It explains why each issue might be a potential problem for someone with a disability. The Accessibility Checker is a tool that reviews your content and flags accessibility issues it comes across. Top of Page Check accessibility while you work in Word If your document has a high level of contrast between text and background, more people can see and use the content. You can also look for text in your document that’s hard to read or to distinguish from the background. To find insufficient color contrast, use the Accessibility Checker. Use sufficient contrast for text and background colors. People who are blind, have low vision, or are colorblind might miss out on the meaning conveyed by particular colors. To find instances of color-coding, visually scan your document. People who use screen readers sometimes scan a list of links.Įnsure that color is not the only means of conveying information. To determine whether hyperlink text makes sense as standalone information and whether it gives readers accurate information about the destination target, visually scan your document. To find missing alt text, use the Accessibility Checker.Īlt text helps people who can’t see the screen to understand what’s important in images and other visuals.Īdd meaningful hyperlink text and ScreenTips. You can also use paragraph banners to organize your content. To preserve tab order and to make it easier for screen readers to read your documents, use a logical heading order and the built-in formatting tools in Word. To check that the order of headings is logical, visually scan your document's table of contents. Blank cells in a table could also mislead someone using a screen reader into thinking that there is nothing more in the table. If a table is nested within another table or if a cell is merged or split, the screen reader loses count and can’t provide helpful information about the table after that point. Screen readers keep track of their location in a table by counting table cells. Visually scan your tables to check that they don't have any completely blank rows or columns. To ensure that tables don't contain split cells, merged cells, or nested tables, use the Accessibility Checker. If you have to use tables, use a simple table structure for data only, and specify column header information. In general, avoid tables if possible and present the data another way. Make it easy for everyone read your documents. The following table includes key best practices for creating Word documents that are accessible to people with disabilities.Īvoid common accessibility issues such as missing alternative text (alt text) and low contrast colors.

Best practices for making Word documents accessibleĬheck accessibility while you work in WordĪdd accessible hyperlink text and ScreenTipsĪdjust space between sentences and paragraphs

What is a screen reader for blind