Course overview
This course provides practical, hands-on guidance and instructions for creating accessible documents using Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat Pro. It is designed for anyone who creates Word documents, or who needs to review and make a PDF accessible.
Learning outcomes
What you’ll learn
- Readability and legibility through colour, contrast, font choice and formatting
- Structuring your documents for accessible layouts, including headings, lists and tables
- Best practice for navigation tools such as links and table of contents
- Creating accessible images and charts
- Using inbuilt accessibility checkers
- Focus and reading order, and editing with the tag tree
Who should attend
This course is great for:
- Content authors
- Product and project managers
- Anyone who works with Word and PDF
Course structure
4 x 2 hour sessions.
Knowledge level
No prior knowledge of accessibility is required.
Technology requirements
The following programs should be installed prior to commencing sessions:
- Adobe Acrobat
- Microsoft Word (2016 or later preferred)
Course outline
1. Readability
Topics:
- Font styles and alignment
- Colour and contrast
- Text styles and fonts
- Layouts
2. Structure and navigation
Topics:
- Headings
- Checking the navigation panel
- Content order
- Spacing, indents and columns
- Tables
- Document settings
- Writing good link text
- Headers, footers, watermarks and endnotes
- Understandability
3. Images and media
Topics:
- Writing meaningful alt text
- Identifying meaningful images
- Adding accessible charts
4. Checking and exporting
Topics:
- Using accessibility checkers in Word and PowerPoint
- Creating templates
- Exporting from Word to PDF while maintaining accessibility features
5. Remediating PDFs
Topics:
- Editing your PDF
- Tagging elements with the tag tree
- Checking and fixing reading order and focus order
- Accessible forms
- Checking metadata and setting document properties
- Accessibility checks
