Gillian Brown: Hello, everyone. Good afternoon, and thank you so much for joining us today for this webinar, ‘Create, Test, Include – Accessible Documents’.

My name is Gill, and I am delighted to be your host for today’s session. If you’ve ever spent longer trying to find a setting in Word and actually write in your document, then you’re in good company.

That’s why we’re here today, and we’re so happy to have attendees from all over different sectors, content creators, supporters, communications professionals and more.

And they’re all committed to building a more accessible digital world.

So before we dive in, we’ve just got a few quick housekeeping notes just to keep it right.

Today’s webinar will last about 60 minutes, and we will pause for any questions throughout the presentation, but do feel free to use the chat function to share any comments or ask any questions at any time.

The webinar is being recorded, so your camera should have been automatically switched off when you entered.

And if I can ask you, please, just to do that now.

And after the webinar, we will send a follow-up email to everyone with resources and a link to the recording in the days to come.

Finally, if you experience any technical issues, I’m going to ask you, of course, to pop a message in the chat, and one of our team members will be happy to help.

And I’m also going to share that we have a troubleshooting guide to using Google Meet, which I’ll pop into the chat as well in case you need it.

So, in the spirit of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, which takes place tomorrow, we’re asking ourselves, are the digital documents we create every day inclusive and accessible to everyone who needs them?

And today’s session will offer practical tools and some simple strategies you can start using immediately to help close any of those gaps.

So, it’s now my pleasure to introduce Leo.

Leo is a graphic design specialist and passionate accessibility advocate with lived experience of both autism and dyslexia – perspectives that deeply inform their work.

They’ve been with Passion4Social for over four years, leading accessible design projects across both the public and the private sectors.

If you are familiar with Passion4Social’s work, you might recognise Leo’s signature from creating the DEI Employers of the Future or Anti-ableism Dictionary resources.

Today, Leo is going to guide us through how to create, test, and include accessibility in your everyday document workflows using tools like Google Suite, Microsoft 365, and Canva.

So again, I’ll just remind everyone, please, if you can make sure your camera is turned off and over to you, Leo.

Leo Ould: Thank you, and welcome everyone.

So just in case anyone’s missed it, why we’re here today is to talk about Global Accessibility Awareness Day, which is tomorrow.

This event takes place to get everyone talking and learning about digital access and inclusion.

It was founded in 2011 primarily as a call to action for web developers to consider accessibility in websites, but it now discusses all types of technology, from websites to apps and game design.

We wanted to celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day this year by highlighting another aspect of accessibility that will affect a lot of us in the workplace, which is documents.

Many places are adopting cloud-based document offering tools; for example, we quite like using Google Drive at Passion4Social.

And because these are shared online, they can kind of be treated under the same regulations as websites, which is the WCAG standards.

And we are sharing all our documents externally, but if we’re working with other disabled colleagues and other professionals, it should be a consideration in our mind because everyone has different needs and access.

So a big motivation for making accessible documents should just be a desire to create more inclusive spaces.

Legally, there are motivations to reach accessibility standards, and organisations are obligated in the UK.

We have the public sector body access regulations, which state that websites and mobile applications need to be accessible to users.

There’s also the IOSO IEC digital standards, which replace the older British standards accessibility code.

This in particular relates to workplace compliance, and failing to comply with these standards may mean discrimination against employees, and that can put you at risk of breaking the Equality Act.

And finally, we have the new European Accessibility Act, which comes into force in June, I believe, which essentially assigns the WCAG 2.2 guidelines into actual laws instead of best practices.

00:05:00

Leo Ould: So, lots of reasons to consider this.

With this webinar, we hope to show that accessibility is easy.

There are small things that can be implemented to help make your documents accessible to anyone, regardless of their impairments or situation.

We talk about accessibility in relation to disability, but it makes for better digital experiences for us all.

With the changing digital landscape, there are lots of competing platforms that do a similar thing.

That is why I’ve chosen three different software that are comparable and popular.

