Accessible Electronic Documents

Electronic document formats also have accessibility features, similar to websites. Therefore, precautions for accessibility should be taken with any electronic course materials used.  

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word documents include the functionality to add alternate text to images.  To do so, in the Format Picture pane, visit the "Layout and Properties" tab and enter and expand the "Alt Text" option.  For long descriptions, enter the information in the "Description" field.  For short descriptions, you can enter the text into the "Title" field.  If text is entered into the "Title" field, users of screen readers will not see the long description in the "Description" field.  

PDF Accessibility

Accessibility of PDF files is a very complex topic, due to the flexibility of the file format.  Many PDF files are nothing more than a scanned image of a page.  As an image, there is no text available to an individual using assistive technology to access the content of the page, and therefore the entire document itself in not accessible.  When creating a PDF file from an image of text, it is necessary to run Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to add a layer of text underneath the image of the page.  Though the OCR process adds text that can be made accessible to users of assistive technologies, this digital process does not always detect the right text, and therefore the output of OCR must be checked to ensure the correct information is embedded within the file.  Once the correct information is ensured via manual check, complex PDF documents should also have a defined reading order.  This sets the order in which text and description (i.e. alt text) fields are read by the assistive technology, and therefore by the user of the assistive technology.  

When working with PDF files created by others, there are multiple ways to check for some of these accessibility features.  In Acrobat Reader, if you can select and copy the text into another application, it should be accessible to users of assistive technology.  If you would like to hear what users of assistive technology would hear, recent versions of Acrobat Reader include a "Read Out Loud" function in the "View" menu.  There are also additional "Accessibility" functions to assist with setup of the reading order of the document and access for assistive technologies in the "Edit" menu. 

More Information

For more information on Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat accessibility, please read the following articles at Webaim.org:

Microsoft Word Accessibility Links to an external site.

Adobe Acrobat Accessibility Links to an external site.

Hands-On with Web Accessibility

The assignment for Web Accessibility Evaluation has been provided as an opportunity to assess a website for accessibility and discuss your findings with other workshop attendees. Please complete this assignment if you are interested in acquiring the Credly badge.