Creating Accessible Documents in Word

Posted by Craig Mill on the 16th May, 2016

In a recent webinar, I explored a range of features and tools that are available in Microsoft Word to support learners with literacy difficulties. 

Although the main focus was to look at customising the settings in Word to suit different learning needs, the latter part of the webinar looked at how to add ‘Styles’ and ‘Structure’ into a document to support visually impaired and/or screen reader users. 

While the webinar offers numerous hints and tips to improve accessibility in Word, underpinning the webinar is the importance of legislation such as the Equality Act 2010 and subsequent Accessibility Strategies to ensure pupils with additional support needs have equal access to Curriculum for Excellence.

The webinar covered the following:

• How to optimise reading in Word
• Providing writing support in Word
• Customising Word’s interface/Ribbon
• Adding Headings and Styles to Word 
• Making the most of ‘Apps’ from the Windows Store. 

A recording of the webinar is available below or you can view the video it on YouTube.

Weblinks highlighted in the webinar include:

• The OpenDyslexic Font - a dyslexia friendly font
• The Dyslexie Font
• Claro Recorder - record audio into Word
• Accessible Text - Guidelines for Good Practice
• WordTalk - a text-to-speech Add-in for Word
• SAIF - Scottish Accessible Information Forum