Making Accessible Choices: Color, Images, Tables
Of course, many documents you are likely to create have more elements than simply lists and headings. It is also important for you to consider such things as the use of color, images, and tables in your document if you are going to make a truly accessible document.
While it sounds like there are a lot of considerations when it comes to digital accessibility, keep in mind that once you get accustomed to using the tools in your word processing program, doing so will become second nature to you. In the end, you should find that creating digital documents is, at least, no more difficult than creating inaccessible documents was before. You may even find that it’s easier to create accessible documents.
Color
If you want to include color in your digital document, you have some special accessibility considerations. Color can be a challenge for people across a range of impairments including color blindness, blindness, low vision, visual processing, and learning disabilities. If you need or want to use color in your document, keep these things in mind:
- Don’t use unnecessary color. Color should be there for a reason. Unnecessary color is distracting to all readers, and it’s especially difficult for readers with learning disabilities and visual processing disorders.
- Don’t let color be the only way something is communicated. Color can help add emphasis, but cannot be the sole means of communication. Readers with colorblindness, blindness, who are low vision, have learning disabilities or visual processing disorders are all harmed when color is the only way certain pieces of information are communicated.
- There should be sufficient contrast between the color you use and the background. In general, a dark color on a light background, or vice versa, is fine. For more sophisticated documents, like infographics, you should learn to use a color contrast analyzer like the one provided by the Paciello Group. Any reader can be harmed by poor color contrast.
Images
If you would like to include images in your document, you will want to ensure that the information in the image is conveyed in a text form as well as in the image. For most images, this means you will need to include an “alt tag” (also called “alt text”). Alt tags are written descriptions that communicate what is in the image so that a person who uses a screen reader can receive the information that the image contains.
To add an alt tag in Word, you can simply right-click the image and choose “Format Picture.” An editing pane will open, and you will need to choose the blue box, which is called the “Layout & Properties” area. Once you are in Layout and Properties, expand the “Alt Text” area and write a description in the “Description” field. [NOTE: why “description” and not “title”? For most uses, the description field is more robust. There are a few edge cases where the Title field is important, but those are rare.]
If you use a different word processing program, this blog post by Terrill Thompson will help train you for those programs.
What should you say in an alt tag? At the least, your alt tag should convey the same information as the image conveys, but that can be very situational. If an image is purely decorative, it is fine to write an alt tag that simply says “decorative image.” But the more information an image contains, the longer the alt tag is likely to be. Try to keep your alt tag as short and straightforward as possible. Alt tags are for information only and not for interpretation or artistic flare.
Tables
Tables present a few interesting challenges. The first of these comes from the world of visual design. Some people use tables simply to tidy up their document and make it look clean to they eye. This use of a table tends to be extremely inaccessible because the screen reader is designed to present a table as data. If you use tables simply to make your document look prettier, consider using the other available tools to get to that same outcome.
If the table you are using is required in your document, then you are going to want to take care to ensure its accessibility, especially for screen reader users. To create tables with improved accessibility, keep these things in mind:
- Build tables using the tables tools in Word. Don’t create something that looks like a table but “really isn’t” by using spaces and tabs. Using your tools will help ensure that screen readers can decode your table.
- Avoid the “Draw Table” tool in Word as it introduces options and styles that will not translate well to a screen reader.
- Choose to add “Row Headers” and “Column Headers” to your table. This is easy in a newer version of Word. In the “Table Design” tab, simply check the boxes for “Header Row” and “First Column.”
- If your table breaks across pages, you will need to repeat the “Header Row” on the new page. To do this, right click the table, choose “Table Properties,” and under the “Row” tab, check the box next to “Repeat as header row at the top of each page.”
- Insert an alt tag for your table. Right-click your table, choose “Table Properties,” then under the “Alt text” tab, write in a description for the table.
There are many other ways to improve the accessibility of a digital document, especially in the Word platform. If you have more complex issues in your document, or if you are simply interested in learning more about functionalities of the program, take the time to review Microsoft’s training on making Word documents accessible.