Create Inclusive Content Easily with Microsoft Word's Built-in Accessibility Features

Digital accessibility makes technology usable for everyone, helping employees stay productive and giving employers access to more talent. Microsoft Word includes a built-in Accessibility Assistant to help you easily create inclusive documents.

Think of it like spellcheck, cranked up to 11, intended to ensure as many people as possible are able to access the information you’re trying to share.

What is Microsoft Word’s Accessibility Assistant, and How Does It Work?

Accessibility standards outline the best practices and tools that should be present in modern software so that as many people as possible—with as many circumstances affecting them—are able to easily read the content produced. It does so by seeking out three categories of issues:

1. Errors that must be corrected (for instance, missing descriptions)
2. Warnings that provide opportunities to enhance a user’s experience
3. Tips to help make a document look more professional

The Accessibility Assistant in Action:

With a goal of ensuring that people of all abilities and with any complicating factors can gain benefits from the tool, developers built features designed to address their immediate challenges.

One example is the use of screen readers that can normally be disrupted by images. The Accessibility Assistant uses AI to generate a description of the image, helping everyone’s experience.

On a similar note, the Assistant can also detect when there isn’t enough contrast between the text color and the background, giving you the opportunity to adjust this balance and make everything more legible. This helps users with colorblindness or other visual disabilities.

The Assistant can even identify whether page elements, such as headings, are formatted properly. These inclusions can help make documents easier to navigate, speeding up comprehensive reading.

This is important information to know, especially given that the Americans with Disabilities Act's Title II updates are scheduled to take effect this year. Making these adjustments is becoming more and more of a prerogative, and less and less an option.

Furthermore, these adjustments are a game-changer for those who need them. So, how does one activate the Assistant and identify where these adjustments can be made?

All it takes is a few clicks:

Activating the Word Accessibility Assistant

Setting up the assistant to run as you work is a simple task: in the Review menu tab, click on Check Accessibility. A panel will open that lists the fixes you need to make and any adjustments to consider, as we went over above.

This is great for a final review, but if you’d rather correct any accessibility issues as you work, you can check the box at the bottom of the Check Accessibility panel labeled "Keep accessibility checker running while I work." With this active, you’ll see an update in the status bar the moment Word registers a potential issue.

Inclusion Can Be Easy to Accomplish

You just need to know how to use the tools at your disposal.

Atech MSP is here to help make all of your business IT as easy to use as possible for everyone on your team. Reach out to us at (888) 814-4843 to learn more about our managed, proactive IT services.