What Can You Do to Make A Document More Accessible for People with Disabilities?

Submitted by Tom on Mon, 10/05/2009 - 21:57

I receive documents of all formats on a daily basis. In many cases, these documents could easily be made much more accessible for people with disabilities with very little effort. I put together a checklist you could run through when you are done editing your document. See how much of a difference you can make in a matter of minutes. Better yet, once you get used to doing it, it will become second nature.

Spell-check your document. It not only enhances the quality of your work, but people with screen readers will not hear words they can't easily identify.
Set the document language. People who use screen readers will hear your document in the language it was written.
Describe all pictures. Not all people can see the pictures you have in your document, but you have surely put them there for a reason. It does not apply to decorative images, but describe anything which will enhance understanding your document.
Make sure different sections are clearly separated. It makes a huge difference for people with cognitive disabilities, but makes it easy for anybody to quickly find information.
If the document is large, use a table of contents. It helps people who have difficulties using the keyboard to quickly jump to a section, but again, it helps all people to quickly find information.
When you use forms, make sure mandatory fields are not only indicated by color, also use "*" or the word "required".

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These are great tips for

Submitted by HTML Basic Tutor (not verified) on Mon, 10/05/2009 - 23:50.

These are great tips for everyone, not just in consideration for those with disabilities.

Your points also add usability to the document.

These are awesome tips. I

Submitted by Doug C. (not verified) on Tue, 10/06/2009 - 00:01.

These are awesome tips. I didn't know there was a program that would read aloud the words on a page. Yes, I live under a rock.

Accessibility of documents apart from web pages

Submitted by Rob Auglend (not verified) on Tue, 10/06/2009 - 03:20.

Does this list also apply to downloadable documents on our website? We have a number of pdfs and word documents on our site, and I was wondering if it's also necessary to make those files accessible.

Thanks for feedback

Submitted by Tom on Tue, 10/06/2009 - 10:09.

Thank you for the feedback, I'm glad you found it useful.

Accessibility of downloadable documents

Submitted by Tom on Tue, 10/06/2009 - 10:14.

Rob,

It depends on your web site. Of course, it is always a good idea to make any documents accessible. However, it is a must when Section 508 or WCAG for example applies to your web site. In this case your documents will fall under the same requirements your web site does.
For more information, please see:
accessibility of documents on the web.

A good starting point

Submitted by Rob Hueniken (not verified) on Tue, 10/06/2009 - 14:59.

Thanks for posting these ideas for making articles more accessible.

I shall do some thinking about this and see what can be done better in my own articles.

Cheers!

Thanks

Submitted by Tracy (not verified) on Tue, 10/06/2009 - 15:02.

Thanks for the tips! It's so easy to forget not everyone sees our sites the same way we do.

Interesting

Submitted by Roschelle (not verified) on Tue, 10/06/2009 - 20:26.

It's really interesting how we take things as simple as reading documents for granted. Good post on enlightening people about making info more accessible for the disabled.

Excellent information

Submitted by Rick Castelini (not verified) on Tue, 10/06/2009 - 23:42.

As a physical therapist and computer trainer who works with disabled folks of all types, great information to keep in mind. Thanks.

I have known to describe

Submitted by Talen (not verified) on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 01:05.

I have known to describe pictures and such but I never knew about setting the document language and to be honest I don;t think I even know how to do that. If writing in English is that an automatic thing or something I must do to ensure that the language is set to English?

Document language

Submitted by Tom on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 09:00.

Talen,

This is a good question. It really depends what kind of document you are editing. Microsoft Word for example uses a default language. But for example when you create an HTML document, you have to set the default language.

I never thought of setting

Submitted by Dipankar Kuzzuk Subba (not verified) on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 00:10.

I never thought of setting the document language. Nice post.

See you around at pb.com

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