Content Contribution: Becky Bernauer, Web and Accessibility Coordinator, MNIT partnering with the Minnesota Department of Health; Rebecca Blomquist, Digital Accessibility Coordinator, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources; Samantha Clayton, Digital Accessibility Coordinator, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development; and Tamara Sawyer, Accessibility Coordinator, Minnesota Management and Budget.

Earlier this year, we spruced up your accessibility testing checklist. Now we want to expand on that list and explore tools that are built into commonly used content drafting software and are easy to use. In this first of two articles, we explore Microsoft Word’s Accessibility Checker tool and how it can help you ensure accessibility features are present in your document. 

We checked with our Digital Accessibility Coordinators (DACs) across Minnesota state agencies who have a combined 40+ years of experience remediating Word documents. We asked them why they use the tool, how they use it for initial testing, and how they address errors the tool finds. 

State of Minnesota Standard for Accessible Electronic Documents 

It is important to understand the specific elements that must be present in an electronic document to ensure an accessible experience. The State of Minnesota has a Digital Accessibility Standard, that requires our digital content, including electronic documents, to meet Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA and Section 508 of federal law. 

If you want to dig deeper into understanding how these standards were developed, view our July 2024 blog “Update to State of Minnesota Digital Accessibility Standard Launches July 1.” 

In general, accessible documents must have structural formatting in the form of headings, tables, and lists that allow users to navigate the document. They use descriptive text that describes photos, charts, and graphs to users. When your documents are accessible, everyone can access them. 

Microsoft Word’s Accessibility Checker Tool Background 

Before you finish your Word document and publish it for the end user to review, you can make your content easier for people to view or edit by running the Accessibility Checker tool. The checker will scan the document for accessibility issues and provide a list of errors and warnings, with how-to-fix recommendations. 

Our DACs share their favorite features, some challenges and how they address the errors while using the Accessibility Checker tool. 

Tool Functionality 

The Accessibility Checker is found under Word’s Review tab. Selecting the Check Accessibility option will open the Accessibility pane on the right of your document. This pane provides the accessibility findings under Inspection Results. 

Our DACs’ favorite features: 

• It’s so easy! With the press of a button, you get advice on how to make your document more usable by people who use assistive technology (AT).  
• It can help content creators find accessibility issues quickly in their document, including missing alt text, issues with the document’s tables, and checking color contrast for text. It also highlights where in the document the issue exists. 
• It explains why the issue poses problems for some users and why the issue should be fixed. 
• The Recommended Actions, found in the checker’s dropdown menu, helps the content creator fix issues immediately. 
• It can run continuously while you work. It shows up in your status bar so you can tell at a glance if you have issues without even opening up the Accessibility Checker pane. 

Challenges: 

• It does not report a missing document title, incorrect heading hierarchy, or improper indentation in a list (which creates blank spaces read by AT). 
• It can’t tell if the information provided is meaningful. For example, it recognizes that an image has alt text, but it doesn’t know the difference between meaningful alt text that helps a screen reader interpret the importance of what is being conveyed visually or placeholder text, “add alt text here,” left by a content creator as a reminder.  
• It can’t tell you if a link is functioning properly. 
• It can’t test for everything. Some manual testing must be completed, and it can be hard to remember to do those tasks. 

Tool Output 

The Accessibility Checker will open an Accessibility Pane with the Inspections Report. This report moves a user through the issues and recommendations on how to address. 

Note: If the Accessibility Checker’s Inspection Results state there are no accessibility issues found, it does not mean your work is done. As mentioned in the challenges section, you must perform manual tests. As you perform manual testing, keep in mind the POUR principals of accessibility. Is the document Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust for the end user? Meaning, can the end user read it in the correct order while using their AT and understand what you’re asking for with no assistance form someone else? If the answer is “no” to any of these questions, then the document isn’t accessible, even if it “passes” the checker. 

Our DACs also provided a checklist to use during a manual review. Make sure:  

• Document properties are filled in. 
• Headings are marked AND have the correct hierarchy. 
• Images have meaningful alt text (not placeholder). 
• Table header cells are marked appropriately. 
• Links function properly and are meaningful. 
• Unnecessary tabbing, spacing, and indenting are removed (turn on paragraph markers to help uncover these). 

Addressing Accessibility Testing Failures 

Our contributors offer these additional tips.  

Becky B : When working in Word, we rarely ever leave anything that creates an accessibility issue. If we do, and the document is going to be turned into a PDF, the issue is easily fixed in the PDF. Editor’s note: Read part two of this Accessibility Checker series, where these DACs provide their insight on Acrobat Pro’s Accessibility Checker.    

Rebecca B : Even though the checker lists the errors in order of severity (error, warning, or tip), I fix everything. Everything flagged causes issues for people with disabilities, and I don’t want our documents to be a barrier. 

Samantha C : I will leave issues alone if they were done intentionally (e.g., white text was placed on white background to give a tip to a screen reader user).  

Tamara S : I fix all issues that may pose a problem to the end user. There are times that I choose to ignore a failure. This is usually when it has been done intentionally. 

Final Takeaways 

While tools are excellent to help aid the testing process, having a knowledgeable person perform manual testing is also a necessity to ensure you capture all accessibility failures for your documents.  

We hope this article provides another tool you can add to your repository to ensure accessible digital content for everyone! In case you missed it, we also covered recommended testing tools for web pages in our April 2024 article “Website Accessibility Testing.” 

Additional Resources

• WCAG 2.1 Quick Reference Guide
• Office of Accessibility Word Training  
• Microsoft Word Accessibility Quick Card (PDF)