Accessibility Guide for Offline Documents
July 6, 2017 by Nia Ordinario
Information about creating offline documents that meet accessibility requirements (ADA, Section 504, 508)
Introduction
Accessibility is a key issue for those who create web content (ie web pages) as well as digital documents that live offline. This strategy post is an introductory post that covers methods and tips useful for making offline documents (Word docs, PDFs, etc) that meet accessibility requirements. For a similar post that covers web pages see this post [INSERT LINK].
Why is accessibility important?
With as much as 20% of the population living with a disability, it is important (and in the case of educational institutions, a legal requirement) to make offline documents accessible. When offline documents are accessible, people who have visual, auditory, motor, and/or cognitive disabilities can access them and interact with them.
What can I do to make my offline documents more accessible?
There are free tools available to both guide the creation of new documents that are accessible and to audit the accessibility of existing documents. Depending on the software used to create the documents, there a simple measure you can take to make them more accessible.