This webinar isn’t about putting people off using certain projects, but for us to be more aware of their limitations, and if you are using them, to know where the gaps are when you’re using them.

I’ll be looking at Microsoft’s version of Word and PowerPoint, Google’s equivalent of Docs and Slides.

And because I am primarily a graphic designer and I recognise more businesses are using Canva for their marketing, I’m also going to talk about Canva.

A topic which I’m not going to talk about today is tagged PDFs.

PDFs deserve a whole course in themselves to understand.

And as the emphasis is to show that accessibility can be easy and implemented in a way that soon can become second nature, I didn’t want to overwhelm you with information about PDF accessibility.

Fortunately, some of the tips we will discuss today will help with PDF accessibility if you’re exporting documents from Word to PDF, but we’re not going to go into the nitty-gritty.

Instead, I’m going to discuss why it’s important to plan alternative formats in your workflow and to know your team’s needs and preferences.

If PDF assessment is something which many of you are interested in, please let us know, and we’ll consider this in future training webinars.

So let’s get started.

Firstly, I’m going to cover some basics.

As a graphic designer, my role is primarily about communication.

I have to think about how a page presentation helps with knowledge transfer, and logically structure things to be aesthetically pleasing, but also communicates information in the most effective way.

So, I wanted to bring an example of a work rota that was shared with me in a previous employment.

It was created in Excel which you might not think is a normal place to consider design, but a store document I shared with multiple people, and I had to read and share.

It had very bold, bright colours as the backgrounds of the cells, and the text in the cells was very close together.

Overall, this made the document very, very hard for me to read as a dyslexic person, and I really became anxious that I was going to miss the shift on my rota as I couldn’t understand it.

It was also a locked document, so I didn’t get the option to change the styles to my preference.

In the end, I had to email my manager to ask what my shifts were.

And whilst this is a really minor example, I felt excluded over something that actually could have been avoided just through layout design and choices.

So, if anyone has any examples of their own that they’d like to share with us, feel free to put that in the chat, and I’d love to hear them.

Because sometimes we find it’s the little things that make the big difference.

So, when creating documents, the fonts and typefaces you choose will affect readability and comprehension.

General recommendations include considering a font size that is around 12 point to 14 point at a minimum.

The line height or spacing between the lines should be about 150% of the size of the text, and the length of the lines on the screen is recommended to be only about 60 or 70 characters long.

On a Word document, this won’t be too much of an issue, as it will rarely go longer than that, but you also want to avoid using two shorter columns.

For example, if you had three columns and it’s all justified text, which means the text is square in the columns, like you would see in a newsletter.

This can be particularly challenging for dyslexic readers.

And the alignment of text, we usually recommend keeping it left-aligned.

Obviously, that’s going to change globally depending on the language, as some languages use right-to-left, but we recommend keeping it justified to the left.

Other important considerations can include the size of headings compared to paragraphs.

So it’s usually recommended that the headings should be at least 20% larger than your paragraph text, so people have that visual distinction.

As a dyslexic reader, I often find that presentation text is one of the most helpful things in how easy it is for me to understand.

00:10:00

Leo Ould: I like fairly short paragraphs and information that is presented in lists or visually ordered into blocks.

And this is coherent with the British Dyslexic Association’s guidelines, which I recommend Googling if you want to find out their recommendations.

So when you’re choosing a font, it’s always recommended for digital platforms to try to use a sans-serif font, as they can appear less crowded.

You should look for a font where the kerning space- that is, the space between the letters- is not too tight or too loose, as this can affect word recognition.

Arial, Calibri and Open Sans are popular choices, and some people prefer slightly rounded fonts such as Poppins.

When you’re trying to make highlighted text, it is best to use bold fonts rather than having words in all caps.

That can make the letters all the same height, and it hinders recognition of the letter shape and the word shape, which can just make it very difficult for people to understand.

So colour contrast is an important tool in a designer’s tool bag.

We need to consider the WCAG standards, which suggest a minimum pattern contrast of 4.5 for text and 3.1 for graphic objects.

Good contrast helps people with colour visual differences.

