Creating accessible documents:

preparing faculty-produced items

Mary Taylor
December 2006
Minor updates January 2009

1 Introduction
Many disabled students find electronic documents more convenient than printed books.
They may find it easier to use a keyboard or some other device to step through pages on a
screen instead of turning paper pages. Or they may rely on the computer to read
documents to them or to magnify them.
These guidelines have been written to help secretarial staff or anyone else who is
preparing documents to be delivered to students through a course website. They will also
be useful for preparing material which is handed over to LTS for processing, it will make
it easier for them to achieve accessibility targets.
The guidelines assume that documents are created in Microsoft Word then converted to
PDF using the Adobe PDF Maker plug-in.
There are some things that you can do when you prepare an electronic document which
will make it easier for disabled students to read. These apply to MS Word documents and
the same principles can be transferred to the other two main accessible formats: HTML
pages or PDF files.
The most important guidelines are:

Use styles and headings instead of direct formatting

Construct tables correctly

Take care with figures

1.1 A note about RTF files

Many disabled students ask for RTF or Rich Text Format file for documents instead of an
MS Word document. It is similar to an MS Word document but can be readily opened by
other word processing programs. It also does not carry macro viruses which means
students feel that it is safer to download. It is easy to save an MS Word document as RTF,
it is one of the options under File/Save as. MS Word opens RTF files in the same way
as it opens its own document format files.

1.2 A note about PDF files

There are some reservations about the accessibility of PDF (Portable Document Format),
but it is widely available and some disabled students have no problems with it.
When you convert an MS Word document to PDF, using Adobe tools such as the Acrobat
plug-in and following the advice given here, the helpful structure will be passed on to the
PDF file without you doing any additional work.
1.3 A note about screen readers
Screen readers are programs that are used by visually impaired people to read the text on
a computer screen. They run in the background and work with Windows, MS Word and
other MS Office programs, Internet Explorer and any other program which has standard
Windows toolbars, menus and text windows.
Users can choose whether to read all of the text in a window or to read a line or word at a
time or just one letter at a time. It is very important for students to be able to read in
detail. They may need to read the same sentence several times or to check spelling of
names or new terms.
For more information about screen readers and other programs used by disabled students,
see Assistive Technology.
1.4 Showing hidden codes
Hidden codes are marks that MS Word uses to add tabs, paragraphs, manual page breaks
and other formatting instructions. Turning on the feature which shows the hidden codes is
useful to spot potential accessibility problems. Select on the toolbar or Show/hide .

2 Styles

Dont use direct formatting use styles

Layout and formatting help any reader to understand the structure of a long document.
These visual cues help people to understand the content and also to remember it. For
example, headings indicate sections and subsections, bullet lists emphasise important
points. People who use screen readers can use the Document Map to navigate. They can
also choose to have all changes in styles announced. This gives them a richer view of the
document which in turn helps them to understand the content better.
Direct formatting can be used to achieve the same result, for example you could just
select a line of text and make it bold, 14 point and Arial font. This would make it look
like a heading, but it wouldnt appear in the document map. A screen reader program
wont be able to interpret it as useful navigation. The next line shows the last heading
created using direct formatting (indented to avoid confusion).

Styles

It doesnt matter if a MS Word built-in style doesnt look the way you want it to to begin
with. You can change the look of any style for a particular document by using the tools
under Format/Styles and formatting. Changes to built-in styles will only be changed for
one document, unless you deliberately change your default settings.

Many of the styles commonly used in MS Word documents have equivalents in HTML
codes and PDF tags. Those covered in this document are passed on when converting
between formats.

3 Headings

Use Title style for the document title

Use headings for major sections such as chapters

Start with Heading 1 for the most important headings

Continue with Heading 2 and Heading 3 etc.

Dont skip from Heading 1 to Heading 3 or 4 if you can possibly avoid it

Remember, if you use direct formatting to create headings, the fact that its a heading will
be obvious to anyone who can see it, but will not be announced by a screen reader. Use
Heading 1, Heading 2 and so on.
Remember also that you can change the look of any style. For example, if you need
Heading 1 to be italic, and right justified:
1

Make sure the cursor is on a line which is a Heading 1

Select Format from the main menu

Choose Styles and Formatting ...

