Does your document generally use light text on a dark background or dark text on a light background, or have you verified the color contrast using an accessibility tool (please consider using the Colour Contrast Analyser )?.Does your document avoid using empty spaces to create formatting change?.

Do your tables have designated heading rows?.Does your document make use of list styles (either bullets or numbered lists) where appropriate?.Have you saved your document as a PDF in such a way that accessibility information is preserved?.If your document has headings designed to help users navigate, have you tagged those headings programmatically as headings?.Do your images have appropriate alternative (alt) text which describes images within the context they appear?.Do your links provide descriptive text in context which describes their destination to the user?.Once you select the Office 365 text, on the next screen in the right middle corner there will be an option to 'Install Office apps' and from there you can download Office 2016. Once logged in, in the top left corner of the screen there is Office 365 text located between the menu and the Outlook text. All MSU faculty, staff, and students can download Office for their local devices at no cost by logging into their MSU email account ( ).Microsoft is quick to point out the limitations of their Accessibility Checker, and they have provided a guide on the support site to clarify what their Accessibility Checker checks, the distinctions it makes between Errors, Warnings, and Tips, and what recommendations they are for the document creator in terms of manual inspection.

“What is meaningful alternative text for an image?” WCAG 1.1.1).

Accessibility checking requires manual inspection and some human judgement (e.g.

Some features and functionality are missing or not working properly in the online versions, including the Accessibility Checker tool.

We recommend using the local, installed desktop version of Office when checking documents for accessibility.

Automated checkers are a good starting point, not the end-all, to check your documents for accessibility.

No automated accessibility checker will ensure that a document is accessible.

The goal of this tutorial is to explain how to use the accessibility features in the latest Microsoft Office 365 application which is the desktop version of the Microsoft Word 2016 program.įor additional support with other versions of Microsoft Word, check out the support page on the Microsoft website. Microsoft Word has a number of tools that you can use to make documents more accessible. Microsoft Word Accessibility Introduction

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