So here on the slide, I have illustrated a common colour blindness type, Protanopia, which makes green and red look similar.

With the different examples, you can see how colour contrast, even the bare minimum, helps people see the information, regardless of what colour is used.

And it helps information be more visible in situations such as bright light on screen, and generally, it makes reading easier and helps with quicker comprehension.

Fortunately, it’s very easy to test colour contrast, and I will go back to this in the ‘Test’ section of the webinar.

And something that is talked about less often is colour hue.

We increasingly use screens in RGB colour profiles, which allow for very exposed and almost neon colours to be displayed.

The brights created by RGB colours can cause difficulty in reading, eye strain, and visual distortions, especially when used together.

This can cause issues for people with sensory differences, like people with autism spectrum disorder, and it can exacerbate conditions like Meares-Irlen Syndrome, where words and stuff already move around on the page.

So it’s just a note to be considerate of the colour choices that you’re using as well.

So that was a very basic introduction to design principles that should help you in making your documents.

We have a very specific webinar called ‘Accessibility for Designers and Developers’ if you’re interested in learning more about that topic.

Next, I’m going to talk about Word documents in general, and the information I will cover will make it easier for screen readers to better navigate and understand the document.

Gillian Brown: I’m just going to read out a little question on the chat about fonts.

Just so that everyone can participate, I’ll read it out.

Hannah has asked, “Is it ever acceptable to use italics or all caps?”

Leo Ould: Hi, I would recommend just being cautious when you’re using them.

I don’t like to use them personally, but I recognise that sometimes if it’s very short, so one or two words in the title, that’s possibly not going to make a difference.

I would definitely avoid it if I were using it for paragraph text or anything that covers multiple lines.

00:15:00

Leo Ould: But I understand that it is used commonly for emphasis in a lot of kinds of written documents as well, so it’s just more to be mindful of when and how much you’re using it instead of just using it commonly.

Gillian Brown: Thanks, Leo.

Leo Ould: Cool, thank you, okay.

So yeah, Word documents.

So this information is going to cover things that are going to make it easier for screen readers to better navigate and understand documents.

We may see visual hierarchy, such as size headings or bullet point lists, and instinctively know where we want to read.

Screen reader users need document navigation to be in place to help them do that.

Otherwise, they might be left having to go through the whole document to find what they need, and you imagine that can be really annoying if the document is very long.

So the next couple of pages, we will discuss document titles, headings and structure, bullet list, alt text, meaningful link text, and tables.

Document title- this might not be so relevant in online publishing, but it definitely is if you’re downloading a document locally onto your computer.

It’s a common accessory feature that we may overlook.

Which is setting the document title.

And this, I might want to add, is different from a file name.

A file name can have many different iterations, but the document title is one that the screen readers first read when opening and searching the document, and that stays the same regardless of how many copies you’ve saved.

So it is very easy to add.

You just need to click the file and look for the ‘Properties’ box, and there’s also ‘Advanced Settings’ if you want to add more information to the document data.

Now, for internal navigation, primarily, we navigate through Word documents by creating appropriate headings.

The headings should be nested accordingly- from H1, H2, H3- kind of like you would with HTML.

This allows the screen readers to be able to jump from each section easily and know where they relate to each other.

You can check the document navigation, and if it looks correct, by opening the navigational panel in Word, which is Ctrl+F, and it shows the information in a visual form.

So I’ve shown this all on the page.

The headings have practical uses as well.

Using them means that you can easily automate a table of contents for larger documents, and this will save a lot of time.

And so I recommend playing around and learning how to use that.

The styling of these headings can be changed to your preference in the styles panel.

Setting up your styles for your organisational brands can help all your staff work be consistent, but also help them to use the correct formatting styles.

You will also save a lot of time because you won’t need to set it up for every new document.

In the styles, you can set other accessibility considerations that we’ve already mentioned: line height and size, and font colour.

And this will automatically update and stays same throughout the document.

Another thing that we need to use is the dedicated format style function, such as list and bullet points, as these can be identified by screen readers, and it tells them that it’s a list.

