Library Subject Guides
Whether at work, in our studies or in the wider world, pretty much all of us have to deal with digital documents in some form. If you are creating digital documents, there are things you can do to make your output more accessible and easier to work with. This page will focus on text documents, but many of the principles apply to other formats as well.
Heading styles (or styles) help structure a document clearly, help with navigation, make it more screenreader accessible. Find out more about how to use styles in both Microsoft Word and Google Docs on the styles page of our creating documents guide.
Whether you choose bullet points or numbers, use the list formatting tool to ensure your list is properly structured. This formatting can be retained if the document is converted to another format and is helpful in making the document more accessible to those using a screen reader.
Alternative text, or alt text, is a way of labelling an image so that someone using a screen reader can access a description. It can sometimes also be useful for sighted users in understanding an image. Most platforms have a built option which enables you to add alt text to any images, diagrams, figures or graphs that you include in your work. We have more information about alternative text in our image editing guidance.
Sans serif font is usually more easily read in digital formats. Make sure your text is comfortable to read- don't use anything smaller than 11 or 12 sized font for your body text. If you want to highlight words for emphasis, use bold, as this is more easily read. Italics can make text harder to read, whilst underlining can cut the lower lines of some letters and potentially cause confusion with any hyperlinks.
Don't use colour as the sole indicator of meaning. You can use it to highlight or enhance, but make sure there are other conveyors of meaning and that you maintain sufficient contrast.
So, for example, using something like "copy all sections marked in red" would be inaccessible, but you could instruct a user to "copy all sections in [square brackets]" and also highlight those sections red - this still makes them easier to spot for many users but avoids using the colour as the only indicator. Another instance might be using green to highlight your example but using a light, bright colour against a white background is low contrast - it would not highlight your example so much as make it hard to read. Y
ou should also take care with colour contrast in your documents. Clashing colour contrasts may prove difficult to read. Use the site WhoCanUse to test colour combinations. You can copy the hex codes to/from this site to use in whatever platform you are working in.
Consistency is really important. If you have a long document, stick to the same way for formatting throughout. This makes it easier for everyone to navigate but especially anyone using magnification software, who rely on familiar layout to help them move around documents more quickly. Try to keep this consistency in your file naming too. If you are producing a series of documents, such as meeting notes, giving these consistent file names will help you group them together. Be sure that they can be differentiated easily by title though - having 16 different files all named "Committee meeting notes" makes it incredibly hard for anyone to find what they need.
Accessibility checkers can do the heavy lifting for you in reviewing a document to check for inaccessible elements. This could mean flagging up improper use of heading styles, or images missing alt text. Within Word, you can access the Check Accessibility within the Review tab on the ribbon. In Google Docs, you can launch the Grackle accessibility checker from underneath the Extensions menu. Both will scan your document and recommend any necessary changes for accessibility. However, an accessibility checker is no substitute for reviewing your document yourself, and some the changes it suggests may require your own judgement to deem whether or not they are necessary. But it is a useful second pair of eyes!
Templates are a great way to save time and ensure consistency in documents which, in-turn, helps ease-of-access.
In Microsoft Word, you can access templates by selecting New from the File menu and browsing the available options. After customising a document, you can save it as a template by selecting Save As and choosing the .dotx format.
In Google Docs, you can select or submit a template from within a document by going to File, New and selecting Template gallery. You could also store a template document with View Only access permissions and prompt users to make a new copy of this. An alternate method to share a template with this method would be to copy the document URL, then replace everything after the last “/” with “copy” (e.g., change /edit to /copy). This allows others to duplicate the template easily. For example, this adjusted URL will prompt you to make a copy of our Creating Accessible Documents training slides.
If you have recurring meetings for a committee or project group, keeping your records consistent is helpful to all users, but especially to those using assistive technology. Templates can help with this, ensuring whoever takes notes or records a meeting is doing so in the same format each time.
The administrative hub has a set of templates for different sorts of meeting documents. These have been designed to be accessible and to be straightforward to use and understand. You can copy these for your own meeting use. This can help keep things more consistent and accessible in the records of each meeting, but also helps make things more consistent across different work strands across the university.
Here's a simple checklist you can use to cover the basics of making a document accessible.
See the full details of these elements in our Top Tips section.
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