Universal Accessibility Best Practices

Later in this document we cover accessibility tips unique to PowerPoint, Word, and PDF documents. We include tips for Apple iWork documents as well, but when it comes to accessibility of documents, Microsoft products are superior. Anne Taylor, the Director of Supportability at Microsoft has been key in advancing Microsoft’s accessibility practices.

The following are common best practices across all document types.

File Name

The filename identifies the document or its purpose. Do not use spaces and/or special characters and limit to 20-30 characters.

File Properties

Go to the Document Info tab (File>Info) and fill in the Title, Author(s), and Tags. This example is from Word, but is the same for PowerPoints. In PDF documents, the information is found under File>Properties.

Screen Shot of Info page with Author, Title, and Tags filled in

Font

Use the recommended fonts Times New Roman, Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, or Calibri.

Comments/Track Changes

Make sure all comments are cleared and track changes is turned off with changes accepted or rejected. Also, do not use watermarks.

Alternative Text for Images

Always use alternative text, or alt text, for images whose meaning conveys content. Alt text should simply describe the image as you would to a person, without using descriptors like color, that would have no meaning to someone who cannot see. Images include graphs and charts. If an image is purely decorative, you may select the “Mark as decorative” option and the screen reader will ignore it. If you right click on a picture, one of the menu items will be “Edit alt text”. You can also navigate to alt text through the picture format tab. WebAIM provides a good guide to writing alt text.

Here is an example of an image and its associated alt text:

This diagram depicts water at a height of five meters, above it is air. To the lower left is a gate in the shape of a quadrant or semi-circle. The radius of the semi-circle is 2 meters. Within the semi-circle or gate is air.

This diagram depicts water at a height of five meters, above it is air. to the lower left is a gate in the shape of a quadrant or semi-circle. The radius of the semi-circle is 2 meters. Within the semi-circle or gate is air.

Tables

Tables are accessible to screen readers and are not treated as images. In order for a table to be accessible, it must have been made using the built-in table tool from whichever program you are using. Screen readers get confused when they encounter blank or merged cells and these should be avoided. If a cell needs to be blank, you can type “blank cell” in the cell and change the font color to match the background color of the table. This way the sighted user will see the cell as blank and the user using the screen reader will be told the cell is blank. All header rows for a table need to be designated as such in the Table Design menu. Tables should read logically from left to right.

Color Contrast

The built in accessibility checkers cannot check for color contrast, but will often note that it will need to be manually checked. There are convenient tools to help you achieve the appropriate ratio like this tool from WebAIM. If you follow the best practice of putting dark fonts on light backgrounds and light fonts on dark backgrounds, you should be fine.

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks need to be embedded in descriptive text (i.e., “Cornell University Website” and not something like “click here”). Screen readers recognize links and will announce them as such. Without context, it is confusing to have a screen reader say “click here, link”.  If you wish to include the entire URL as well, you may do so, but do not make it a hyperlink.

Example: Cornell University Website https://www.cornell.edu/