If you don’t do this and you just use tabs to manually set up the bullet points, the screen reader won’t read it as expected, and you can risk the information not making sense.

So if it’s a list that really depends on understanding what came before, it’s not a good practice to do this.

We also recommend not creating bullet points using images either.

You can create custom image bullet points in the property settings if that is something that you want to do.

But a lot of people might just use an image and then place the text, and this isn’t recommended either, because it’s not essential that it might visually look okay, but the computer can’t read it and make sense of it.

I’ve hopefully shown on the screen where you can find these settings in Word if you’re unclear.

Alt text is a principal accessibility feature across the web, and it basically describes images to viewers who cannot see them.

Alt text is great for others as well because it will also be there as a descriptive item if a picture is broken.

I personally can find it quite tricky to add the right alt text.

00:20:00

Leo Ould: So, a quick guide that I’ve been taught to use is object, action, and surroundings.

So you should ask yourself, what is the main object or focus of the image?

What is happening in the image, and what is surrounding it?

It is best to keep the information concise and relevant to help people absorb the information in a timely manner, and also try to keep it objective so the audience can make up their mind.

If the information in the image has essential text, you should include this in the alt text.

So, for example, if it’s an image with a diagram, you should put the text in the alt text.

And don’t say things like “it’s a photo of”, or repeat any information that has already been stated in the surrounding text or caption.

It’s also keen to mention that some items, like icons and graphic objects, do not need alt text, but instead can be marked as decorative items, and this stops the screen readers from reading them out loud.

And this is absolutely fine to use if it’s not adding additional information to the content.

So, for example, on this page, the top corner with decoration, I would have marked that as a decorative item, as it’s not adding any context or relevant information to this slide.

So adding alt text in Word documents is very simple.

You can find the panel by right-clicking ‘View Alt Text’.

AI is generating predictions of alt text, and it can be useful, especially if you’re finding it difficult to explain.

However, it’s worth checking what AI is actually generating because it can be nonsensical sometimes, or not really describe the image.

So, I thought if we were thinking about the suggestions on the previous page, a better alt description for this image could be: “A white woman in a wheelchair, sitting at a laptop, focusing on their work in a clean and spacious cafe”.

And I felt that this covers the object, action, and surroundings in richer detail.

But context is key, and depending on what you might add or even want to add, it depends on actually where you’re using the image as well.

Another thing that is often overlooked is meaningful link text.

You need to ensure that you’re creating meaningful link text, and the link needs to be unique on the page and should be meaningful when said out loud.

So screen readers often navigate through links on the page.

So if they’re presented with multiple “click here”, it’s not really telling them much about where that information is going to lead to, or what it’s referring to in the body of the text.

So that’s why we try to do meaningful link text.

And for other conditions, such as anxiety disorders and autism spectrum disorder, it’s also best practice not to use language like “click here” as they are not descriptive or clear.

It’s best to use language like “attach file”, as this will tell quite clearly what is expected of them.

And finally, using tables in Word might be a common feature, but it can have accessibility issues.

So, you need to be careful about how you’re setting them up.

You want to mark table headings and table columns so the screen reader announces which information is related to each other, and you should avoid complex tables.

In the example that I’ve got on the screen, we’ve merged cells to create secondary table headings.

And these might be really easy for us to visually see and to understand, but there isn’t a good way in Word documents for the information itself to be related to each other in screen.

So that is basically my little introduction to Word.

I’m going to move on with the slideshow presentation.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to put them in the chat.

Otherwise, I’m just going to move on.

00:25:00

Leo Ould: So with presentation accessibility, they are not the most accessible option, but there are things that we can do to try and make them as accessible as possible.

A lot of the same information applies, such as alt text and meaningful links.

You can also add the document title, but there are a few other things to consider, such as unique slide titles, reading order, and how you’re using kind of multimedia elements such as animations and videos.

So, unique slide tiles are very much a navigation aid for screen reader users.

