INSTRUCTOR: Hi everyone, in this video I'm going to show you
how to make a Word document accessible.
In other words, how to make the content easy to perceive
and navigate by people with various types and degrees of disability.
I'm using Office 365
but it should be similar in other versions of Word.
We'll look at the following topics,
images, colours, headings, spacing, links and tables.
Here's an example document.
This is a shortened version of a syllabus for my class.
It doesn't look too bad.
Most people who can perceive visual design should have
no problem reading or finding information in it.
We've already got a good start.
The text size is 12 which is a good size for reading.
There is enough spacing between rows, it's not cluttered and the content
is organised in headings, subheadings, bullet points and so on.
However, people who use screen readers or have less than perfect sight
or colour vision would have some problems.
Let's first have a look at the Microsoft Word accessibility checker.
Go to file, check for issues, check accessibility.
The checker has spot some problems.
The graphics don't have alternative text,
they're also not in line
and there are several instances of insufficient contrast.
The checker is a great tool but it doesn't see all the problems.
So, in general, it's best to have an idea
of the main accessibility issues and how to fix them.
Let's start with images.
All graphics need to have an alternative text or alt text in short.
That is text describing an image which can be read by a screen reader.
These days when you first insert a picture,
Word automatically generates a description which you can see and edit.
If you're editing an older document,
you can add alt text by right-clicking the image then edit alt text.
It's good to keep the description short and concise.
Of course, if you're describing a complex graphic
like a chart, you will have a longer description.
In this case, I will write headshot of the instructor.
The other graphic is this rectangle under the title.
For images that are just ornaments, tick the box mark as decorative.
This way the screen reader will know to ignore it.
The accessibility checker also said that my images are not in line.
This can make it hard for a screen reader to navigate a content.
To fix it, right-click on the image,
go to wrap text and select in line with text.
For my picture, this means that I cannot keep my layout
so I will move it under the text to make it look better.
Colours need to have enough contrast to be read easily by anyone.
Default colours black and white have great contrast
but we often want to include other colours in our documents.
In my example, I have some green headings and some red text
and both of these were flagged by the accessibility
checker as having low contrast.
There are many websites where
you can check the contrast of colour pairs.
I like this one at Level Access because I can input
the RGB values which is what Word shows me.
So, if I select my text and go to text colour,
and click more colours, custom,
I can get the RGB values and check them,
in this case, on a white background which is 255 255 255.
There are two settings, one for less than 18 points
and one for 18 points or larger or 14 points in bold.
My text is 18 so let's check the second one.
You can see that this combination is not even at a double A level.
Let's go back to Word and make the colour a bit darker.
According to the accessibility checker, this is now OK,
but let me double-check with the online tool.
You can see that it is now level double A compliant
but, in many contexts such as universities,
we aim for triple A.
So, let's go even darker.
And, there you go.
Now we have enough contrast so I'll go with that.
I'm not going to change the other headings for now
because we will change them all in the next section.
My document also has some red text.
We can fix this the same way.
We have an additional problem here.
It's not a good idea to use only colour to convey meaning
because some people may be colour blind.
So, to emphasise a word or a sentence,
also make it bold or italics or even better,
make use of one of the options in the styles box,
like, emphasis or strong and then add your own style.
You can also install a tool like the colour contrast analyser
to help you check and adjust your colours.
It also has a colour blindness simulator which is useful
when your design contains combinations of multiple colours.
Though I made my headings and titles stand out through visual design,
a screen reader doesn't know what they are.
Marking them properly, will let screen reader users skim
the content and understand it's organisation easily.
To do that, we need to use the styles feature.
First, select the text, then, in the home tab,
go to the styles box and pick the style.
In this case, I will choose title.
As you can see, it changes what your text looks like,
but, you can then style it any way you want.
Let's do the headings.
Instructor information is the first level so it will be a heading one.
Select the text then click heading one.
Do the same for all first level headings.
Now, to change what they look like,
select one of them,
change the style.
In my case, I want them to be Arial 19 green.
Then in the styles box, right-click heading one
and select update heading one to match selection.
This changes all my heading one text to the desired style.
Now I can do the same for heading two.
Select text, change to heading two,
change the style,
update to match selection.
As you can see, my document looks the same
but now it is screen reader friendly
thanks to the structural formatting.
One more thing we can do to increase accessibility
is to remove unnecessary spaces.
So, instead of adding empty lines,
use the paragraph settings to adjust the spacing.
Select the text or place the cursor on the line you wish to change,
click on the little arrow in the paragraph box
and adjust the before and after settings.
For heading one, I will make it 24 points before and twelve after.
Now apply it to all the headings
the same way we did before by selecting the text
and updating heading one to match selection.
Do the same for heading two, let's say 20 before and 14 after.
Update
and now remove all the empty lines.
We can do the same for paragraphs.
In this case, I'm not going to match the styles
because it would change the colour and everything
so it's best if you set this up when you first create a document.
The links need to include meaningful text rather than the URL.
A screen reader may read the URL one letter at a time
which is not very helpful.
Additionally, descriptive links help
both screen reader users and sighted users skim
the document to get an idea of the content
or find specific information.
To make a link descriptive, right-click on it
and choose edit hyperlink.
Change the text to display to something meaningful.
In this case, blackboard help for students.
Now, everyone knows immediately where the link is sending them.
Alternatively, type your text in first,
then select it, right click and choose link.
Now you can paste in the address.
If you think this document will be printed,
you may want to put the URL in brackets after the descriptive text
so people can see the link and type it in if needed.
Tables can also cause some trouble to screen reader users.
The main role is to keep them simple
and avoid split cells, merge cells, and nested tables.
Another thing you can do is to have a designated header row.
To do that, select the row, right click and select table properties.
In the row tab, check repeat a header's row
at the top of each page
and uncheck allow a row to break across pages.
You can also go to the alt text tab
and write a title and a description.
Now you can see that the header row appears
on the next page, which really helps all users,
but also a screen reader will be able to navigate the data better.
Once you've ensured accessibility on all these aspects,
they will all be preserved
when you turn your Word document into a PDF.
You can simply save as and choose PDF
or, if you want to double check from the file tab,
go to export, create PDF,
options,
and make sure document structure tags for accessibility is checked.
So, these are the main things you can do
to make your document accessible.
Thanks for watching.