Microsoft Word

Introduction

There are several things you can do to your MS Word documents which will have a major impact on their usability and accessibility. These chiefly have to do with design. Microsoft has included many tools such as heading and list styles, as well as the ability to add descriptive text to images. Many of these features were created to give your document a consistent look and feel; and the bonus is that they also help enhance its usability and accessibility. The following explains these in more detail.

Lists

When writing both sequential and non-sequential lists, it is preferable to use the automated bullets and numbering provided from the format menu (or home tab) in Word. THE easiest way to do this is to write your material, highlight it and then add the style you wish.

For a sequential list (as in the below instructions),choose a style from the “numbered” tab within the bullets and numbering dialog box or customise to your preference.

For a non-sequential list (when you simply want to list items which have no sequence or hierarchy, (as in a shopping list) choose a style from the “bulleted” tab within the bullets and numbering dialogue box or customise to your preference.

Word 2003

Highlight the text you wish to list.
Choose "format" from the toolbar or press alt with O.
Select the “Bullets and Numbering” option from the drop-down menu, or press the letter N. This will land you in a multi-page dialogue box.
Select the appropriate style to your list type from either the “bulleted” or “numbered” tabs. IF you don’t like the styles offered, hit the “customise” button and create your own.
When you’re done, click "okay" or press the enter key.

Word 2007

Click the home tab or press alt followed by letter H.
From there, select “paragraph”.
Choose the "bulleted" or "numbering" button as appropriate to your list type.
If you want a different style, just right-click the selected list and select one from the dialogue box.
Click "okay" or press the enter key when done.

Adding Heading Styles

Just as a good piece of prose needs punctuation, sentences and paragraphs, a well-structured document with heading styles in place makes it far easier for users of screen readers to navigate, as well as making it easier to be consistent with your design. If you’ve ever written a very long document and had to scroll back in order to remember what fonts you’ve picked for a given section heading, you’ll know what I mean. Adding these styles is colloquially called marking up.

When you read, your eye takes in blocks of text; but a user of a screen reader can only ever hear one word at a time, no matter how fast the speech rate is set. Even with braille, it’s only possible to scan ahead for a few words at a time. This means that without clear markers, a speech user has no way to skim efficiently through a document.

Those markers are called heading styles, and they can be found in the format menu. You can assign one of nine heading levels to the headings in your document, depending on where in your document they occur. For instance, a major heading would be Heading 1”. Lesser headings would be 2, 3, 4, and so on. For conversion to an intranet or inter-school network however, it is recommended that you use only the first six heading levels.

To mark up documents, do the following:

Word 2003

Click "Format" or press alt with letter O.
From the drop-down menu which appears, choose "styles".
Choose the appropriate heading number from the list box.
Press the enter key.

NOTE: for a quick result, simply highlight the text to be included in the heading, hold down the alt and control keys and press the number appropriate to your chosen heading.

Word 2007

1 Click the "home" tab or press alt followed by letter h.
Hit the letter A. This will bring up a drop-down menu into which you can type or select a desired heading style.
Type in the desired heading number: e.g. heading 3. Because of the auto-complete function, you can type in any heading level, even if you don’t see it in the drop-down menu. Word will include it in the "recently used" styles box for when you next require it.
After typing or selecting a heading level, hit the "apply" button and press the enter key.

Alternative text

If you plan to use images, charts, clipart or any graphic as part of your presentation or handout, the addition of alternative (or alt) text is a must if users of screen readers are going to identify them. Furthermore, if your work ends up on an intranet or inter-school network, a search engine is going to have a far easier time finding it.

The text itself is simply a short description of the image or object you’re using. This can range from a simple label such as "Ministry of Education Logo", through to a description of the relationships in an organisational chart. It really depends on the context in which the image exists.

If this sounds a bit daunting, a look at this

Descriptive Text Tutorial

from the University of Wisconsin may be of help.