In the Styles and Formatting window, find Formatting of selected text at the
top, Heading 1 should be in the drop-down box.

Click the drop-down arrow on the right of Heading 1 to reveal the options for
this style

Choose Modify style ...

A dialog box will open with a selection of the usual formatting tools

Set the text to italic and the alignment to right

Click on OK and all your level 1 headings will be changed

So, if you want the most important heading level to look the same as built in Heading 3,
change the look of Heading 1 and use that, dont be tempted to use Heading 3 instead.
Screen reader users will be puzzled if something which is styled as Heading 3 is a main
section heading or a chapter heading.
If possible, make sure that subheadings follow in a logical order, use Heading 2 for the
next level after Heading 1, not Heading 3 or Heading 4. You may need to ignore this
guideline to achieve the structure intended by the author.

4 Lists etc.

Use built in list styles

If there is a style for what you want to display, use it.

For example for numbered or ordered items, use numbered lists:

1

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

and for other lists use bulleted lists:

Red

Yellow

Green

Screen reader programs can announce the beginning and end of a list that is styled in this
way. Some will also announce the number of items in the list.

5 Tables

Use MS Word tables for tabular information

Dont use tables to create columns or lists

Turn on the table option Heading rows repeat

Use table cells correctly for tables with text keep related material in one cell

Use tables for the correct purpose, arranging tabular information. Dont use them for
laying out columns or to lay out a list, use the column and list tools.
Turn on the option Heading rows repeat for any table which has headings, this will help
screen reader users if it is a long table, and anyone who needs to increase the font size
which might cause the table is split over two pages.
If a table has column headings, use a style for this row which includes bold text, this
helps the screen reader to identify them.
For example:
Table 1 Standard and Roman numerals
One

Two

Three

Four

Five

II

III

IV

5.1 Tables with text

Be careful when using tables to display text, make sure that things that are meant to be
read together are in the same cell. Screen reader programs can step through tables cell by
cell, across and down rows.

In the next table, the first row shows the right way to use table cells, the next 2 rows
shows the wrong way and the last row shows the order in which a screen reader user
would hear it.
Table 2 Nursery rhymes
Do it this way

Jack and Jill

Went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down
And broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.

Old King Cole

Was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he.
He called for his pipe
And he called for his bowl
And he called for his fiddlers three.

Dont do it this way

Jack and Jill

Went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down
And broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.
Jack and Jill
Old King Cole
Went up the hill
Was a merry old soul
To fetch a pail of water.
And a merry old soul was he.
Jack fell down
He called for his pipe
And broke his crown
And he called for his bowl
And Jill came tumbling after.
And he called for his fiddlers three.

Old King Cole

Was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he.
He called for his pipe
And he called for his bowl
And he called for his fiddlers three.

Otherwise a
screen reader will
read the rows out
of order like this

Take extra care if you dont have visible grid lines in the table as it may not be obvious
where the cell breaks are.
5.2 Dont use tabs to create columns or tables
For the same reason, never use tabs to make text look like a table or columns. Screen
reader programs will just read across rows a line at a time.
For example
Jack and Jill
Went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.

Old King Cole

Was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he.

This was created using tabs:

Jack and Jill
Went up the hill

Old King Cole

Was a merry old soul

To fetch a pail of water.

And a merry old soul was he.

and will be read by a screen reader as:

Jack and Jill Old King Cole Went up the hill Was a merry old soul To fetch a pail
of water. And a merry old soul was he.

6 Figures

Check that the author has provided descriptions of essential figures

There are two main types of figures in a MS Word document, those that are inserted as
pictures and those that are constructed using text boxes and arrows.
Both types may need a description, this should be discussed with the author or course
team.
See Description Guidelines for more information on how to describe figures.
6.1

Figures which are pictures

Add web alternative text if needed

For a figure which is a picture, you can add short descriptive text by right-clicking on the
image and choosing Format picture then the Web tab. Enter a few words in the
Alternative text box.
Note that the alt text is not visible or read out by a screen reader in the MS Word
document, but it will be read out when the document is converted to PDF.

