Accessibility for Apple iWork Documents

As mentioned above, Microsoft products are better at accessibility. Apple’s Support page addresses accessibility for their Pages, Keynotes, and Numbers applications, but they do not cover all universal best practices mentioned above. One thing you will note, Apple applications do not come with built in accessibility checkers. You will also note that the Health and Human Services 508 checklists were written with Microsoft products in mind.

The recommendation for best accessibility is that you use or convert iWork documents to Word and PowerPoint.

If that is not an option, please follow these best practices for Pages and Keynote.

Templates

Pages and Keynote do have built-in templates you should use. For Pages, this means using the style features, such as headings and line spacing, found in the format sidebar.

Screenshot of a the format sidebar in an Apple Pages doc

In Keynote, use the Master Slide (view>edit Master Slide), which is similar to the Slide Master in PowerPoint. Keynote’s Master Slide does not allow for as much customizing as PowerPoint. For example, it is not able to add a placeholder for a chart, image, or table in a Master Slide. You can add those elements to a slide, but they will not appear in the Outline View.

Screenshot of Apple Keynote showing navigation to Edit Master Slides from View Menu

You are able to add a title to each slide and hide the title if it is not necessary for sighted-readers to see it. Do this by clicking on the Title checkbox for the Master Slide. Write in your title. Uncheck the title box. The title will still appear in the Outline view so you know that it is still there to be read by a screen reader.

Screenshot of Apple Keynote showing a slide with the appearance menu to the right and the Title checkbox circled

Alternative Text

For some reason, Apple does not allow for images to have alternative text. Instead, they have a box for an image “description.” They indicate that assistive technology, like screen readers, will read the image descriptions. As you would in a Word or PowerPoint document, be sure to add a description for images in a Pages or Keynote document following alt text protocols.

Screenshot of Apple Keynote showing a slide with the appearance menu to the right and the Title checkbox circled

iWork documents do not allow you to designate background images. This means all decorative images will need a description and will be read by screen readers.

Reading Order

It does not seem possible to set reading order with iWork products. In Keynote, you should look at the outline view to ensure all of the elements are being “seen.” Be aware that even though you can manually insert text boxes to a slide via insert>text box, but these will not be visible to a screen reader.

File Properties

In iWork Documents, there is not “Info” page like in Microsoft products. You can set the title and keywords of a document by clicking on the “untitled” document name on the top of the document. Once it is open, you can set the title of the document and add tags. There is no space to add the author of a document. I’d recommend adding the author’s name to the tags.

Screenshot of Apple Pages document with the document title drop down selected and an example title with dashes instead of spaces filled in