Accessible Document Tips; Accessibility for Your Documents and Papers

1. Meaningful Headings and Structure

• Use headings that are logical and hierarchical (e.g. H1, H2, H3).
• Increase readability by dividing document content into sections with headings.
• People who use screen readers can easily scan content through headings.

2. Use of Alternative Text

• Provide descriptive and concise alternative text for all images.
• Leave the alternative text for decorative images blank (alt="").
• The content of the alternative text should be clear and functional, reflecting the content or purpose of the image.

3. Accessibility of Tables and Graphs

• Alternatively, present your graphs in a table view. Screen readers cannot read graphs. Instead, providing a table view ensures readability for a screen reader.
• Use header rows and columns in tables.
• Simplify complex tables as much as possible and include explanatory notes or summaries below tables.
• Organize table contents in a way that makes sense for a screen reader to read.

4. Readability and Text Layout

• Set line spacing in text to at least 1.5 and leave enough space between paragraphs.
• Break up paragraphs using short, clear sentences.
• Increase readability by keeping the font size 12 points or larger.
• Create a neat and consistent visual layout by aligning text to the left.

5. Use of Color and Contrast

• Provide a minimum of 4.5:1 contrast between text and background colors.
• Do not rely solely on color to convey information, support it with shapes, icons, or text.

6. Links and Anchor Text

• Create links with descriptive and meaningful words; state the purpose of the link clearly, rather than “click here.”
• Make sure link URLs are meaningful and understandable.

7. List and Bullet Structure

• Create a clear and consistent structure by numbering or bulleting list items.
• Improve readability by breaking complex lists into sublists.

8. Accessibility of Forms

• Associate form fields with clearly identifiable labels.
• Include explanatory and help text that makes form elements accessible.
• Provide informative messages that clearly indicate user errors.

9. Define Document Language

• Be sure to specify the language of the document explicitly (e.g., use the lang tag for HTML).
• In multilingual documents, specify language variations between sections.

10. Additional Tips for Accessibility of PDF Documents

• Use tagged PDF options when creating PDF documents.
• Convert scanned documents to text using OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
• Organize document content in a logical reading order, which screen readers follow.
• Use bookmarks in PDF documents to quickly access content.

11.Accessibility of Excel and Other Data-Driven Documents

• Use descriptive titles to make cells meaningful and clear in Excel documents.
• Add alternative descriptions or comments for cells and tables containing data.
• Clearly state features such as filtering and sorting in data tables and inform users.

12. Test and Validate Documentation

• After creating documentation, test it with screen readers and accessibility checkers.
• Continuously improve by taking user feedback into account.