Microsoft Accessibility Checkers: What They Won't Catch

Summary

Microsoft Accessibility Assistant tools (included in Microsoft Office applications) don't always adequately identify accessibility problems. This document provides a list of items known to fail. See related manual review checklists for Word, Powerpoint, and Excel. 

What Accessibility Assistant Will Catch

Word

  • Successfully identifies color contrast issues and facilitates corrections
  • Usually provides a checklist of images that identifies missing alt text and facilitating manual review of alt text quality.
  • Document Access is simply a status indicator; it is successfully assessed, but its value has no bearing on accessibility.

PowerPoint

  • Appears to complete most checks successfully.

Excel

  • Successfully identifies color contrast issues and facilitates corrections
  • Usually provides a checklist of images that identifies missing alt text and facilitating manual review of alt text quality.
  • Checks existing table structures for presence of a header row. (Note that it would be difficult to make an Excel table that did not have a header row.)

What It May Not Catch

Word

  • Fails to recognize any issues with tables.
  • Fails to recognize any issues with document structure.
  • Sometimes fails to recognize newly-inserted images. You should manually review any new images you insert

PowerPoint

  • Reading order and alt-text checkpoints can be cleared accidentally. You should double-check manually.

Excel

  • Most issues critical for Excel accessibility are not checked by the Accessibility Assistant.
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