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Accessibility Essentials 2
Writing Accessible Electronic Documents with Microsoft® Word
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TechDis is an advisory service of 
,the Joint Information Systems Committee.
,the Joint Information Systems Committee.
Introduction
The TechDis Accessibility Essentials Guide on writing accessibly with Microsoft
® Word has been designed to give step-by-step information to enable anyone writing with Microsoft
® Word to do so in a more accessible manner. These hints and tips will be of great use to all people who write using Microsoft
® Word, including those who write documents for print and those whose documents will be read electronically (e.g. via email or from a website).
The use of the techniques described here will aid people with a wide range of disabilities to get more from written content, by adding different means of conveying the information. These techniques will also make documents easier to read and understand for everybody.
This guide has been divided into the following sections:
Authoring Accessible Documents
- It is important to ensure that when writing a document accessibility is taken into consideration from the outset. Information in this section covers the use of fonts styles and colours, appropriate structuring, appropriate images and the use of hyperlinks.
Accessibility and Usability Benefit for Authors
- When an author is creating a document, there are a number of inbuilt features which could save time when creating a document or series of documents. This section covers the use of the outline view, AutoCorrect, AutoText, synonyms and the creation of a table of contents.
This document builds on the information provided in the first Accessibility Essentials Guide. The first guide in the series, entitled 'Making Electronic Documents More Readable', was designed to give practical step-by-step information, to enable anyone reading material to amend its look and feel into a style which suits them. There may be sections of this document which would be of use to document authors.
For further information on the Accessibility Essentials guide for reading see the TechDis website.