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ESSENTIAL RULES FOR DOCUMENT ACCESSIBILITY

The topic of document accessibility could easily be its own separate course. Every type of document has its own unique concerns, and every program's accessibility options are in different places.

We've worked to condense this content to the essentials for you, paying particular attention to techniques that apply across almost all documents, whether you're using Microsoft Office, Google Docs, or other programs. Later, we'll look at specific considerations for Microsoft Word Documents and PDFs. If you would like specific advice about a particular type of document or program, we'd invite you to reach out to our team for help.

Verify OCR on PDFs

We covered this topic in Step 4: Check PDFs for Optical Character Recognition (OCR), but it's worth reiterating here because it is so critical. If your PDFs are not properly configured with OCR, users of screen readers will not be able to access the content at all.

Go Back to the Source Document Where Possible

While many instructors use PDFs for files, creating a fully accessible PDF file is much more complicated than creating one in a program like Microsoft Word, then exporting it to a PDF. We recommend going back to the original document program to make accessibility changes, though this may not be possible for some documents, such as journal articles you downloaded for students to read. The other advantage of going back to the source document is that you won't have to redo your work every time you make a change to the document.

Add Alt Text to Images

As we discussed elsewhere, alt text provides users with textual representations for important visual information. Alt text is arguably even more important for external documents, as these documents often contain complex visuals such as charts and graphs.

Every modern document editing program will provide alt text editing capabilities (often visible by right-clicking an image and selecting "Alt text" or "Edit Alt Text").

Use the Editor's Built-In Tools

In Before You Start: Learn the #1 Rule of Canvas Accessibility, we discussed the importance of the Canvas Rich Content Editor to creating accessible course content. The same idea also applies to document editing software. Programs like Microsoft Word have built-in features such as section headings, bullet and number lists, and tables. Using these features rather than simply changing the formatting ensures better accessibility of the content. For example, in Microsoft Word, instead of increasing your font size and bolding your section headings, apply the Heading 1 or Heading 2 styles from the Home tab.

Be Careful About Copying and Pasting

Just as in Canvas, copying and pasting from one document editing program to another can bring over underlying code that harms the accessibility of the document. Using the "Paste without formatting" option in your document editing program, then using the program's built-in tools for editing and styling, will help ensure the content's underlying code is accessible. Many programs even let you change the default paste options. For example, in Microsoft Word, go to Paste > Set Default Paste and you can change to Keep Text Only.

MICROSOFT WORD DOCUMENT ACCESSIBILITY

Alt Text in Microsoft Word

Adding alt text in Word is simple and easy. In newer versions of Word, just right-click the image and select "Edit Alt Text." Just as with Canvas, you have the option to "Mark as decorative." Be sure to either include alt text or mark as decorative for all images.

If you're using an older version of Word or other Microsoft products, check out this full tutorial on how to add alt text in Microsoft Office.

Section Headings in Microsoft Word

When formatting a document in Microsoft Word, if you have the Home tab selected in the Ribbon, you will see a Styles bar with a variety of styles available. This style bar is essential for accessibility, since it ensures your content's underlying code is properly structured.

Select any content to identify which style is applied (a light gray box appears around the style). "Normal" is used for body text paragraphs, while Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. are used for section headings. The visuals of a style—such as color, typeface, and font size—are irrelevant to the underlying code, so you may change them as you see fit.

Word provides section heading levels for 1-9, though only 1-6 are used by most assistive technologies. Depending on your version of Word and its settings, you may not see all section heading levels in the Styles bar. If you don't, we highly recommend you use one of Microsoft's accessible document templates. If you just want a blank template with all the heading levels, go to File > New and type "single spaced" in the search bar. The "Single spaced (blank)" template contains all the section heading styles you'll need.

Check the Accessibility of a Document in Microsoft Word

The easiest way to check the structure of a Word document for accessibility is to use the Navigation Pane. This is available by going to the View tab, then checking the "Navigation Pane" box under "Show."

This will pull out a left sidebar that shows you the structure of your document's headings. If this area is blank, that means no headings have been applied, so you should go back to the previous section about section headings. If headings are present, check to make sure all levels are included, such as subsection headings.

Once you've checked the Navigation Pane, go to the Review tab and select "Check Accessibility." This will open Word's built-in accessibility checker. This checker is not particularly comprehensive, so you'll want to always do a manual review, as well.

PDF ACCESSIBILITY

PDF Tags

The core of an accessible PDF is tags. Tags in PDFs work a lot like HTML (the code base of Canvas and all web content): they indicate what each content is, such as body text, section headings, tables, and more. Tags allow users of assistive technologies to better navigate a PDF and locate key information.

PDF reading programs like Adobe Acrobat will look for tags, and if they are not present they may automatically generate them. Unfortunately, automatically generated tags are usually inaccurate and sometimes cause further confusion. That's why manually tagging a PDF is the only way to go for accessibility.

Manually tagging PDFs can be a labor-intensive process. That's why we recommend going back to the original source and making accessibility changes there, then exporting to a PDF. If you need to manually tag, such as when the source document isn't available, here is a guide to creating and editing tags in Adobe Acrobat.

Adobe Acrobat Accessibility Tools

Adobe Acrobat Pro is the industry standard for PDF tools, and Ball State faculty can download Adobe Acrobat for free.

Acrobat comes with several Accessibility tools. In the tools sidebar (right side of screen), scroll down and select "More Tools." Search for "Accessibility" and select "Add" to add the Accessibility panel to your tools sidebar.

This will give you quick access to a variety of tools for accessibility. The two most important tools here are Accessibility Check and Set Alternative Text.

Accessibility Check will run a report on the document's accessibility and open a left sidebar for you to see accessibility issues.

To fix individual issues, right-click them and select Fix.

Set Alternate Text will run an automated check for any images (which Acrobat calls "figures"), then allow you to set alt text for the images it finds. Just as with Canvas and Word, you'll have the option to enter alt text or mark the image as decorative.

Continue on to take a quick, 3-question quiz about document accessibility or skip the quiz and go to the next module, Special Topics.

Take the Document Accessibility Quiz Skip to Special Topics Module

Quick Recap

Return to the source document and use the source program's built-in editor tools to create accessible documents.

Further Reading