Tips for creating accessible documents

2 Apr 2021

About font types and size

  • Use familiar sans serif fonts such as Arial, Calibri or Verdana
  • Use a font size 11pt or larger.
  • Avoid using all capital letters and excessive italics or underlines

 

About structuring your text

  • Include ample white space between sentences and paragraphs
  • Use paragraphs and headings
  • Make use of bulleted lists

 

When adding visuals in your text

  • Add alt text to images, such as pictures, smart graphics, shapes, charts, icons, videos, and 3D models, so that screen readers can read the text to describe the image to users who cannot see the image.

    A so-called “thick description” helps to better understand the explanation: adding for instance feelings to actions in a certain context

 

Format of documents

  • Preference for Word above PDF to make use of text-to-speech/braille possible
  • If PDF is necessary, take this into account:
    • Be sure the source document (often created in Word) has taken above guidelines into account
    • The document title is viewable
    • Good contrast between text and back ground
    • All information is available for colour blind readers
    • The document contains bookmarks making it possible to navigate
    • Correct metadata

 

Accesibility checkers

You can use an accessibility checker, for instance in Microsoft Word (fill in ‘accessibility checker’ in the menu field ‘Tell me what you want to do…’) or Adobe Acrobat accessibility checker (PDF), to give insight about your documents.

[et_bloom_inline optin_id=”optin_3″]
word cloud referring to digital accessibilty
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Last updated: 02/04/21