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.
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