Accessible digital documents are designed to be inclusive, allowing individuals with disabilities to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the content. By making your documents accessible, you provide equal access to information, fostering inclusivity and enhancing user experience. Accessible PDFs benefit a wide range of users, including those with visual impairments, cognitive disabilities, or mobility challenges. The Google Docs text editor offers features built-in to help you create accessible content.

Where to Start?

Not sure where to start? No problem, follow these steps to help you create an accessible Google document.

Add a Document Title

You should add a document title to your files. A document title is different than a file name. The title typically matches the heading 1 for your document, or the main title if you have multiple heading 1s.

Type your titles in upper and lower cases. Avoid using ALL CAPS, and any internal review terms (i.e. My Document Title - FINAL; My Document Title - REVIEW).

Format Your Structure

The structure of the document is important to convey. Assistive technologies, like screen reader and text-to-speech readers, rely on the underlying code in a document to tell the difference between a heading and regular printed text or when a person navigates into a table or a list of items. These cues help provide an understanding of how the document is organized.

Headings

Headings are very important help people navigate the content of your document. These are tend to be large and bold text. Though they sometimes could be a colored font, too.

Just making your headings visually big and bold is not enough. You need to add the underlying structure telling other technologies that "this text is a heading" and how this heading fits with other headings in your document. With the GoogleDocs Text editor, you can easily format your headings.

For more information on structuring your headings, check out our Headings Overview.

Lists

Numbered and bulleted lists help break up paragraphs. If you find yourself using more than three commas to list things off in a sentence, try using a bulleted list instead so it is easier to scan for information.

When the list is formatted as a list, it is also easy to scan with assistive technologies. A screen reader will tell a person when they are entering and exiting the list instead of listening to the list as if it were a run-on sentence with dashes.

GoogleDocs typically will automatically set a bulleted list if you start numbering a list or use the dash key. Some older versions may not automatically create a list and you may need to manually add a list to your document.

Columns

Sometimes you may need more than one column to present your content.

Avoid using the tab key to make space between columns on a page. Assistive Technology will read document text left to right, top to bottom. If you use the tab key create spaces between columns, assistive technology will read across both columns before moving down to the next line. In GoogleDocs you can format your columns so assistive technology will read one column before moving on to the next.

Add Meaningful Text Links

Links let people jump to a new location in the current document, open a web site, or open another document. By linking text in your document you can allow people navigate around or away from your document. The words in a text link should clearly convey where you are taking a person if they select the link.

Ensure any media linked to from your document is provided in accessible formats.

Add Alternative Text for Images

Images should have a purpose. The image's purpose must be conveyed through text either in the surrounding content or in an alternative text (i.e. image description, alt text, etc.). GoogleDocs allows you to add alternative text to images. 

Tips on writing alt text for images

Tables

Tables can help organize and display some types of content, particularly data. Data tables take large amounts of information and compile it into cells. These cells form rows and columns so people can compare data points. 

Assistive technologies, like screen readers, are linear and will read an unformatted table one row at a time, left to right. Large data tables can be confusing when the table's headers are not conveyed to screen reader users.

Resources

• Make your document or presentation more accessible
• Accessibility for Docs editors