Most of us have been using Word and Powerpoint longer than smartphones have existed. It doesn’t mean we are using it logically and with readability in mind. This accessibility tips post will remind you of what’s already in place and give you suggestions on how to personalize the ready-made templates better to ensure your branding is included AND there is no loss of readability for disabled visitors. Remember, being disabled isn’t always obvious. Those potential clients and customers visiting your site who are sensitive to contrast and colors are also affected. Why not take a bit more time to ensure what you create is easily read by all? Following the ideas below will also assist those using readers because your information will be better organized. Heck, I always prefer to read better-organized content. There is one part that will cause you issues, I’m sure. Let’s see if I was correct at the end of this post.
Before you do anything, in both Word and Powerpoint develop a branded template that can be used by everyone in your company. You want to make sure it has YOUR colors, your fonts or similar whenever possible and still has high enough contrast to be read by anyone. Both Word and PowerPoint come with stock templates you can customize. Look at the headers on a page first and the other slides or pages to see how it will look. You can always change colors and fonts. This is the quickest way.
Next, get your colors for your brand and change out the colors in the template. Save the template as whatever you’d like: companyname-standard-letter, companyname-quote, etc.
When you create a new document, first select your new template, then you are ready!
- Make sure your first slide or the first page of the document has a TITLE applied.
- If using headings, start with an H1 and go through them. Do not skip H2 to use H3.
- If you are not liking how H2
The following four-minute video will help guide you with some quick outlining tips. This is for Microsoft Word.
The tips in this post came from the course offered by WebAim.org – I highly recommend it for ANYONE creating documents and web content for your company.
If you need help with existing videos or would like me to create some of these for your company, or speak to your group on this topic, let me know.