Document headings identify the structure and content of your document. Although changing the font or size of text might allow a sighted reader to perceive divisions in the document, they do not aid in document navigation for screen readers or sighted readers.
With proper heading structure, all readers, sighted or not, can skip from heading to heading to get an idea about what the document contains, understand how the different sections relate to each other, and efficiently navigate to specific parts that they want to read. Without proper headings, a screen-reader user would be forced to read the entire document from beginning through to the end every time they wanted to find specific information on a page.
Use built-in heading styles from your authoring application to structure your document. In many applications, headings can also be used to create an interactive table of contents. For PDFs, document tags, not headings, provide a hidden document structure for screen readers. MS Word headings styles can be preserved and leveraged to create tags through MS Word to PDF file conversion.
After you incorporate headings into your document, you will want to review and specify the reading order. Reading order refers to the order in which elements are encountered by a screen reader. Reading order is sometimes referred to as tab order because navigating with the tab key will take you through the reading order. The goal is a logical reading order where elements are encountered in the desired sequence.
For content in English, left-aligned text is the most visually accessible layout for headings and body text. If you're using MS Word, the default justification setting is left-alignment. Preserve this format as much as possible.
Avoid fully justified text (text that is aligned with both the right and the left margins) because the extra white space between characters and words impairs readability.
To create whitespace in your document, use built-in formatting options such as page break, alignment, or column size instead of repeating blank characters using the Tab or Enter key.
Screen readers announce when they encounter blanks and the screen reader user may mistakenly believe that they have reached the end of a document and stop reading when they hear repeated blank characters, a particular risk when authors create new pages by repeatedly pressing the Enter key. To create a page break, simply press CTRL+Enter.
Page numbers also aid in document navigation. To include page numbers in your document, use built-in pagination tools that allow you to format the location and appearance of page numbers. These built-in pagination tools also include options to have different number formats applied to different sections of your document, this is especially useful if your document contains front matter.
San-serif fonts, such as Work Sans or Verdana, are fonts that do not include additional decorative markings for characters. San-serif fonts are visually simpler than serif fonts, and therefore, more readable and accessible.
Work Sans is the new branded NorQuest College font and should be your default font for text documents.
Bold or colour alone should not be used to emphasize text. Using colour alone is inaccessible for readers with colour blindness and using bold alone is inaccessible to screen readers.
Neither MS PowerPoint nor Foxit Phantom PDF provide style options for accessible emphasis. However, you can use MS Word style options to mark content with emphasis or strength.
Remember to:
Tables can be a visually attractive and efficient option for presenting data with a logical relationship to your readers. Tables can also be accessible to screen readers if you:
Screen readers can only announce cell contents one cell at a time, and screen reader users cannot visually track what the column heading is for a cell. Cell contents without context quickly lose meaning. By repeating header rows, screen readers can announce the header for the column along with the cell contents telling the reader what type of information they are encountering. Including a table summary and keeping the structure simple also helps screen reader users to more easily track the cell contents.
Lists are another attractive and efficient option to present related information to your readers. You can use built-in list tools to include a bulleted or numbered list in your document.
List format tools provide information to screen readers about the relationship between list items. If you manually type and format your numbered list, screen readers simply encounter a paragraph containing numerals and may not understand they are reading a list or how items relate to one another.
When including a link in a document, do not copy and paste a destination directly into your document. Instead, write a description of the link contents and then hyperlink the destination to the descriptive text. Never use "click here" as your link description.
Note that a destination may refer to a URL, a file on your computer, a different location in the document, or a new e-mail message.
When you insert a hyperlink correctly, your linked text will be automatically underlined and formatted in a different colour than regular text. This formatting tells your reader where to click.
Additionally, screen reader users can use the [Tab] key to ignore regular text and jump between hyperlinks, only hearing the linked text. For this reason, the text of a link should describe the content of the link, even when read out of context with the rest of the sentence.
Colour contrast refers to the difference between the foreground colour (font) and the background colour. The font colour must be sufficiently different from the background colour for the text to be readable by a wide audience.
Most estimates suggest that about 8% of males and 0.5% of females have some form of colour-blindness, ranging from an inability to see colour at all to minor deficiencies in seeing specific colours. When you deviate from black text on a white background, ensure your colour selections for font and background have a minimum contrast of 4.5:1. The same standard applies to contrast ratios for images containing text.
You can use Web AIM’s Color Contrast Checker to check your colour contrasts.
The Web AIM Color Contrast Checker will ask you to enter your foreground (text) color and background color in RGB hexadecimal format, a system that identifies colours with a 6-digit combination of numbers (0-9) and the first 6 letters of the alphabet (A-F) preceded by a pound sign.
If your materials adhere to the NorQuest College visual identity guidelines, you can find HEX values for our brand colours on page 24 of the Brand Book If you’re not using branded colours, Web Aim includes an eye dropper tool with their Color Contrast Checker. You can use the eyedropper to “sample” any colour and have a HEX value automatically generated.
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