Demystifying Accessibility: Text Documents
Be it text books or research articles, course policies or assignment instructions, text documents make up a huge portion of the course materials students encounter. As such, the ability to read all of that text in an accurate and efficient way is crucial for student success.
The problem comes in when the student is capable, but unable to read the required materials due to outside factors they can’t control. This is where the accessibility of the text comes into play.
What counts as a Text Based Document?
Most file formats and digital platforms call for the same accessibility standards, but there are some minor differences that are important to note. The primary documents that we’ll be focusing on today are PDF documents and rich text files such as .docx and .rtf.
Lastly, this guide is built around searchable text specifically. Scanned images of a document, or flattened text documents, do not count as text as they can not be “read” by a computer program. If you can select the text in any way, such as to copy and paste it, then it is searchable text and not an image of text.
Images of text are inherently inaccessible, and should be converted to searchable text using optical character recognition (OCR) before applying any of the other accessibility features.
Assistive Technology
There are a variety of assistive technologies that function to make text documents more accessible, often in different ways. Throughout this guide, we will often reference one or more of these tools and discuss how they specifically interact with the text.
- Text-to-Speech (TTS) Software: These tools are primarily for users who can see well enough but struggle with reading specifically. They read aloud digital text to help improve focus and reading comprehension.
- Screen Readers: This software is paired with either a speech synthesizer or braille display to let blind or visually impaired users access digital text. They tend to be more comprehensive and include navigation capabilities that TTS software lacks.
- Braille Displays: Where some screen readers simply read text aloud, blind or visually impaired users may prefer to read the digital text themselves using braille. This hardware translates digital text into physical braille cells that refresh as the user navigates their screen.
- Electronic Magnifiers: This software works to magnify various individual elements of a user's screen and is often used by people with mild visual impairments, or those who may only need situational assistance.
Fortunately, the tips listed below help ensure our text documents are fully accessible, regardless of which type of assistive technology is used.
Ensure Accurate Metadata
PDFs contain far more information than just what is visually present on the page, mostly in the form of metadata. This data defines and organizes the content of a PDF and is critical for Screen Readers to work properly.
The title is not the same thing as the name of the pdf file, and is handled differently by different assistive technologies.
Tags identify the various elements of a document such as headings, lists, and images, and help screen readers understand and navigate the document. Tags are also typically created automatically by the authoring program.
Adobe Acrobat Pro has an Auto-Tag feature that will create tags should they be missing. This feature works best with simple layouts, and results should be checked for accuracy.
Some screen readers can switch between languages based on the document language setting. This flag is often added automatically by the authoring program used to create the document, but that is not always the case.
Confirm Reading OrderThe Reading Order directs the flow of screen readers and TTS software to ensure content makes sense as it moves through the document.
This element is critical for navigation and is most important when a document has a complex or varied layout of information, such as multiple columns or sidebars.
Use Integrated Heading and Styles
While not as robust as a PDF, other rich text documents like Word documents still include important meta data, particularly in the form of title and heading styles. Headings are already very important to ensure legibility and ease of understanding text, but screen readers and TTS software also rely on them for navigation.
It’s important to remember that headings are not just visually different from other text, so manually changing the font size and color is not adequate to ensure accessibility. Instead, use the Headings and Subheadings setting in the authoring program to ensure accurate metadata.
Avoid Tables If Possible
There are many accessibility concerns that revolve around the use of tables, and this guide is already too long as it is, so the short answer is to avoid tables when possible. For instances where it isn’t possible to avoid including a table, keep these primary points in mind:
- Always use table headers: Screen Readers use header information to identify rows and columns and to keep track of its location.
- Never nest a table within a table: This causes Screen Readers to lose count of its location in the table, making it unable to continue from that point.
- Test table for responsive design: Open your document on a mobile phone and check how the table changes to the new screen size. If you need to scroll horizontally to see all of the content, then a Magnifier will likely struggle with the table as well.
- Never use tables as a design tool: While it can be tempting to use tables to arrange separate content in an aesthetically pleasing manner on a page, this can cause information to potentially be missed or misunderstood. Use document columns and layouts for design purposes instead.
We will explore table accessibility further in a later guide. If that is something you need more immediate assistance with, feel free to email us for guidance.
Provide Alternative Access to Visuals
If a visual element (such as a photo, chart, or logo) is used to convey important information anywhere in the document, then you must either provide alt text attached to the visual, or describe the information elsewhere in the document. If a visual element does not provide important information, and instead functions to add visual appeal and aesthetic to the document, it should not be described.
This option is most often used for elements like charts or diagrams that express a lot of information in a very dense format. An example would be providing a diagram to show a framework of a concept and then using the next few paragraphs of text to explain the concept in detail.
Often shortened to alt text, alternative text is a brief explanation of the visual element stored as metadata and read to users by screen readers. When writing alt text, focus on the information that the image conveys, not the visual of the image itself.
Avoid Color-Coding
Color is an incredibly useful tool when conveying information, but it shouldn’t be the only way information is conveyed.
If you were to print the document in black and white, would there be any confusion? If so, add other ways to differentiate the information that color is providing. Labels, symbols, or alternating designs can help tell color coded elements apart.
Use Descriptive Text for Hyperlinks
When we say “descriptive text”, we mean that it's best practice to write exactly what the link will be leading to, as opposed to the URL itself or vague phrases like “read more”.
“Download the Accessibility Handbook Here” as opposed to “Download”
“Read our privacy policy” as opposed to “www.samplewebsite.com/privacy”
There are two key reasons why we suggest using specific and descriptive text for any hyperlinks included in a text document, or perhaps more accurately, why we suggest against using urls or vague phrases.
Aside from the general annoyance of having to listen to assistive technology read out every single letter or number added to the end of URLs, personalization settings can actually end up removing the link entirely, or might remove key parts of the url if the technology in question doesn’t realize that it is important information.
Additionally, keeping track of different URLs for the same website can be very difficult, especially if the majority of the URLs are similar to each other. If you are linking multiple articles from the same database, it will be very challenging for readers to keep track of which URL is which.
The primary reason for avoiding these is a matter of context. Screen reader users can opt to have their screen reader list off links in a long list, removing any surrounding context for each link.
If there is only a single link that reads “Learn more”, then there is a possibility that they will be able to recall where said link resided in the rest of the document, but if there are multiple links all reading “Learn more”, then they will have no way of knowing which is which.
Conclusion
With all of that said, it's also important to remind everyone that these strategies not only make documents accessible, but also clearer, more consistent, and more user-friendly. As we continue to strive for high quality education, keeping accessibility at the forefront helps us build learning environments we can all be proud of.
We don't want to just meet the minimum requirements for compliance. We want to excel, offering the best education we can. Keeping accessibility in mind from the beginning is an excellent first step.
Meet the Author
Ray Seiden, B.F.A., is our Faculty Success Designer and is responsible for designing, developing, and delivering professional development training modules aimed at enhancing faculty teaching excellence. They use their experience in Instructional Design and Graphic Design, alongside their passion for accessibility and andragogy, to create user friendly training materials and robust support programs for faculty.
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