Creating Accessible Microsoft Word & WordPerfect Documents by Using Markup

When most of us hear the words “electronic accessibility,” we think in terms of Web pages, forgetting that virtually all our computer-generated documents--from Microsoft Word to PDFs--exist initially in electronic form. This means that considering accessibility from the outset of constructing even our simplest memos, minutes, and other working documents needs to be part of our daily workflow in order to ensure full electronic accessibility.

The most commonly used form of assistive technology available to read word-processed (also known as “real-text” documents) to people with disabilities is the screen reader. Screen readers are designed to recognize real-text and read it in audio form to its users—most commonly people with visual impairments or learning disabilities.

In this tutorial, you will become familiar with a tool used to give a recognizable--and accessible--structure to many forms of electronic documents, a tool known as "markup." This tutorial focuses specifically on the use of markup as it is available for use in the construction of Microsoft Word and WordPerfect documents. Using markup in word-processed documents is a practice important to ensuring the accessibility of the PDFs and Web pages we commonly generate from Word or WordPerfect documents, since markup carries over into these other formats.

Background

When we create documents in Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, few of us give much thought to how we create the layout of our document. Features such as font type, size, color and emphasis tend to be managed one element at a time and we change them according to our personal preferences. In similar fashion, when we create document headings, tables or lists, most of us give little thought to how those organizational elements are produced—we just want their status to be visible to readers in the layout of the document.

The problem is that while customizing the title and headings of your word-processed documents by choosing, for instance, a Charlesworth font type, in the color purple and emphasized by a bold italic style is visible to the sighted reader, such text characteristics are not readily recognizable to some assistive technologies or their users.

Similarly, when we construct lists point by point, using only indentations and carriage returns, the white space that gets created visibly communicates the organization of the information listed to the sighted user. The organizational use of white space, however, does not get communicated to the user with a disibility who requires assistive technology, and the organization of information is lost in a lengthy, unbroken ribbon of words.

When assistive technologies such as screen readers encounter text that has been styled using the font format feature shown above--or a list that has been organized by using white space & carriage returns-- the fact that the styling represents an organizational element or emphasis is missed by the person using it. The result is the user of assistive technology does not have access to important information that both helps navigate the content of the document and prioritizes specific pieces of information over others within the document. As mentioned earlier, this is true not only of the original, word-processed document, but of any PDF or Web page created from that document.

Using Structural Markup

The solution that best addresses the accessibility issues posed by word-processed documents is the use of pre-formatted styling called “structural markup.” While markup is commonly associated with web pages, our word processing software uses a version of it as well. What markup does is it assigns a specific status to a portion of text—it elevates it to an “element” such as a header, a first-or second-level heading, sections, or a numbered list.

Use “Styles & Formatting” function in Microsoft Word

 

Use “Styles” function in WordPerfect

Because assistive technologies can quickly identify and sort these elements within a document, using markup to create your headings, lists and sections from the outset of your work goes a long way to making an accessible document.

As you can see in the example below, while sighted readers can visually perceive the organizational hierarchy of department name, personnel name and job title, without markup, someone using a screen reader to read this document would not easily differentiate between the department name and job title of a given person—and would spend a lot of time going back over the list to identify which title belonged to who.

Example 1: A Word-processed Document with no Structural Markup

What a sighted person sees: Online Services Warbler, Red Director Crane, Sandy Information technology Bunting, Indigo Web design Communications Falcon, Perry Editor Finch, Rebecca Project assistant Eagle, Goldy Web design Spring, Robin Webmaster

What a screen reader reads aloud: Online Services Warbler, Red Director Crane, Sandy Information technology Bunting, Indigo Web design Communications Falcon, Perry Editor Finch, Rebecca Project assistant Eagle, Goldy Web design Spring, Robin Webmaster

Simply by electing to use a formatted heading rather than the font format feature, you can create a more fully accessible electronic document that will carry over these marked-up elements into PDF document or Web page formats.

 

Example 2: A Word-processed Document using Structural Markup

Because screen readers can sort by headings, use of pre- or custom-formatted headings make text documents more accessible, saving their users a lot of time.

What a sighted person sees:

Online Services Warbler, Red Director Crane, Sandy Information Technology Bunting, Indigo Web design Communications Falcon, Perry Editor Finch, Rebecca Project assistant Eagle, Goldy Web design Spring, Robin Webmaster

 

What a screen reader reads aloud: Heading Level One: Online Services Heading Level Three: Warbler, Red Director Heading Level Three: Crane, Sandy Information technology Heading Level Three: Bunting, Indigo Web design Heading Level One: Communications Heading Level Three: Falcon, Perry Editor Heading Level Three: Finch, Rebecca Project assistant Heading Level Three: Eagle, Goldy Web design Heading Level Three: Spring, Robin Webmaster

In addition to providing the document’s user with clearly labeled headings and subheadings, structural markup allows a screen reader to quickly identify information that shares equal organizational status (in this example, departments or names) by doing a sort of the headings encoded into the document. A screen reader might thus report to its user “There are two level one headings: Online Services, Communication. There are seven level two headings,” etc.

Customizing Structural Markup

Some people that use markup prefer to customize their personal preferences into their own formatted styles. If, for instance, you wanted to create a special heading level called “Custom Heading 1,” just open the “Styles & Formatting” selection under the Format menu in Word, then select the “New Style” button to walk through your options in creating your new heading. For customization in WordPerfect, select the “Quick Styles” option under the Format Menu.

This feature allows you to capture those personal preferences—the purple, bold, italicized Charlesworth 16 point font, for instance—and assign them the status of a heading, making it more accessible to assistive technologies like the screen reader. One additional, but relatively unknown feature of both Microsoft Word and WordPerfect, is that they allow users to import styles from external documents, and to incorporate them into a customized style.

In a fashion similar to the markup for headers and headings, Microsoft Word provides markup for pre-formatted bulleted and numbered list styles, reducing user reliance on whitespace to organize the information in lists. This contributes significantly to the accessibility of the document, since assistive technologies like the screen reader can quickly identify and sort through lists of information on the basis of their organizational status. This type of markup is not supported in WordPerfect.

Using Microsoft Word's numerically-ordered and bulleted pre-formatted lists is an additional tool we can use to make our Word documents accessible when they're converted to PDFs and Web pages.

In summary, using structural markup in Word and WordPerfect documents is a good example of how people who may not have any knowledge of coding and design for the Web can make a significant contribution to making electronic documents accessible for all. If you use graphs, charts, pictures and other images in your word-processed documents, check out our Alt-Text description tutorial to find out how to make those images accessible to persons using assistive technologies. For additional accessibility features of Microsoft Word, including how to easily add alt-text to images, visit our page on the Accessibilty Features of Microsoft Word.