Accessible documents
Guidelines for ensuring that your documents are accessible:
- All documents, including PDFs must be fully accessible
- Documents must have an informative and meaningful title
- Text should be left aligned, not justified
- Avoid underlining, except for links
- Do not use colour or shape alone to show meaning
- Do not use images containing text
- All links should be meaningful out of context, without reading the surrounding text. Avoid 'click here' and 'read more'.
- Tables should only be used for data, not for laying out other types of content
- Avoid splitting or merging cells in tables
- Tables must have appropriate alt text
- Each table must have one header row and one header column. The headers should not be visually communicated by formatting the text using size or colour
- Always run your final document through the programme’s accessibility checker before converting to PDF
Additional recommendations for presentations (either PowerPoint or PDF):
- Use unique slide titles, to allow screen readers to skim slides to navigate
- Make hyperlinks, images and tables accessible
- Set reading order of slide content, this is particularly important if there is more than one text box. Screen readers read the elements of a slide in the order they were added in, which might be different from the intended order.