Most people who work in colleges regardless of their role produce Word documents. They are used to create learning and teaching material, to produce information about services, to communicate information across the organisation. There is a legal obligation for colleges to ensure that no-one is disadvantaged because of a disability, to anticipate the needs of people who might be accessing your information and your services and to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate their needs. One simple thing that everyone can do to meet these obligations is to ensure that the material that they create using Microsoft Office is created inclusively, doing so will ensure that it is accessible to a wide range of people who use assistive technologies or who have difficulty accessing text based information. This presentation will highlight some simple ways to make your documents accessible using Word 2010 and how well designed Word documents can be converted into accessible PDFs.

1. Creating Inclusive Information
Margaret McKay
Jisc RSC Scotland

2. How do you know if the information
you create is accessible?

3. Model of Accessibility Maturity
Where are you?

4. About You
What area of practice do you work in at your
organisation?
1. Inclusion/equalities/learner advisor?
2. Lecturer/curriculum?
3. Quality?
4. Student services?
5. Marketing?
6. Other?

5. Creating Inclusive Information
Ten Top Tips

6. Can you think of the barriers that might prevent
students accessing your information?
A group of 1st year students were asked about difficulties that
they experienced accessing course or other online material
What do you think that they said? Please enter your thoughts in the text pane.

7. • Headaches/discomfort if text is too small or too close together.
• The information on the screen is too small to see.
• Bold print leaves a shadow when I try to read it.
• Because of my dyslexia the words keep jumping around the screen.
• I lose my place on the line when reading dense chunks of text.
• Not all of the content can be seen on my screen if magnified.
• The vocabulary is very difficult/unfamiliar.
• I forget the information if sentences are too long.
• I can’t adjust the font and colour backgrounds to suit my personal
preferences..
• Information not accessible with my assistive technology.
• I can’t hear the audio information because of my hearing loss.

8. Serif Font Styles are less accessible
Times New Roman (abc DEF)
Sans Serif Fonts Styles are more accessible
Trebuchet (abc DEF)
Comic Sans (abc DEF)
Arial (abc DEF)
Verdana (abc DEF)
Helvetica (abc DEF)
Geneva (abc DEF)
Calibri (acb DEF)

9. Text should be no smaller than 12 point.
Many people find 1.5 line spacing more comfortable.

10. Ensure all text is left aligned, not justified

11. Using Bullets and Numbering
• Using bulleting or numbered lists helps break
up large blocks of text and makes lists of items
easier to read. This is most useful for print
impaired readers in particular for people with
dyslexia,
• Putting a punctuation mark at the end of each
item list helps blind people who use screen
readers to identify items on the list instead of
hearing a long list of text.

12. http://tiny.cc/colour

13. Don’t use colour alone to convey information

14. Don’t use colour alone to convey information

15. Adding alt text to images provides information
for assistive technology users
• Right click your
image and select
format.
• Choose the format
picture/alt text.
• Add an alt text that
describes the image.

16. Alt Text Descriptions
“It’s important to
have description of
images to help a
visually impaired
person imagine what
that image could be“
“Alt text gives me
the idea of what
the image, is not
just a massive gap
when the screen
reader is reading
back.“
Listen to what Jennifer a 2nd year university student (and screen reader user)
has to say about the importance of alt text descriptions
http://tiny.cc/AltText

17. Use Heading Styles
Microsoft ® Word has an inbuilt structuring system for heading styles which should
be used when creating any document

18. What do you think are the
accessibility benefits of using built
in heading styles?

19. Accessibility Benefits of Heading Styles
http://tiny.cc/Navigation

20. Heading Styles
“As a screen
reader user it is
important for me
to have heading
structure in a
Word document.“
“very time consuming
scrolling down
continuously not
knowing and
listening to
information you don’t
want to know about. “
Student
perspective
http://tiny.cc/Headings
“Without heading
styles in electronic
documents, it is
difficult for me to
read & often I am
the one spending
time making my
course work
accessible “

21. Accessible Tables
• Tables are read by screen reading software from left to right.
• One of the most important factors in the creation of accessible
tables is the manner in which the information is presented. It is
important to understand what the objective or learning outcome
for your table is. If the reading order is considered, fewer issues
should occur.
e.g. in the table above the default reading order would be from left to right, row by row.
Name Age Height (cm) Asraa 24 152 Mike 37 187…….

22. If the objective was to work out the mean age of all participants,
this layout might be more appropriate. Here the default reading
order would be as follows:
Name Asraa Mike Jane Annita Age 24 37 42 65 Height (cm) 152
187 163 170.

