Summary
The automated accessibility checking tool included in Microsoft Office applications does not adequately identify accessibility issues. This document provides a list of items for manual review for Microsoft Word. (Related articles covering other Microsoft Office applications will be added as their documentation is completed. This article may link to other articles for further explanation.)
Mandatory
The following must be checked to ensure accessibility:
- Headings must be properly formatted and nested.
- Data Tables must have a header row. Microsoft Word no longer identifies missing header rows as an issue.
- Images must be reviewed to assess their alternative text:
- If an image has alternative text, it must be appropriate to the image and context.
- All automatically generated alternative text must be reviewed for accuracy and appropriateness.
- If an image will not have alternative text, it must be marked as 'decorative.'
- If an image would require a large amount of alternative text, it should be supported by additional explanation, adjacent to the image, in the body of the document.
Desirable
The following should be checked:
- Wherever feasible, hyperlinks should be rendered using descriptive text that's linked to the URL. If the document will be used in print form, the URL may need to be visible. If it is intended to only be used in digital form, a descriptive word or phrase should be linked.
- Logical flow of the document. Does it make sense? Do the headings make sense? Is the document clearly written? Are there typos? Etc.
- Reading order of the document. Related to, but not the same as logical flow: Would a person with limited mobility or who reads only using assistive technology get the right information in the right order?
- Tables used for layout should be reviewed, and reformatted in some other way if it's feasible.
- Tabular data that's not presented in a Microsoft Word table (for example, aligned using tab stops) should be reviewed to determine if it can be turned into a table.
- Spaces used for vertical alignment should be replaced by tabs and tabstops. Excess spaces can be a problem for some text-to-speech software, and can add navigation challenges for people with mobility or motor-control issues.
- Word Text Boxes should be removed wherever possible. They pose navigation problems in Word for users with mobility or motor control issues, and are often rendered at unexpected positions in the document's reading order. It's very rare that the purpose of a text box can't be better fulfilled using other formatting features, such as paragraph borders.
- Underline should not be used for formatting. Underlined text in a PDF or Word document is often parsed by users as a broken hyperlink. Instead, rely on bold or italic.
- Underlined blanks (for example, in form fields) should be created using underlined tabs. If they are created using the underscore character (shift-hyphen), or by underlining space characters, some text-to-speech software can read them aloud as the word "underscore", repeated for each space or underscore character.
- Form field labels should not be below the field. For text fields, the label should be to the left or above; for checkboxes and radio buttons, they should be to the right. They should never be below.
Tips for Manual Review
Note that some of these tips below will not be useful for everyone. Use them as they benefit you.
- Toggle "Show/Hide" to make formatting markup visible. On the Home tab in the Microsoft Word ribbon bar, click the paragraph symbol (ΒΆ) in the Paragraph group to show paragraph, tab, table cell and (optionally) space characters.
- Turn on the Navigation pane to see the heading structure of your document. On the View tab in the Microsoft Word ribbon bar, find the Show group and select Navigation Pane. You can use it to navigate the document, but also to see the document's logical structure (also called semantic structure).
- Switch to Outline View to see the document as an outline. On the View tab in the Microsoft Word ribbon bar, find the Views group and click Outline. This can be helpful if you need to reorganize a document that's either very long, or which has a complex structure. Note that it hides images and some other kinds of formatting, so you may not want to use it for regular editing.
- Add commonly used features to your Quick Access toolbar.