Just like links, we want them to be unique as it helps to quicken the navigation for users.

Every slide needs to have a title, but you don’t need the slide title to be on the screen.

So if you think it’s visually not important for it to be on the screen, you can just push it off, and it will still be there for accessibility purposes.

The best thing to do is to use the built-in slide presentation templates that you get, so when you create a new slide, it will have the little templates that you can choose from, because they always have a title option.

It also helps with the reading order, which I’ll go on to, and if the slide title is missing, or if you accidentally delete it, the best way I found is to use the Accessibility Assistant to add one.

And that’s a very easy thing to do, and I’ll talk about this more in the ‘Test’ section.

So, the reading order is a really common mistake that many people don’t consider.

It simply tells the screen readers the correct way to read the information on the page.

If we’re creating custom slides and adding images and text boxes, it might visually be obvious to us how it should be read, but it’ll be nonsense to the computer.

So checking the read order helps eliminate this problem.

It also gives you the option to hide information that you deem to be unessential, or so that information doesn’t get too repetitive on the pages.

So if you have page numbers and stuff, you can hide them if you want.

So it’s a really good practice to get into checking your reading order.

If you’re exporting into PDFs, PDFs use a very similar function with reading order, and so they tend to relate to each other if you’re exporting.

And finally, we talk about animations and videos.

Some people can struggle with animated effects such as movement on the screen.

It can be really distracting or can even make people feel unwell, and the WCAG guidelines recommend that for the web, you should have things like autoplay turned off.

With presentations, we can consider this and reduce as much animation as possible.

Try not to have too many looping or distracting GIFs and moving images in your content, and as you may already know, flatting images can cause issues with people with epilepsy, so we try to avoid anything like that as well.

As always, if you’ve got video content in your slides, enable closed captions so that people can watch and understand it without sound.

And if you’re presenting, and you have the option to, consider audibly describing what’s going on in the video as well, because this can help people understand the context as well.

Some other basic principles which I felt like I needed to talk about are that you’re able to use a slightly bigger text than the 12-point minimum.

Some people recommend an 18-point font for slides, as always with Word documents as well.

Avoid tables because this same has the same accessibility issues as Word documents, but also on slides, visually they can be difficult to set up.

And consider adding context and information to the presenters’ notes, especially if you’re handing out the presentation after an event, as sometimes just having the visuals can tell you little about what was discussed on that day.

So having information in the notes to say and clarify information on the slide is really useful.

And the last one is one that designers are really bad at, because it is often done as a timesaver, but really try not to create slideshows that just use background images or have text in the image.

00:30:00

Leo Ould: This is completely unreadable to people using screen readers and assisted technology.

It’s like giving a blank presentation, so although I understand it can be a lot quicker sometimes, it’s really not the best practice to do.

So thank you very much.

That was the ‘Create’ section.

I hope you found that useful.

Next, I’m going to talk about testing, but if anyone has any questions now, it’s a great time to jump in.

Gillian Brown: Leo, someone’s asked, could you recap the image use, please?

Leo Ould: Is that for the alt text?

Just to clarify.

Or do you mean using images as backgrounds for slides?

The last point that I just made?

Yeah, okay, that’s fine.

So yeah, so sometimes when people create presentations, for example, if I use this example, they might just create the whole background and all the decorative elements as an image, and some people also put the text in that image instead of writing it out on the presentation.

On one hand, that’s a lot quicker because you just use one software to make it, but because all the visual information is embedded into that image, it’s a flat image, and that means it has no information for assistive technology to read.

It can’t read that text.

Yeah, so we try not to do that just because, as I said, it’s just putting a blank image that no one can read.

Thank you, ok, so testing.

Sorry, everyone, my notes have gone away.

Really sorry about that, just had a little technical issue.

I will get it back up.

Cool, Gill, is that backup?

Gillian Brown: Yeah, it is, yeah.

Leo Ould: Cool, thank you.

Okay, so testing on Microsoft on both their browser version and their local version is really simple.

