Introduction
The following statement is one that this author cannot stress enough: Initially creating accessible content is always easier, less time consuming and more effective than remediating existing content for accessibility!
That said, the fact remains that we often find ourselves tasked with the responsibilities of both creation and remediation. The tasks and techniques for accessible document creation and remediation will vary based on they type of document being addressed.
While I have strived to provide as much information as possible in one location due to my own experiences with document accessibility, going into the details of how assistive technology interacts with specific types of content within electronic documents such as PDF, PPT and Word files would be a class within itself.
Since this is the case, I will not be covering these types of details within these pages. However, many of the best practices I have compiled will cover some of this information and the resource links provided in the sidebar will assist you in learning more about document content and assistive technology interactions.
About the Checklists
While MS Office applications and Acrobat both contain built in Accessibility Checkers, these tools should not be used as the only way to check documents for accessibility. Visual inspection of the content within documents is required to ensure that assitive technology users can access and comprehend the informaiton being provided in the manner intended. As this is the case having a checklist of items that need to be inspected can save you much time and effort when reviwing content for potential accessibility issues.
Before continuing it is important to note that the checklists are not designed to tell you how to create documents that are accessible nor do they provide instructions on how to remediate documents for accessibility.
The purpose of the checklists is to provide you with a simple list of items that need to be checked to ensure that your documents are accessible to all users, regardless of their use or non-use of assistive technology.
The checklists consist of accessibility questions about each type of documents content. The questions are designed to be easy to answer, and serve as a guide about what should be done to make documents accessible. Each question is followed up with a rationale that supports the need to make content accessible for all.
Checklist Background
The best practices checklists found on this site are based on both the US Access Board Section 508 Standards for Electronic and Information Technology as well as the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0).
The checklists also include some general usability recommendations which are derived from industry usability best practices and the author’s experience with accessible document creation and remediation.
Now that you have the background on how the checklists were designed, let's take a look at how you, the auidence - or learner, can use the information provided on this site.
- Build your documents with accessibility in mind.
- Use the checklists as a guide when creating new document content.
- Refer to the checklists when assessing and remediating existing documents for accessibility.
- Refer to Resources section in the sidebar for links to referenced guidelines, standards, tools and other accessibility related topics.