Office 365 accessibility features

Available in all Office products:

All Office apps include a Check Accessibility function.

The Check Accessibility function is in the Review section of the Office ribbon menu. It will highlight accessibility issues in your content and offer solutions.

You should use the Check Accessibility function for any content that you create, but you will produce much higher-quality content if you design your content to be accessible from the start. See Best Practices for more information on how to design your content to be more accessible.

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MS Teams features:

MS Teams can record online meetings and provide automatic transcription of audio content. When you begin recording a Teams meeting, transcription is automatically enabled, but transcription can also be enabled without recording the meeting. Once transcription is enabled, either by recording a meeting or independently, each user can choose to either view the transcript as it is being generated, or choose to hide it if they find the transcription pane distracting.

Teams can also provide live captions for users during the meeting. Live captions can be enabled and disabled by each meeting attendee individually.

See Accessibility Tools for Microsoft Teams on the Microsoft website for a full list of accessibility features and best practices for MS Teams.

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Best practices

In general:

Include alternative text with all visuals.

Visual content includes pictures, SmartArt graphics, shapes, groups, charts, embedded objects, ink, and videos.

Avoid using text in visual content as the sole method of conveying important information. This includes SmartArt graphics. If you must use visual content with text in it, repeat that text in the presentation. In the alternative text, briefly describe the image and mention the existence of the text and its intent.

Add meaningful hyperlink text and ScreenTips.

People that use screen readers will sometimes use the screen reader to display a list of links in your presentation, without any of the surrounding context.

If your link just says, “Click here”, and is being read by a screen reader, the user will not know where the link goes. Instead, use the title of the page you are linking to, or a description, or even the full text of the link if it’s short and self-explanatory to your audience (for example, www.mcgill.ca ).

You can use ScreenTips to display a tooltip when your user hovers over a link or an image with a link. This is not only helpful for accessibility, but it is also a good information security practice.

Ensure that color is not the only means of conveying information.

People who are blind, have low vision, have certain intellectual disabilities, or are colorblind might miss out on the meaning conveyed by particular colors.

Examples:

• Instead of using colour coding in a chart, you could use shading or text labelling.
• Instead of using colour to denote a hyperlink, you could underline it.
• Instead of using colour to emphasize a word, you could use grammar or vocabulary.

Tables are for data only, and they require column header information.

Use only simple tables and avoid merging and nesting cells. Screen readers count the numbers of cells to keep track of data structures in presentations. If you merge or nest cells, they will often become garbled for the screen reader.

Use a larger font size (18pt or larger), sans serif fonts, and sufficient white space.

Do not use all capital letters (even in titles), or overuse italics, bolding, or underlines. Keep the “reading load” low where possible. This will help a variety of people consume your content, including those with dyslexia, low vision, and attention deficit.

Make videos accessible to visually impaired and hearing-impaired users.

This will also improve the accessibility of your content for many people that have a different primary language and allow people in noisy environments to consume your content. You could use:

• Subtitles: a transcription (or translation) of the dialogue.
• Closed captions: also describe audio cues such as music or sound effects that occur off-screen.
• Video description: audio-narrated descriptions of a video's key visual elements. These descriptions are inserted into natural pauses in the program's dialogue. Video description makes video more accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired.

Use simple language whenever possible.

For examples of simple language explanations, Simple English Wikipedia is a great resource. This will help people with intellectual disabilities, but also people who don’t speak English or French as their primary language.

Use built-in headings and styles and avoid additional embellishments.

Organize your document into logical sections, and then use the built-in styles for Title, Heading 1, Heading 2 and so on. Attempt to keep each section brief; aim for a few paragraphs per section.

In PowerPoint:

• Make sure slide contents can be read in the order that you intend by checking the Reading Order from the Accessibility Checker.
• When creating a new slide, use the built-in slide designs, without adding additional textboxes. Manually adding textboxes will often cause screen readers or the built in Immersive Reader to read content out of order, making it incoherent or indecipherable.
• Use sufficient contrast for text and background colors. This means that it is easier to visually distinguish your content, so it will be easier to read and understand. You can check your colour contrast with the accessibility checker.
• Give every slide a unique and meaningful title. People that use assistive technology often use slide titles to find the information that they are looking for. Built-in slide designs have a Title field where you can put your unique and meaningful title.
  
  • As an example, “Slide 5” is not very helpful, but “Key considerations for PowerPoint Part 5” is more helpful. You can also place the title outside of the visible area of the slide if you do not want it visible in the slide. A person using a screen reader will still be able to access it and use the information to navigate your presentation.

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