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Accessible Technology

Documents

When creating digital documents, there are a few basic issues to keep in mind in order to ensure your content is accessible. These issues are the same regardless of whether your document is in HTML, Word, PDF, or another document format.

The following steps provide a recommended path to more accessible digital documents.

Step 1. Build an understanding of digital document accessibility

The following pages on the current website are a great place to start for understanding digital accessibility broadly:

The following pages are a good starting point for learning specifically about accessibility as it applies to common types of digital documents:

Also, a wide variety of Training Opportunities are available at the UW, including a recent addition, Deque University, an extensive library of asynchronous online courses on digital accessibility (free to everyone in the UW community).

The UW also hosts a wide variety of meetups, trainings, workshops, hackathons, and study sessions focused on digital accessibility. Please see our Events page for current and upcoming events.

Step 2. Prioritize and review your documents

Accessibility is a journey. Where do you start? Prioritize reviewing your content by focusing on what will affect users most frequently and significantly. Start with core materials used regularly and address the issues that are most straightforward to fix. Starting with the highest priority documents, use the following tools and procedures to evaluate them:

Use accessibility checkers. 

  • Microsoft Office includes a built-in accessibility checker, offering both a summary on request and real time feedback for authors creating Word documents or PowerPoint presentations. For more information, see Checking Microsoft Office for Accessibility.
  • PDF:  Adobe Acrobat Pro provides features that enable users to check and fix accessibility within PDFs. For more information, see Checking PDFs for Accessibility.
  • Canvas: There are multiple options for checking accessibility of documents uploaded to Canvas. For more information see our Canvas page.

Conduct a manual review.

Built-in accessibility checkers are helpful, but they are not complete.They detect rule-based issues, but they cannot evaluate content for logical reading order or contextual appropriateness. While accessibility checkers are a good starting point, the following items are important to review:

  1. Do headings form an outline of the page content?
  2. Do images have meaningful alternative text (no images of text), and are non-important images marked as decorative?
  3. Are tables used solely for presenting rows and columns of data (not for layout), and are the column and row headers properly identified?
  4. Are lists used to identify all content that can be described as a list of something?
  5. Is the proper metadata included?
    • Does the document have a title that describes its topic or purpose?
    • Has the language of the document (or individual parts of a multilingual document) been defined?

For additional issues, see our Digital Accessibility Checklist.

Step 3. Clean house

A big step in ensuring your content is accessible is deleting content that is no longer needed.  If content is no longer actively maintained but is needed for reference, content should be clearly marked as “Archived.”

The Office of the ADA Coordinator has published Archived Web Content Guidance to help you determine whether older content should be deleted, archived, or remediated.

Step 4. Use UW-branded themes

UW Branded documents and stationery, and PowerPoint templates are available. These templates have been reviewed for accessibility, but it is always advisable to review the final documents again for accessibility after adding content to the templates (see Step 2, point 1: Use accessibility checkers).

Step 5. Get help

If you get stuck with any of the previous steps, or simply have questions along the way, UW-IT Accessible Technology Services is happy to help. Please see our Help page for options.

Digital Document Remediation

UW-IT Accessible Technology Services (ATS) will remediate a limited number of will remediate a limited number of digital documents (e.g., PDF, PowerPoint, Word) without charge through a service supported by UW-IT. Individuals, departments, and other units at the UW are encouraged to apply to remediate highly-visible, high-impact, multiple use, and/or strategic documents. For additional information and to apply for this service, please see our Help page.

Outsourcing PDF Remediation

Crawford Technologies provides document remediation services at prices and turnaround times that seem to be a good match for higher education institutions. Contact the vendor for a quote: das-quotes@crawfordtech.com

UW Document Conversion Service

The UW offers an online Document Conversion Service to help students, faculty, and staff at the University of Washington to produce alternative versions of documents quickly and easily. The service is free to anyone with a UW NetID, and can be accessed at tinyurl.com/uw-doc-convert.

Please note the following limitations of this service:

  • The source file needs to be of good quality in order to maximize conversion accuracy.
  • Some file outputs may require additional editing after conversion.
  • This service is intended to provide a quick temporary solution, but is not the final solution for accessibility. For faculty and staff who are producing documents, please consult the above links for information on how to create accessible documents in various document formats.
  • Students requesting alternate materials as an accommodation, please contact Disability Resources for Students (DRS).