Document Accessibility Cheatsheet

January 2017

Document Accessibility Cheatsheet

While not all-encompassing, here are some common things to check to make accessible documents.  Link to longer document with links, screenshots, and additional resources.

Alignments:

• Set custom tabs (don’t use tab multiple times for placement)
• Use left-alignment for blocks of text (don’t use justified)
• Set line & paragraph spacing for vertical space (don’t use “extra” returns)

Colors:

• Ensure font & background are high contrast between light & dark (don’t use similar colors together)
• View document colors in grayscale to ensure color differential (don’t use colors that look similar when viewed gray)
• Use text with color to convey important information (don’t use color alone to show important information)

Document Layout:

• Divide page with columns & sections (don’t use nested tables)
• Adjust margins (don’t use tables, text boxes and returns for placement)

Fonts:

• Best choices for blocks of text are: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica & Trebuchet (don’t use decorative fonts)
• Titles & headings 14 pt or larger may use serif or sans-serif fonts

Headings:

• Documents should be segmented with built in headings (don’t set font type, size, color, alignment on individual items to segment)
• Headings can be customized, but should follow good font & color selection processes

Images:

• Should have alternative text assigned to them that is descriptive (don’t default to the picture name)

Links:

• Purpose of link is clear from linked text, OR purpose is clear from context of text surrounding the linked text (don’t use “click here” or other ambiguous text)
• Text is linked that identifies what it is (don’t use the URL for both text and link)

Lists:

• When able, use lists to break up text (don’t use manual line breaks and add symbols)

This work by Melinda C Waffle - Calhoun Intermediate School District is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.