23. Tables
Let's pretend that you are a screen reader for just a
moment. You're going to a web site to find information.
The info you need is presented in tabular information,
and this is what you hear…..
Table with 10 columns and 7 rows. Department Code, Class Number,
Section, Max Enrollment, Current Enrollment, Room Number, Days,
Start Time, End Time, Instructor, BIO, 100, 1, 15, 13, 5, Mon,Wed,Fri,
10:00, 11:00, Magde, 100, 2, 15, 7, 5, Tue,Thu, 11:00, 12:30, Indge,
205, 1, 15, 9, 6, Tue,Thu, 09:00, 10:30, Magde, 315, 1, 12, 3, 6,
Mon,Wed,Fri, 13:00, 14:00, Indge, BUS, 150, 1, 15, 15, 13,
Mon,Wed,Fri, 09:00, 10:00, Roberts, 210, 1, 10, 9, 13, Mon,Wed,Fri,
08:00, 09:00, Rasid.
Do you know were biology 205 is supposed to be?
Ref: webaim – accessible tables. http://webaim.org/techniques/tables/

24. Adding table headings, alt text
and captions to tables
• Click anywhere in the table.
• Go to the design or tables tab (Office 2010 for Windows) at the
top of the page.
• Check the Header Row check box for the First Column and/or
First Row.
• Type your column headings.

25. Adding alt text to tables
• Highlight the whole table.
• Right click and select table
properties.
• Select alt text option.
• Add a description of the
table.
http://tiny.cc/AccessibleTables

26. Accessible Hyperlinks
http://www.collegedevelopmentnetwork.ac.uk/news-access/
free-webinar-accessible-information-using-microsoft-
word
You could use a tinyurl or tiny.cc to create a bespoke link
e.g. http://tiny.cc/AccessibleWord

27. Which is the most inclusive way of
presenting hyperlinks?
1. Click here to view the accessible word webinar.
2. Click here to view the accessible word webinar.
3. Click here to view the accessible word webinar.

28. Hyperlinks should make sense out of context
Especially important for screen reader users who can
opt to listen to hyperlinks as a summary of information.
The links need to make sense out of context.
2. Click here to view the
accessible word webinar.

29. Accessibility Checker in Word

30. Converting an accessible MS Word document to PDF

31. Adobe Reader
From a user's viewpoint the following functionalities
in Adobe Reader offers the following benefits:
• The ability to navigate via bookmarks.
• The ability to read the text out loud.
• The ability to magnify text.
• The ability to reflow text so that when it magnifies
sentences are not lost ‘off the page
• The ability to change the text and background colours.
• The ability to automatically scroll through the
document and therefore access it without mouse
interaction.

32. Accessibility Features of
Adobe Reader
http://tiny.cc/AdobeReaderAccess

33. Provide Information in
Alternative Formats
Offer a tagline in your information e.g.
Edinburgh University.
'if you require this document in an alternative format, such
as large print or a coloured background, please contact…..’
http://tiny.cc/EdUniAltFormat

34. Provide Information in
Alternative Formats
Learn how to use free and easy to use
technologies such as Balabolka to produce
mp3/audio versions of text based information
’this information is also available as an audio file which
can be accessed at the bottom of this document’
http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx/balabolka

35. Provide Information in
Alternative Formats
Ensure that any audio/visual information is
provided with captioning (or at least a text
based alternative) to describe what is being
said to those who might have difficulty
hearing it.
http://tiny.cc/CaptionYouTube

36. Techdis Toolbox
http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx

37. Technology
Working with Windows
Working with Mac OSX
Mobile Phones
Tablet Devices
Using the Web
Free Software
Assistive Technologies

38. Useful links
• Creating Accessible Material (2013), Jisc Techdis [online]
http://tiny.cc/AccDoc (accessed 1st December 2014).
• Creating Accessible Documents in MS Word 2010: a comprehensive
guide, (2013). Jisc Techdis [online] http://tiny.cc/Access-Word
(accessed 1st December 2014).
• Accessibility for online content, (2014). Portland Community
College, [online] http://tiny.cc/PortlandAccess (accessed 1st
December 2014).
• Accessible Word How To videos by Techdis -
http://tiny.cc/AccessibleDocumentsHow (accessed 1st December
2014)

39. Useful links
• Adobe Acrobat PDF plug in or the Save as PDF feature in MS
word -http://tiny.cc/Word2PDF. (accessed 1st December
2014)
• Adobe Acrobat Pro has a series of action wizards one of
which takes you through the process of creating accessible
PDFs - http://tiny.cc/accessPDFwizard. (accessed 1st
December 2014)
• Using the Accessibility Check in Adobe Acrobat highlights
any major accessibility issues with your document -
http://tiny.cc/PDFAccessCheck. (accessed 1st December
2014)

40. Creating Inclusive Information
Margaret McKay
Jisc RSC Scotland