To add alt-text to a graphic: :

In Word 2003

Place the cursor on the graphic.
Click "format" or press alt with letter O
Choose "graphic" from the drop-down menu (where graphic represents what you’re working with). You will only be allowed to format a graphic if your cursor is resting on it.
From the multi-page dialogue box in which you will land, move to the “web” tab, where you will find an edit field.
Type a short description of the graphic in the field and click “okay” or press the enter key.
Now, when a screen reader user passes over your graphic, it should speak the description you have given it.

In Word 2007

Right click the graphic.
Select “size” from the list.
From the multi-page dialogue box in which you will land, select the “alternative text” tab.
Now you will need to change the original filename of the graphic to something which accurately and succinctly describes it.
Select “close” when done.

Hyperlinks

A hyperlink is a quick way of transferring the reader from one place to another, be it

in the same document
Another file on a hard drive, or
A website which relates to the topic under discussion.

It also happens to be a great way for those using screen readers and magnifiers to navigate around larger documents because they can move quickly and easily to the appointed location. This ease of navigation is helped if the link is a contextual one.

Contextual and non-contextual Links

A contextual link is one which fits seamlessly into the context of a document and is descriptive of itself. Take a look at the hyperlink further up this page. You will see that it is marked by the words “Descriptive Text Tutorial”. This link fits into the context of the topic under discussion and tells you exactly what you will find when you activate it.

A non-contextual way of introducing that link would be:

If this seems a bit daunting, take this descriptive text tutorial from the University of Wisconsin.

This appears to make logical sense, as it fits easily into the sentence. However, anyone who wishes to know what they will find under that link needs to investigate the text around it; and for users of screen readers or magnifiers, this can quickly become inefficient and tedious. Furthermore, screen readers can now present hyperlinks in a list for speed and ease of navigation. If they continually encounter “click here” on several links in a document, they have no way of distinguishing between links or of knowing what is under them. So, why not just say what’s under the link, for everyone’s convenience?

In Word 2003

Type or copy and paste the path or address of the file or web page to which you wish to link. In the case of a web page, this would usually begin with http://.
Highlight the text you’ve just typed or pasted.
From the “insert menu”, choose “hyperlink” or hold down the control key and press letter K.
The path or link which you type will now appear in the dialogue box.
In the “display name” field, write a meaningful and contextual name for the link.
Click “okay” or press the enter key.

In Word 2007

Type a meaningful and contextual name for your link. (Note: this is the opposite method from Word 2003.)
From the “insert” tab, choose “hyperlink” from the “links” group.
Click either “existing webpage” or “new document”, depending on the location of your link.
Type or copy and paste the web address or document path in the appropriate box and click “create”.
These are called custom hyperlinks. If you wish to learn more about hyperlinks and how to make Word deal with them, go to: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/903163

Hyperlinks

Word provides a variety of ways of creating tables, and this may be one reason why they’re so widely and inappropriately used. A table is a data structure where the like information is arranged in rows and columns. It is not a form, nor is it columns of text as in a newspaper. Word provides other ways of writing those.

Although it may be tempting to use tables because they easily organise your material in a way that is visually appealing, they can be difficult to navigate with a screen reader and all but impossible with a braille display. So, it is important that you only use tables when the information you’re presenting requires it.

When using tables, there are a few important things to remember.

Write a caption to your table, briefly describing the table contents.
Create your table using ‘insert” rather than drawing the table manually.
Label all column and row headers (MS Word sees the top of each row/column as the header)
Select table cell size using percentage rather than pixels
Keep the table structure simple
Avoid merging or splitting cells or nesting the information. A screen reader reads a table from the top left to bottom right and this can interfere with the reading order.

This will ensure that your table is read more easily with a screen reader, and give your table a polished and professional look.

Summary

This section was designed to help you get the most out of the valuable time and effort you put into writing documents using Microsoft Word. With all style elements in place, your work is not only more accessible, those elements are retained if your work needs to be transferred to your intranet or inter-school network, and the chances of a search engine locating it are greatly increased once there.

Footer navigation