Documents

Making documents accessible is an important, but sometimes overlooked part of digital accessibility. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and UNC policy has rules for ensuring ALL digital content is accessible. This includes digital documents like Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint slides, and PDFs. These documents must have specific structure, tags and labels to ensure they are readable by assistive technology.

UNC’s Digital Accessibility Office (DAO) provides documentation and training to help you make your documents accessible.

What Do I Do With a Document That’s Not Accessible?

1. Do site visitors need to download the document? If not, it would be easier to paste the document content into a web page.  Web pages have certain accessibility requirements of their own (headers, alt text for images, etc.) but these are often easier to address than document requirements.
2. If the document is going to be used digitally – sent out via email, placed on a website, etc., then it needs to be accessible.
   1. If someone else created the document, send it back to them and ask them to make it accessible. You might want to help them out and send them the link to this web page so they can learn about document accessibility requirements and find the resources listed here.
   2. If the original creator of the document won’t make it accessible then the website editor/administrator needs to do it before the document is added to the website.

External Resources

Word Documents

• WebAim, Microsoft Word Accessibility – this article outlines how to make Word documents more accessible on the web.
• Make your Word documents accessible by Microsoft
• Create Accessible Word Documents from Harvard

Google Documents

• Create Accessible Google Docs from Harvard

PDF Files

• WebAim, PDF Accessibility – this article outlines how to make PDF files more accessible on the web.
• WebAim, Word and PowerPoint Accessibility Evaluation Checklist
• Create and verify PDF accessibility using Acrobat Pro by Adobe
• Create accessible PDFs by Microsoft
• Create and verify PDF accessibility (Acrobat Pro) – provides a step-by-step method for analyzing existing PDF files and making them accessible
• Creating Accessible PDFs from Harvard
• PDF accessibility checklist provided by the Community College of Baltimore County.

PowerPoint Documents

• WebAim, PowerPoint Accessibility – this article outlines how to make PowerPoint files more accessible on the web.
• WebAim, Word and PowerPoint Accessibility Evaluation Checklist
• Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible by Microsoft
• Create Accessible PowerPoint Presentations from Harvard

Google Slides

• Create Accessible Google Slides from Harvard

Excel

• Make your Excel documents accessible by Microsoft

Multiple Resources

• Quick cheatsheets by the National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE) on how to make documents accessible.