In this video, we will show you how to make Microsoft Word documents more accessible. There are some differences between Microsoft Word and Word for Mac when it comes to accessibility. I will point out some of these differences as we go. We'll go over how to use Styles to structure your Word document. How to add alt text to images. How to avoid common mistakes, and how to check your work with Word's Accessibility Checker. We'll focus on sharing the goals behind these practices, with the use of some examples. As we wrap up, we'll share additional resources for more information and step-by-step guide. When creating content using Microsoft Word, it's important for all readers that your material is organized and structured. Notice in this Word document, there is no title, no section headings, and no lists, or other structures. Without formatting to provide cues as to how you organize the material, it can be difficult to make sense of the information provided. You may commonly provide similar types of material in this way. Here we have provided a title and section headings. We did this by changing the font size, and by making some of the text bold. This is an improvement for some of our students, but we can do better. By using Styles in Word, we can help Assistive Technologies, like screen readers also recognize the structure of our content. Let's take our original document and Styles. Go to Home and look for Styles. Here you'll find many different Styles to choose from. Make your document title a Heading 1, and top level section headings a Heading 2. If your document has subheadings, make those Headings 3, and so on. The information in this section of text can be conveyed as a list. So, I will use the bulleted list formatting, using bullets or numbered lists from the menu. Well, I'm sure that this is a true list. If you don't like where its default styles, you can change how they are formatting. First, select the style you'd like to change, right click, and then select modify. In the modify style pop-up, you can change the font, the size, color, and other attributes of the style. The important thing is to use Styles, like heading 1, heading 2, numbered or bulleted lists, et cetera, to provide structure to your content that can be simultaneously visual, while also conveying the structure to screen readers and other Assistive Technology devices. When using a PC, this structure can also carry over if you make a PDF version of your Word document, helping to make the PDF more accessible. For non-text components of your document such as images, graphs, or diagrams, you will want to include alternative text or alt text. Students using a screen reader will use this alt text description, to understand what is the important information conveyed by the image. To do this using Word 2010 or 2013, right click on the image, select format picture, layout and properties, and then alt text. Then you can add concise, typically 120 characters or less, alt text the description field, not to the title field. If you're using Word for Mac, right click on the image, and choose format picture. Then select alt text, and add your text to the description field. We've just described how to add structure, and alt text to your Word documents. These are great practices for creating accessible Word documents. Here are a few things to avoid. Don't use text that is all capital or upper case letters. Words that are in all capital letters, such as this example on the left, are more difficult to read particularly for long blocks of text. Try to keep your use of consecutive capitalized letters to acronyms, abbreviations, or short titles, or headings. When adding links to your Word documents, avoid vague hyperlink text such as click here. Big hyperlinks do not provide useful information for students using Assistive Technologies. You may be hearing, or viewing the link out of context. Instead, do use descriptive text for your hyperlinks. You'll also want avoid showing the full URL, particularly when the URL is lengthy. The format is difficult to read and may not provide descriptive information. If your students will need the full URL, we suggest including a hyperlink with descriptive text, with a full URL, not as a hyperlink in parenthesis. When using color, make sure you do not convey information through color alone. Here, text and color is used to convey information about available time slots displayed in a table. Also, avoid low color contrast, such as using light grey on a grey background as we have done here, or having a busy brightly colored background with text over it. Low color contrast can make the text difficult for everyone to read. Don't use Styles for reasons outside of organization and structure. So, don't use Styles solely for aesthetic reasons. Remember, those using Assistive Technology may be relying on your selected Styles to navigate the content. Make sure the Styles you choose matches the actual structure of your content, and remember you can edit the default Styles in Word to have a font, size, color, and other attributes that you prefer. If you're using Word 2010 or 2013 for PC, you can use the built-in Accessibility Checker. To use the Accessibility Checker, go to File, check for issues, then check accessibility. The Accessibility Checker will then give you a list of errors or warnings, which can help you find figures with missing alt text and other issues. The Accessibility Checker also provides some instructions for how to address any issues. For more information on making Accessible Word documents and using the Accessibility Checker, see the list of video tutorials and quick guides for various resources for this module.
