In practice
Accessible PDFs from Word – the 10-point guide
90 % of accessibility is made (or lost) in the source document. These ten simple steps make the difference.
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- Styles instead of bold. Mark up headings with “Heading 1/2/3” – never just format them bold and large. Only then are real heading tags and bookmarks created on export.
- Alternative text for every image. Right-click → “Edit Alt Text”. 1–2 sentences: what can be seen, what information does it convey? Mark decorative images as “decorative”.
- Real lists. Use the list function rather than typing dashes by hand.
- Simple tables. No merged cells, no tables as a layout tool. Mark the header row: Table Tools → “Repeat Header Rows”.
- No text boxes. Content in text boxes often drops out of the reading order completely. Use normal body text.
- Set the document title. File → Info → “Title” field – this becomes the window title of the PDF, the first thing that is read aloud.
- Check the language. Review → Language. Mark up passages in other languages accordingly.
- Contrast and links. No light grey text on white (guideline value 4.5:1). Write meaningful link texts – not “click here”.
- Run Word’s accessibility checker. Review → “Check Accessibility” – fixes the worst errors before the export.
- Export correctly. File → Save As → PDF → Options: tick “Document structure tags for accessibility” and “Create bookmarks using: Headings”. Never via “Print → as PDF” – that produces a PDF without tags!
And then?
Upload the exported PDF to DokAudit: the rest (title display, tab order, finer points of the standard, font embedding) is checked and added automatically – including a test report as proof. You can also upload the Word file directly; DokAudit takes care of the conversion into a tagged PDF.