Figure 1 S103 Block 2 Figure 9.1

This is only useful for very short descriptions as, although a screen reader can read them
out, they cannot be read interactively in the way that document text can. If the document
being created for disabled students, longer descriptions can be added after the caption for
a figure. If the document is to be used by all students, descriptions should be supplied in a
separate document.
6.2

Figures constructed using text boxes

Keep all boxes, lines and arrows which are part of the diagram within a single
canvas
6

Add a web alternative text description for all figures if this type

Screen reader programs will try to read any text which they find on the screen, including
words in text boxes. This is not usually helpful when text boxes are used for figures.
If care is not taken when constructing figures, a screen reader may read partial
information or may read it in an unexpected order, or it may not read it at all. What is
read out depends on the layout of the figure and its position in relation to the surrounding
text. It wont read lines or arrows or give any information about the positions of the
boxes. If you have any text boxes which are outside the main area of the figure, these are
sometimes read in MS Word as part of the next paragraph, causing additional confusion.
The most reliable way to avoid this is to construct figures using a program which can
save them in a picture format such as JPEG. However, this is often not desirable as
figures created this way may not look as sharp and may increase the size of the document
file.
Given that its not practical to use image files for these figures, the simplest way to avoid
confusion is to make sure that all of the boxes and arrows that are part of the figure are
contained within the canvas object. The figure should then behave in the same way as a
figure which is a picture; a screen reader will announce text box or something similar,
then ignore all the boxes and continue to read the rest of the page.
The canvas object is the background labelled Create your drawing here which MS
Word creates when you chooseInsert/Text box to start a new figure. (I have formatted
the canvas to have a border to make it easier to follow, this is not the usual setting.)
Add a web alternative text caption, even if its just Figure 1. To do this:
1

right-click on the canvas

select Format drawing canvas from the menu

select the Web tab and enter a short description, or Figure x in the Alternative
text box.

The description will not be read by a screen reader in MS Word, but it will be read in the
PDF version of the document. If you dont add even a simple description, all the text in
boxes will be read in the PDF file, causing confusion.
It is much quicker to add the description in MS Word than it is to fix the PDF file
afterwards.

A box about right

and left

A box about
something else

(created third)

A box about the left

A box about the right

(created first)

(created second)

More notes
here

Figure 2 Text boxes

There are more problems for this kind of figure when it is converted to PDF. Any text
boxes that are not completely inside the canvas will be read out, not necessarily in the
right part of the page. In Figure 3, one of the boxes has been dragged outside the canvas.
If there was no border round the canvas, it would not be obvious that this is significantly
different from Figure 2.
A box about right
and left

A box about
something else

(created third)

A box about the left

A box about the right

(created first)

(created second)

More notes
here

Figure 3 A text box outside the canvas

When reading this page in the PDF version, a screen reader user would hear the lines
above the figure then Figure 3 A text box outside the canvas . This would be followed
by the rest of the page then a stray sentence More notes here.

7 Finally
If you have followed the guidance given above, you are ready to save the file as RTF and
PDF.
7.1

To save as RTF
1 From the main menu choose File/Save As
2

In the box Save as type, choose Rich Text Format (RTF)

7.2

To save as PDF

7.2.1

Checking conversion settings

If you have the Adobe PDF maker plug-in, and you have not changed any settings since it
was installed, the conversion settings should be correct for creating accessible PDF
documents. If you are not sure whether the settings have been changed:
1

From the main menu choose Adobe PDF

Select Change conversion settings

Click on the Restore defaults button in the bottom left corner

Select Standard in the drop down box labelled Conversion settings

Click on OK to close the box.

If you need to change settings for other reasons, ask for technical help.
7.2.2

Creating the PDF file

From the main menu choose Adobe PDF

Choose Convert to Adobe PDF

If you havent saved the file, you will be asked to confirm that the converter can
save it

When prompted, change the file name if necessary and the conversion will
proceed.

8 Other resources
JISC/TechDIS - Authoring Accessible Documents