1

Document Accessibility Basics

Documents contain many potential accessibility barriers for people with disabilities and must be designed intentionally to prevent such problems from occurring. 

This checklist will get you started in designing accessible documents from the beginning and avoid costly and time-consuming remediation. Refer to resources below to learn how to apply accessibility to different document applications.

Getting Started

Who Benefits

Accessible documents benefit everyone, including people with disabilities. For example:

  • Meaningful document structure: Clear headings and lists help people using screen readers or mobile devices.
  • Adequate color contrast: Good contrast makes text easier to read for people with visual impairments, or for anyone in a poorly lit environment.
  • Plain language: Simple, clear writing helps people with cognitive differences and disabilities.
  • Text equivalents for images and graphics: Alternative text and descriptions help people who can't see the images understand the content.
  • Built-in styles and formatting tools: Consistent formatting ensures that everyone receives the information as intended.

How to Do It

Before you start creating or editing a document, ask yourself a few questions:

  • Does this need to be a document? HTML web pages are easier to make accessible and could be a good alternative.
  • Do I have a legal requirement to keep this as a document?
  • Can this document be made accessible? If not, you may need to recreate it or use special software.
  • Is this document still widely used? If not, consider deleting it.

Use the Document vs. Web Pages guide to help you figure out what format is best for your content.

Think About Your Content

Content should be useful, usable, unique, and credible. Before creating new content, it can be helpful to:

  • Identify your audience. Knowing who you're writing for will help you create valuable and actionable content.
  • Research. Make sure your topic hasn't already been covered to avoid creating duplicate content.

Digital Document Best Practices

  • Use a minimum of 11-12 point font for all body text.
  • Use a minimum line height of 1.5.
  • Use an easy-to-read, brand-approved sans serif font for all body text.
  • Use adequate color contrast between all text elements and their backgrounds, as well as between all graphic elements and their backgrounds.
  • Don't fully justify, center, or use italics for blocks of paragraph text.
    • Text that is fully justified aligns each line of text with each side of the page to create a perfect column of text. This can create inconsistent spaces between words, which may be difficult for some users to read.
    • Blocks of centered text can be difficult to read because each line may start and end in a different place.
    • Blocks of italic text may become difficult to read for some users.
  • Only use images when they add value to your document. Avoid using images for decoration. Doing this will also help minimize the final file size of your document.
  • Use alternative text to briefly describe images, graphs, and other non-text objects to allow blind and low vision users to interpret visual information the same way that sighted users do.
    • Images that are purely decorative, such as a stylized line that separates two sections of text, should be given a null tag in the field for alt text. This will tell screen readers that the image does not have important information and can therefore be skipped and not read aloud. (A null tag can be added by adding two sets of double quotation marks in a row to the alternative text field with no space in between. For example: "").
    • Images and graphs that require a lengthier description than regular alt text need to have the same information from the image or graph available in another format for blind and low vision users to access.
    • Visit our guide to images for more information about alt text for complex images.
  • Use descriptive and meaningful text when creating links so that users understand the unique purpose of the link. For example, the words “click here” are meaningless out of context, such as if a screen reader user navigates to the link without reading the surrounding text.
    • Use parentheses after the link to indicate the format of the link, for example, (PDF) or (Google Slides). 
  • Don’t use color alone to convey meaning or emphasis. 
    • For example, if you want to emphasize one line of text that is really important, it is okay to change the text color to red, as long as you also indicate the importance in another way, such as by adding an asterisk, or writing the word “important.” Even in this case, it is still necessary to use adequate color contrast between foreground and background colors.
  • Don’t underline non-link text. Underlines are a visual indicator for hyperlinks, so users may assume that a hyperlink is present but broken if they see an underline that is not clickable. 
  • Only use tables to organize tabular data. Do not use tables as a method of creating structure for text on a webpage. 
    • Use columns to create structure for non-tabular data.

Page Structure

All document content must be both visually accessible and accessible to be read by a machine because screen reader users will access the content of a page by listening to each element read out loud by their device. It is important to use the official element styles that exist within document creation applications so that everyone can interpret the elements of the page correctly. 

Word Processor Ribbon Menu

The ribbon menu bar in Google Docs indicating font and paragraph formats.
  • Designate all headings with the appropriate heading element tag, which can be found in the ribbon menu of most word processing applications.
  • Apply appropriate document hierarchy, starting with Heading 1 (also written as H1) and using other heading elements in chronological order afterwards. This structure will allow screen readers to interpret the correct reading order of the document. It will also encourage document creators to think about how content should be logically structured.
    • Each document should only have one H1 heading. Subsequent heading levels can be repeated.
    • Do not skip any heading levels. For example, an H3 will always be nested below an H2. Do not skip from H1 to H3 because of the visual effect of these styles.
  • All other page elements should also be semantically indicated. For example, if you create a list, be sure that you use a real list, selected from the ribbon toolbar, such as a bulleted list or numbered list. Creating the visual appearance of a list without semantically designating it as a list will cause problems for some users.
  • Visit the accessible page structure page for more information.

Quick Tips and Common Missteps to Avoid

  • Share data in multiple formats. For example, if you use a graph in your document, consider adding a table with the same information.
  • When exporting your document to another format, make sure to preserve the semantic structure.
  • Share data in multiple ways. For example, if you include a chart, consider adding a table with the same information.
  • Avoid sharing proprietary documents publicly, as not everyone has the software to open them.

Tips Based on Document Type