Best Practice Guide – Making Microsoft Office documents accessible

This guide is for people who are producing Word, Excel, and Powerpoint 2010 (or later) documents for internal circulation, to upload to the Internet, or to load into Adobe presentations. It explains how to make them accessible to various assistive software (AS) IT packages.

In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 requires that both public and private organisations make reasonable adjustments to make our products accessible to anyone, regardless of what their disability may be. Many other countries have similar regulations. Unfortunately, authors of guidance or informational documents do not always know where the pitfalls are. This guide will tell you what to look out for, and how to set documents up correctly.

Apologies in advance if you feel anything here is too basic for your needs. Some users will have enough experience of Word not to need the in-depth guidance, just pointers on what to include to make something accessible. But this guide must also cater for people with only a basic knowledge of Word, so it includes step-by-step instructions.