Receiving a Word document that I can't read with my Screen Reader is not only frustrating, it remind me of how far we need to progress as a society to be more inclusive. Word documents are one of the more accessible document formats but do need you to take action to ensure they are accessible. There are three key tasks you can do to help ensure your Word documents are accessible:
- Add Alternative Text to Images
- Use Proper Heading Styles
- Use descriptive Link text
These are slight changes that once embedded into your routines will add minimal effort to the document authoring but will make a massive different to consumers of your document.
Read Word Accessibility - Blog - Finnberrys for more context and step-by-step instructions.
Thank you to Nikki Berry for the excellent blog post.
In the same way as sighted people can visually skim through headings, a screen reader user can bring up a list of headings and then jump to the section they want to read about. This only works though, if the headings are created properly. If you just format the text, a screen reader won't recognise it as a heading.
https://finnberrys.co.uk/Blog/blog-30-word-accessibility.html
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