So Microsoft has built-in functions to check accessibility called the Accessibility Assistant, and from this panel, you will walk through all the necessary checks to help your document become accessible.

So it’ll tell you to check the colour contrast, add any alt text, and tell you of any issues you might have with merge cells in the table or headers.

It also has a good option to provide further accessibility tips if you want to recap your knowledge.

I might want to add that it’s not a guarantee that your document is going to be accessible.

This is still an automated test and not a person test.

I have known documents say they’re accessible, which I personally don’t think they are, because they haven’t used structure elements like headings.

So you just need to think about the basics yourself and be aware of what it might be missing.

It also doesn’t check if you have a document title, so this is something that you should remember to do yourself.

00:35:00

Leo Ould: Microsoft also has options to use and just view high contrast colours in their text and fill properties, so you can just eliminate any colours that are not high contrast, which I think is really great to have because it just makes your choices so much less.

So with Google Docs, a lot of the same theory can be applied to Google programs, but I found that they just have different names.

The structure headings can be found in the top menu, so a lot of the things that Google Drive does are very similar.

There are a few differences.

You can set up your navigation through your headings again, but instead of having the navigation panel, you have the tabs panel, which would be visually on the left hand the screen, and it works in exactly the same way.

You can also add alt text by right-clicking on your images in your Google document and adding it that way; it’s just really easy.

So there are a few differences, as I mentioned.

The Google table functions in one way.

I find them more intuitive, but there isn’t a way to set dedicated table headings, and that might be an issue depending on the screen reader.

My colleague said that this is often fine if the table is simple and they’re able to work out the information without it, but with very large and more complex tables, this is just not going to work as an option.

So I would consider being considerate when you’re using tables and perhaps even thinking of different ways to present the information that could be more accessible if you need to use them.

You can’t set a document title in Google Docs because you just use the file name.

This might only become an issue if you download the document locally on your computer.

So, that’s something that you might have to add later on.

Unlike Microsoft, which doesn’t have the accessibility checker, there’s no native way of checking colour contrast within Google itself, and they recommend using online checkers like WebAIM.

And their Colour Contrast Analyser is a really good colour contrast checker that I use a lot.

So with Google Slides, they don’t have a lot of the functionality that PowerPoint does.

They’re much simpler.

So it doesn’t have the functions of creating a reading order panel; however, you can make sure you’re keeping a logical order by sticking to the preset templates that come with new slides, and trying not to add too much of your own text boxes or images.

Just stick to the templates.

You can check the reading order on your slides by pressing tab, and it will highlight the items in their selected order, and you can just tab through it.

You can see how things are going to be read.

You should be able to reorder them, going back to front, but I noticed that it doesn’t always work.

So, my recommendation is that it’s safest and easiest just to use the preset templates when it comes to Google Slides.

One thing that I did notice that was really neat with Google Slides is that they have an option to share the presentation through as a HTML page, and there’s a shortcut called Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P, and you can share that link with whoever you want and it’s just a one long HTML page which is going to be a lot easier for many people who use screen readers and assisted technology to read.

00:40:00

Leo Ould: However, if you’re doing this, it will include all your slide notes and presentation notes.

So, if that’s not something you want to share, that’s something to consider.

But, it is just really great that they’ve thought about how different people might access the information and put workarounds in place for how people can read it.

So Google are constantly working on their accessibility issues or accessibility functions and making them better and putting new things in them.

So it’s always worth just playing around and finding what’s new out there.

And then finally, I’m just going to quickly talk about Canva, because like I said, it’s becoming more popular for businesses to use options like this.

Canva has some really actually in great built-in options to check your work.

However, I would still advise caution when downloading into Word or PDF files.

Canva states specifically on their website that the PDFs are not PDF/UA compliant and will require remediation, and I think that a lot of this is because Canva is a design-oriented website; some of the structural items don’t always carry over as expected.

Or it’s just not really compatible with the newest versions of Acrobat, but fortunately, as I said, checking accessibility on Canva is very easy.

If you go to ‘File’, ‘Check Accessibility’, it often gives you options to open a design accessibility panel, which is very much like Microsoft’s accessibility checker.

