Documents

Making documents accessible is an important, but sometimes overlooked part of digital accessibility. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) set up rules for making ALL digital content accessible. This includes digital documents like Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint slides, and PDFs. See the Accessible Document FAQs and Accessible Document Decision Tree for more guidance.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word provides a robust set of tools to help you to make your documents accessible. One of the tools is a built-in accessibility checker. Starting with an accessible Word document, also creates a more accessible PDF, requiring less remediation after the fact. We offer a Document Remediation Part 1 training course designed to teach you about making Word documents accessible.

Microsoft PowerPoint

Since PowerPoint is also a Microsoft product, it comes equipped with many of the same tools as Word for creating accessible slides. The Document Remediation Part 1 training covers these tools for PowerPoint including the built-in accessibility checker tool.

Accessible PDFs

You can create and export PDF files from other file formats or applications such as Word. Ensuring that these documents are accessible can be a big task. The Document Remediation Part 2 course covers PDF accessibility and how to remediate them in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.

Other Document Types

There are countless other types of documents out there that also need to be accessible to all. If you need guidance on your documents, please reach out to the Digital Accessibility Office. To get started, you can submit an online help request or email us.