Making accessible documents

What it is

This guide is about the documents you give or send to clients: an invitation to a first meeting, a leaflet about debt advice, a report, a form to fill in. On paper, or as a Word file or PDF by email or on the website. The digital documents are called office files: PDFs, files from Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and files in the Open Document Format, such as odt.

A document is accessible when everyone can read and use it. That includes someone who is blind and uses a screen reader: software that reads the text aloud and can jump from heading to heading. And someone who opens the file on a phone and zooms in, or who finds reading hard.

This needs two things. The document must be well put together, so that assistive technology understands what a heading, a list or a picture is. And the text must be easy to understand.

Why it matters

In the Netherlands, about 3 million people aged 16 to 75 have difficulty with reading, writing and/or maths, and for them a long letter with difficult words is hard to read.

People forget a large part of what you tell them in a conversation, and remember some of it differently from how it was said. A document to take home helps, if your client can read it.

For someone with a screen reader, a document without structure is one long block of text. If the text is in two columns and the reading order is wrong, the software reads line by line across both columns, so the sentences get mixed up.

For Dutch government organisations it is also a legal duty. All office files they have put online after 23 September 2018 must be accessible, and older files only if people still need them to arrange something. The same requirements apply to a PDF as to a web page.

First: do you need a document at all?

It is rarely necessary to put information in a PDF. A normal web page is usually better: it adapts to a small screen, loads faster, and a form is easier to fill in on a web page. The visitor also does not have to switch from the website to a file.

Do you already have a lot of PDFs online that are not accessible? Then you can follow this order:

1. Clear out. Remove what is out of date.
2. Choose what comes first. Make the files that are used most accessible first.
3. Make the rest accessible on request. Say how quickly someone will get an accessible version, for example within two working days.

How to do it

The steps below assume you use Word. Other word processors, such as LibreOffice Writer, work in a similar way. Also have your organisation’s templates adjusted, so that what you make with them more easily becomes an accessible PDF.

1. Start with the message. Put at the top what the reader needs to know or do. So an invitation does not start with a paragraph about the law the meeting is based on, but with the day and the time: “We will come to your home on Tuesday 6 October at 10am. We will then talk about what you need.”

   Write short sentences with everyday words, at language level B1 (a level from the European framework for language skills). For people with low literacy, B1 is often still too hard. A2 suits them better: even shorter sentences, ten words at most, preferably fewer. Also read Writing at B1.

2. Use real headings. Make a heading with the Heading 1, Heading 2 or Heading 3 style, not by making text big and bold. Keep to the order and do not skip a level. A screen reader only recognises real headings, and someone can then use them to jump from heading to heading. This is requirement 1.3.1 of WCAG 2.2: the structure you see must also be fixed in the file itself.

3. Make lists and tables with the buttons in your program. You make a bulleted list with the button for bullets or numbering, not with dashes you type yourself. Only use a table for data, not to put text side by side. Give the table a header row, so that a screen reader knows which column is what.

4. Give images alt text. Alt text is a short description of an image, for people who cannot see it. If the image tells you something, write down what it means. Do not start with “an image of”. If it is only decoration, mark it as decoration, so that assistive technology skips it. Do not put important information only in a picture, such as a phone number in a logo. This is requirement 1.1.1 of WCAG 2.2. With the Alt text helper you write alt text by answering a few questions.

5. Make sure there is enough contrast, and do not use colour on its own. Normal text needs a contrast of at least 4.5 to 1 with the background, and for large text, from 18 point or 14 point bold, 3 to 1 is enough. That is requirement 1.4.3. Also, do not let colour be the only thing that tells you something, such as “the red appointments are compulsory” (requirement 1.4.1). The Colour-blind view shows roughly how someone who is colour-blind sees your leaflet, and works out whether two colours differ enough.

6. Write link text that says where the link goes. Not “click here”, but “See the opening hours of the neighbourhood team”. That way, someone who only has the links read aloud knows where each link goes.

7. Give the file a title and a language. Every PDF needs a clear title, which you fill in under the properties of the file. Also set the language of the document, so that the screen reader pronounces the words correctly. If a part is in another language, such as a sentence in English, mark that too.

8. Let Word check it. On the Review tab, choose Check Accessibility. Word then points out problems, such as images without alt text. Fix those points before you make a PDF.

9. Save as PDF, with tags. Tags are invisible labels in a PDF that tell a screen reader what a heading, a list or an image is. Under Save As, choose PDF as the file type, open the options and tick Document structure tags for accessibility. The PDF then takes over the headings, lists and alt text from your Word file.

10. Check the PDF itself. Open it on a phone and zoom in. Try to select text: if that does not work, it is a picture of text. If the document is long, check whether there are bookmarks, so that someone can jump to a chapter. If the text is in columns or text boxes, check the reading order (requirement 1.3.2). You can check and change it in a PDF program such as Adobe Acrobat Pro.

11. Ask someone it is meant for to read it. Test information materials with people from the target group: show the images, read the text aloud, and then ask what the person has understood. That last part is called the teach-back method. For example, ask: “What are you going to do now with this letter?” Does someone then think the meeting is at the office, while you are coming to their home? Then put “to your home” in bold.

Letters and leaflets on paper

WCAG is about digital information, not about paper, but the same ideas help there too. Tips that work for text in plain language include:

• A large sans-serif font with space, such as Verdana, of at least 12 point.
• Line spacing of at least 1.5.
• Each sentence on a new line, aligned to the left.
• Black letters on a white background. Lots of colours are distracting.
• Important or new information in bold.
• A title and short subheadings that say what the text is about.
• Contact details with the name of a person and a phone number.

For images, choose concrete pictures, and often photos rather than drawings. Read more about images in Visual support for your client.

A letter often exists both on paper and digitally, for example as a PDF in the client portal. Then make that digital version accessible too.

Points to watch

• Turn a scan into real text. A scan is a photo of text: a screen reader cannot read it aloud, and you cannot search in it. Use text recognition (OCR) for this, and then give that text a structure with headings and lists. If you still have the source file, it is better to start with that.
• Keep the layout as simple as you can. Text boxes and columns mix up the reading order. What looks good on your screen can be a mess for a screen reader.
• Make a form on a web page rather than in a PDF. A form in a PDF must meet the same requirements as a form on a website, with clear labels for the fields. You cannot do that in Word: you need an advanced PDF program for it.
• Check for yourself what an automatic check does not see. Such a check finds missing alt text and header rows. Whether your headings are logical, your alt text is right and your text is easy to understand, you judge yourself, ideally together with someone the document is meant for.

Questions

Is a Word file better than a PDF? Both can be accessible, if you use the right way of working and the right software. A normal web page is usually even better, especially on a phone.

Our leaflets come from a design agency. What can we do? Agree that new PDFs are delivered accessible straight away, with tags, alt text and a good reading order. When they are delivered, ask how the agency checked this.

How long should alt text be? Short: a short sentence or two at most. Write what the image means in that place in the document. For example, a photo of the team next to “Who will visit you?” gets the names of the people in it, not “four people laughing”.

Find out more

• Writing at B1 level for your clients and the checklist for a text at language level B1.
• Recognising and discussing low literacy
• Visual support for your client: pictures, appointment cards and step-by-step cards.
• Writing an accessibility statement
• Perceivable: nobody misses information: about alt text, contrast and structure.
• PDFs and other office files on Digitoegankelijk ↗ (in Dutch): what is required, and how to make a PDF accessible.