And there are also other options to reduce animation motion if you’re creating videos or other multimedia content.

So I think these are really great tools there, and if you’re creating social media or presentations through Canva, make it a habit just to test everything after you’ve made them, and then it becomes second nature.

Also, you can set a document language in Canva, which I don’t know if I mentioned in the other slides, but the document language is important for screen readers because it tells them what language to use.

And this can be done in the file settings.

And depending on what multimedia tool you’re using in Canva, there’s a whole bunch of other accessibility options, such as reducing animation settings, adding video captions, adding autoplay on and off, and increasing screen message time.

So it’s really fantastic that they’re thinking about this with accessibility in mind.

I did mention that the PDFs on Canva are stated as not being compliant with accessibility standards.

I’ve noticed that if you’re creating documents on Canva, if you share it through a public view link, this will actually share the page as an HTML page, and this is fantastic because HTML is very accessible in its nature.

It also means that the styles are not going to change, which is often why people prefer PDF.

It’s because all the design information is embedded, and it doesn’t change on the computer, so this is something to consider if you’re ever sharing work as another option to share that might be much more accessibility-friendly.

Okay, thank you.

I’ll try not to be too long because I realise the last section is just called ‘Include’, and this is kind of just further considerations.

So, some describe accessibility as a moving target, and although we try our best to uphold standards, even by following the rules, it’s not possible to ensure something is accessible to everyone.

Even people with the same disability can perceive information differently from one another, and sometimes it’s about context and personal preferences.

Having alternative formats prepared is a good practice.

It’s recommended for online publishing because if something isn’t accessible, the user has the right to request a version in an alternative format.

However, in the workplace, it could be beneficial to have alternative versions prepared because you may hire a future colleague or freelancer who will need to access older files and find that they’re not accessible to them.

So, you don’t want to have to remake work or lose work, or even potentially good colleagues, because this information isn’t readily available.

The best way to do this is to simply build it into your workflow.

00:45:00

Leo Ould: So if you’re creating a plain text document, which I would describe as a Word document, to go alongside any graphically designed versions.

So if you’re doing reports and PDFs, and just to have someone who is responsible for noting any changes that are happening through the development of these products and to note those changes on a plain text version as well.

So you’re basically having two documents being worked on concurrently.

This may feel like extra steps, but it will save you a lot of time, especially if someone asks for a plain text version and you notice that your final version doesn’t match up with your version ones.

So it’s much easier to keep track of changes as they’re happening than to retrospectively try to convert one format into the other and then add accessibility on top of that.

If you’re on a mixed team, I like to listen and learn what other methods your colleagues like to communicate by.

There’s a saying that says treat others as you would like to be treated, but I’ve heard it is better to treat others how they would like to be treated.

I personally have certain preferences and ways of working that help me.

I’m a visual planner, and I use colour coding and blocks to help me understand deadlines, but I know my colleague who’s using a screen reader, and this is not going to mean much to them.

So I’m happy to find alternative ways to share the information with them in a manner that they can access, and it doesn’t add too much time if you’re already creating the information.

Something that I really appreciate about Passion4Social is that we also give each other options to personalise our internal documents, such as time sheets.

So even though the functionality is locked, we can’t change how they work, but things like colours and fonts are customisable to our needs.

And so for me, who’s quite sensitive to colours and fonts, that’s a really nice addition to consider.

And just a little note, if you’re familiar with Microsoft settings through this webinar and you’ve gone away and practised them, all this knowledge also applies to their emails as well.

You can set up your font styles to adhere to accessibility guidelines, such as font size and sans serif.

You can create headers and use formatted styles to make navigation in your emails quicker, and you also can add alt text to images.

And this is also really useful, like I said, if images get broken when sent in the email, the alt text will tell you what the image was meant to be.

The emails have the same accessibility assistant as seen in Microsoft programs.

And I would also recommend playing around with the editor feature, which can help you with your spelling and grammar.

It’ll tell you more about your writing style and the comprehension level of your text.

