How do you create accessible documents? And what has Microsoft been up to?

Accessibility
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In the digital world, it’s important to create content for people who might have a vision impairment or might not use a mouse to navigate through a web page or people who have difficulty reading a lot of text on a page.

It starts with changing how we use the software we use at work. For example, did you know you can turn on and use the in-built accessibility checker from the search bar in your Office suites?

These short videos from Microsoft show you how to make your work accessible.

*** Accessibility 101: Introduction to disability and accessibility with Microsoft**
*** Creating accessible documents in Word (7 videos in the series)**
*** Creating accessible presentations in PowerPoints (5 videos in the series)**
*** Creating accessible workbooks in Excel (3 videos in the series)**
*** Creating accessible emails in Outlook (3 videos in the series)**

You can test your content for screen readability using the device’s virtual assistant or programs like the NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA).
*** Apple **
*** Google**
*** Microsoft**
*** NVDA**

We hope you found the resources useful. We’d love to hear about your go-to resources to improve visual accessibility!

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These are great :slight_smile: I find the WCAG guidelines are really helpful too, as accessibility covers a lot :slight_smile: Automated testing tools are a great starting point but they don’t always catch everything. I’m a little biased - but I think user research with a diverse range of people is the best way to uncover when our work could put up barriers.

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Hi Jess,

Welcome to the community!

Thank you for your post. Yes, what you wrote is in line with all subject matter experts we consulted with. They said accessibility should be considered at all stages and by all roles. That means from user research to content design to quality assurance. The last of which includes automated testing tools and even then, they suggest using a combination of them to find and resolve as many issues as possible.

While we are on the topic of accessibility testing, Vision Australia has helped us by putting together this list:

Cheers.

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