Creating accessible documents makes your work more inclusive and allows everyone, regardless of their abilities, to benefit from their simplicity and clarity.
When you create digital documents, you must make sure they're easy for everyone to read and navigate. This includes people who are:
- blind or have low vision
- dyslexic
- colour blind
As a public sector body, we must also follow the government's accessibility regulations and make sure the documents we share on our website are accessible.
Choose the best format for your content
You can make digital documents accessible to assistive technology in programmes like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
Word documents are usually best for people who use assistive technology because the content is more linear and easier to navigate. Word also gives people more flexibility for changing styles and text size.
It's simpler to make a document accessible while you're creating it than to attempt to make it accessible later.
Consider making a web page instead
If you need to put some information on the website, decide whether it would be better as a web page or a document uploaded to a Publication page.
Typecase, our website’s publishing platform, has been designed to make it easy to create accessible web pages. As a web page, your content will be easier to find, read, and navigate than if it's uploaded as a document.
As a general rule, only upload a document to a Publication page if:
- people need to download it
- people need to print it
- the content of the document is more than 10 pages long
If you don't have access to Typecase and need to put some content on the website, contact your lead publisher.
Give your document a meaningful, descriptive filename
When you create a new document, you should always give it a unique filename that explains what the document is. This is particularly important for documents uploaded to a Typecase Publication page.
‘Report.docx’ is an unhelpfully vague filename, whereas ‘university-of-bath-financial-report-2022-23’ describes the document’s contents briefly and clearly.
Read about naming conventions for Publication page attachments.
Check text spacing and alignment
When text is tightly packed on a page it can be hard for some users to read.
Make sure your text has a spacing of 1.5 or 2 between lines. This makes the text more accessible and easier to read for all users.
Always align text to the left. Don't use 'justified' text alignment. This creates a block of text across the whole page but puts uneven spacing between words, making your content hard to read for some people.
Use headings
People who use assistive technology often navigate between sections in documents by moving from heading to heading. Headings also break up long pieces of text and make documents easier to scan and read.
Use Microsoft Office’s in-built heading styles
To add headings in a Microsoft Office programme, use the in-built heading styles. These are coded to tell assistive technology what heading style they are, making it easier for people to navigate the document.
You can find the heading styles menu in:
- Microsoft Word’s Home toolbar
- Microsoft Excel’s Home toolbar, under ‘Cell styles’
Using these headings in Word documents will also create a navigation menu which people can use to jump from section to section. Select the 'View' tab, followed by 'Navigation Pane'.
Don't use other formatting to create headings
Don't use bold, italics, or larger font sizes for headings. Screen readers and other assistive technologies don’t read bold or italic formatting. They also don’t identify different font sizes. If you use any of these to create headings, you make your content inaccessible and make it difficult for people with visual impairments to navigate your content.
Use the correct heading hierarchy
Heading styles follow a hierarchy from 'Title' (the largest, used for document titles) to 'Heading 4' (for the smallest subsection headings).
Make sure you use headings in the correct order. The first heading for every section in a document should be heading 1. If you want to add a subsection, use a heading 2. When you make a new section, use heading 1 again.
Don’t skip headings as this can confuse people.
Read our guide to creating headings in Typecase.
Make your headings unique
Make sure each heading in your document is unique. It’s very difficult for people, especially those using assistive technology, to tell the difference between sections with similar headings.
Make images accessible
If you add images to a document, you must make them accessible to people who can't see them.
Add alternative (alt) text
Alt text is a brief factual description of the contents of an image. Assistive technology can 'read' alt text, describing the image to people with visual impairments.
Microsoft Word and PowerPoint 365 automatically generate alt text for images you add to your document, but it's not always correct.
You should replace automatically generated alt text with your own to make sure it accurately describes the image and relates to the context of your document.
Read Microsoft’s guidance about adding alt text.
Avoid using images with text in them
Screen-reading software cannot 'read' text when it’s part of an image. For this reason, using images with text in them can be an accessibility issue.
If you must use an image with text in it, make sure you include the information in the alt text or the main body of text on your document.
Avoid using complex images
Complex images, like tables or graphs, contain significant amounts of data. Screen-reading software cannot 'read' these, potentially stopping people with visual impairments from understanding important content.
Avoid using complex images in documents you plan to share with others or put on the website. If you need to present large amounts of data in a Microsoft Office document, create a table and follow Microsoft's guidance on making tables more accessible.
If you have to use a complex image in your document, add alt text to identify the image and a text alternative in the document to describe the essential information conveyed by the image.
Find out more about using complex images.
Format links correctly
When you add a link to the main body text of a digital document, use link text that clearly describes the information people are looking for when they click on it.
Never use 'click here', 'here', or a generic phrase such as 'our guide' as link text.
Don't paste full URLs as links in the main body text of a digital document. People using assistive technology often navigate documents by moving from link to link. If you use full URLs, they have to read the whole link to find out what it's for, which could be very frustrating.
You can use full URLs:
- in footnotes to reference sources
- if people need to print the document
You can shorten URLs by using a link shortener like bit.ly or TinyURL.
Read Microsoft's guidance about creating accessible links in Word.
Avoid unnecessary use of colour and animation
Colour for emphasis
Users with colour blindness, partial sight, or limited-colour screens may not be able to see colours you use in a document to emphasise text. Similarly, screen-reading software cannot tell if text is in a different colour from text around it. For these reasons, avoid using colour for emphasis, using heading styles instead to draw attention to sections of your text.
Inaccessible colour contrasts
All people can find text hard to read if the text and background colours are insufficiently distinct from one another, making colour contrast a potential accessibility issue.
If you choose to use coloured text on a coloured background in your document, it’s simple to check whether the text is accessible using WebAIM’s Contrast Checker.
Read Microsoft's guidance about using colour accessibly in documents.
Unnecessary animation
When creating PowerPoint presentations, avoid animations and sounds unless they're crucial to understanding your content. Decorative transitions and other animations can be distracting for some users while adding nothing to your content. Additionally, animations can cause screen-reading software to read slides twice.
Use Microsoft’s Accessibility Checker
Microsoft's Accessibility Checker is available in all versions of Excel, PowerPoint and Word from 2010 onwards to identify any accessibility issues that need addressing.
Find out how to run the Microsoft Accessibility Checker on your device.
The Accessibility Checker can’t find every accessibility issue so it’s important you check your documents manually too.
Make PDFs accessible
All PDFs on our website must be accessible.
Creating accessible PDFs
The easiest way to create accessible PDFs is to create an accessible source document in Microsoft Office first.
When you export your document as a PDF, Microsoft Office will automatically add accessibility tags, making it easy for people using assistive technology to navigate the PDF.
Read Microsoft's guidelines for tagging PDFs.
Making existing PDFs accessible
Acrobat Pro can help you check the accessibility of existing PDFs and fix any accessibility issues.
Providing alternative formats for documents on the website
You must be able to provide documents you have uploaded to the website in an alternative format if a user requests it. Alternative formats can include:
- large print
- digital braille
- audio file
- coloured backgrounds
Find out more about creating a Publication page.