It also has additional features such as figuring out like gender specific biases and mental health biases in your language, which is all great to know if you’re trying to be as inclusive as possible.

Google Mail has all the same kind of structural elements and functionality as Microsoft, but without the additional checkers.

So okay, thank you, that was my presentation today.

Sorry for the little rambling at the end.

Gillian Brown: Thank you, Leo, for that presentation.

It was very informative and thought-provoking.

We have some time now just for some questions, so if you haven’t already, please do pop your questions into the chat and we’ll do our very best to answer them.

I’m going to read them out so that everyone can participate.

So, we’ve already got one question about Canva.

Leo, if we create our annual report in Canva, would this be okay to share the document in HTML, or the PDF policies also in a Word document?

Leo Ould: I think if you’re creating stuff in Canva, it’s just to be aware that there may be accessibility issues.

So if you’re publishing in HTML and you have a website, it might just be easier to put the information on your website as HTML, rather than using Canva’s specific share link, because then you have more options to create actual web pages instead of just one long document.

As I said, I didn’t want to put anyone off from using Canva.

00:50:00

Leo Ould: It’s just to be aware that there might be some accessibility issues with them, but it is always good to have, like I said, options for a plain text version.

Have your Word document with your report, just in case anyone needs it and needs access in the future.

Gillian Brown: Thank you, Leo.

Are there any more questions anyone wants to pop into the chat?

Maybe think about a time you might have run into an inaccessible document, and how it impacted your work?

Or what tools might you find the trickiest with accessibility?

Someone’s asked, Leo, could you kindly go over the document titles again?

Leo Ould: Let’s see if I can quickly skip back to the page.

It’s very far away.

So, on Microsoft Word, you have your document title, and this can be found if you click ‘File’, and it’ll have the ‘Save’, and all those things.

It’ll have the big panel that comes up, and then underneath properties, it has the option to put the title, and the document title is basically what the document is going to be read as on the screen reader first.

This is different from the file name, which, as you may know, might have file version one, version two, but the document title will always be the document title, and this will be noticeable if you’re publishing online.

The document title will be the thing that is seen at the top, and it’s really important to add that so people know exactly what your document is, and they’re not reading the really long file name that says final, version three, or something.

PDFs also have this function as well.

If you’re doing PDFs, to check the document title, it’s just something that really gets overlooked because I don’t think it’s made super obvious.

Gillian Brown: Leo, someone else has just asked, and just for anyone else who missed the very beginning, whether you’ll get a recording of the meeting or the presentation.

Yes, just in case anyone did miss that, you will be sent an email to follow up with the recording, and it will be transcribed, as well as the presentation, as well as the follow-up resources.

Any further questions from anyone?

Thanks for these nice, kind comments that are coming into the chat.

Maybe if anyone wants to share a takeaway or an idea from the presentation that they think they could apply straight away, or anything else they want to ask before we go?

Then, I guess that brings us to the end of today’s webinar.

So, a huge thank you to everyone for taking the time to join us and for engaging with the theme.

I’m sure you’d all like to join me in thanking Leo for doing such a great job with the presentation.

Getting lots of thumbs up and applause reactions here, Leo, well done.

They shared a lot of valuable insights, I think, and actionable tips.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we’ll all have come away from today’s session better off.

And as we’ve seen today, making digital documents accessible is far from just about compliance.

It’s about inclusion, dignity, and ensuring everyone can participate fully.

So if you’d like to learn more about the theme of accessible content creation, Passion4Social has lots of resources, webinars, and practical guides to help you continue on your accessibility journey. You can check out our website or follow us on LinkedIn.

And we’ll also, as I said, send a follow-up email very soon.

It’ll take a while for the recording and the transcript to come through.

And you’ll have that presentation and a short feedback survey, if you care to fill that in for us, that would be fab.

And until then, if everyone can keep creating, testing, and have a fantastic Global Accessibility Awareness Day tomorrow.

Thank you, everyone.

00:55:00

Meeting ended after 00:56:17