Accessibility in MS Word

To make your text accessible, it’s best to:

• choose a sans serif font
• use bold to emphasise text rather than italics, underlining or upper case (all capitals)
• left align everything.

Sans serif fonts help readers to identify the shape of letters and words. Serif fonts, which have ‘caps’ and ‘feet’, hold the eye on the line for most readers but can cause the letters to run together for others.

Using bold for emphasis retains the letter shapes closest to normal text. Other options – such as italics, underlining or upper case – can impair legibility. 

Although it is not incorrect to align text against both left and right margins, it can pose a risk to accessibility. 

In a published book, text is generally aligned to both margins so there are neat blocks of text on the page. But this requires careful typesetting to break and hyphenate some words at the end of a line to keep the word spacing even.

In everyday documents, fully justified text can cause uneven spaces between words, and these that form ‘rivers and lakes’ down a page. These cause a problem for accessibility. 

Headings and lists are important navigation aids for all readers. To make sure that those using assistive software such as screen readers also benefit from these, create lists using in-built styles in MS Word.

For example, you can build a heading hierarchy using the styles function and label each level  ‘Heading 1’, ‘Heading 2’ and so on. This means screen readers can interpret the headings for those with a vision impairment to follow the document’s structure and find the content they need.

In longer documents, you should also create a matching table of contents through the Insert > Index and Tables ... menu.

When using lists, follow the same principles and set them up using defined styles. Avoid custom symbols, as a screen reader may not be able to interpret them. Stick to standard list styles with:

• bullets (dots) for most lists
• numbers for lists that have a set order.

Images present particular problems for people with vision impairment. The solution is to write some alternative text (alt text) so that screen readers and other assistive software can read out a title or a description of the image.

Without alt text, a screen reader will likely just read out the image’s dimensions. Alt text will tell them what the image depicts. Here are some guidelines to follow.

To add alt text in MS Word:

1. Right-click on the image.
2. Select ‘Format picture’, then ‘Alt text’.
3. Enter your text in the dialogue box.

Keep your alt text to around 125 characters at most.

If a document table is not accessible, assistive software will not link the cell data to the corresponding heading. This means the data will then make little sense to readers.

To make different types of tables accessible for screen readers:

Note that MS Word doesn’t allow 2 bookmarks with the same name, so you’ll need to add a number or descriptive term to the field if you have more than 1 table.

It’s best to avoid:

• tables any more complex than combination tables – try to separate them into multiple simpler tables instead
• blank cells – create white space by adjusting a cell’s width or height instead
• merged cells – restructure your table instead.
  

Readers with colour blindness may find certain colour combinations difficult. Stay away from:

• bright, clashing colours
• white or pale text on a shaded background, especially if the shading is pale as well
• pale text on a typical white background.

You’ll find tools online to help you measure your colour contrast. The maximum contrast comes, of course, with black text on a white page. 

Also avoid using colour alone to call attention to an item, as screen readers often ignore this.

Give your headings and body text room to breathe with plenty of white space.

But build this space into your paragraph styles using the ‘Spacing Before’ field in the Format > Paragraph menu. Avoid using the return key to add blank lines because screen readers may read these out, creating unnecessary noise.