, you need to edit them for accuracy.

Kaltura (Media Space) automatically generates captions when a video is uploaded to your account. You can access the caption editor by selecting Caption & Enrich option under the Actions menu. After you’ve edited the captions, you must enable them by selecting Show in Player from the Captions tab.

For more detailed instructions see Kaltura Captioning Tools.

Embedding Accessible Audio

Audio-only content requires captions or a transcript to be accessible.

Audio files can be captioned by adding the file to Kaltura (Media Space) and editing the captions with the caption editor. See Kaltura Captioning Tools.

A transcript can also be provided on the slide itself.

Although MS Word comes with a built-in accessibility checker that can help identify accessibility issues throughout a Word document, it doesn't check for everything. The checker is not a substitute for understanding accessibility best practices for MS Word.

Current shortcomings of the Microsoft Accessibility Checker:

• It cannot identify what content should be formatted as a list, or advise on whether to use an ordered or unordered list.
• It is unable to check if color alone is used to convey information.
• It cannot determine if appropriate link text was used.
• It cannot determine if there are accessibility issues with headings if headings are not present in the document.

Ultimately, as a responsible content creator, you should do your best to author your content according to the accessibility resources available, then use the accessibility checker to screen for any remaining issues.

Accessing the Accessibility Checker

To open the Accessibility Checker:

1. Select Review from the ribbon menu.
2. Click on the Check Accessibility button.
3. A report will generate in the right hand panel.  

• Make Your Word Documents Accessible to People with Disabilities (Microsoft)
• Microsoft Word: Creating Accessible Documents (WebAIM)