Have you ever produced a document, such as an event invitation, and focused on its appearance rather than its usability? Have you ever thought about how those with access needs might access what you have produced? In most cases, the answer is likely to be no. However, ensuring that the documents you produce are accessible for those with a vision impairment will help everybody and not just this user group. In this blog, we will explore some of the key things to consider when putting documents together.

When it comes to longer documents, formatting is a critical access requirement. Be sure to use actual heading styles, as demonstrated in this blog, as these allow vision impaired readers to quickly jump to the relevant section of your document. Screen reading software, such as JAWS, even allows readers to navigate a document just by heading. So this is a really useful thing to do. In addition, consider using a properly formatted table of contents if your document has a number of headings or is more than five pages in length. This allows users to quickly navigate to the relevant section of your document.

1. Choose fonts that are easy to read over those that might look more decorative. Good fonts to use include Arial, Calibri and/or Verdana.
2. Use an adequate font size. Size 12 is normally sufficient for body text, though larger font sizes might be necessary for headings and subheadings. Whilst a vision impaired reader might have access to magnification software, this is not always the case.
3. Ensure that there is a strong contrast between text and background colours. This might be the difference between somebody being able to read your document or not.