0.6 Making documents people can actually read

What you'll be able to do

Make documents that work for every reader they will actually meet. That includes people using a screen reader — software that reads a screen aloud — and people reading on a phone in bright sunlight. At SOOP this is not a nicety. Real learners here use software like this, and a document that fails them fails its job.

Before you start

One of your own documents, with at least one image and a few links in it.

The work

1. Same either way: give every image alt text. Alt text is the sentence a screen reader speaks in place of the picture. Select the image, open the context menu with Shift+F10, and choose View Alt Text (or Edit Alt Text). Write what the image is for, not what it looks like. "Monthly sales, rising steeply after March" beats "chart with blue bars". An image that is only decoration is marked decorative instead, so it is passed over in silence.
2. Same either way: make link text say where it goes. A screen reader can read out all the links on a page as a list, away from the words around them. A list of five "click here" links is unusable. Write "the fee structure PDF" as the link text, never "click here" and never a bare web address.
3. Same either way: never let colour carry a meaning on its own. "Errors are in red" leaves out anyone who cannot tell that red apart, and everyone printing in black and white. Add a second signal every time: a word, a symbol, or bold. Red and the word "overdue".
4. Same either way: keep the contrast strong. Use dark text on a light background, or light text on a dark one. Pale grey text on white looks refined on your own monitor and disappears on a cheap phone outdoors, which is where your reader often is.
5. No documented keyboard shortcut for this — use the menu: run the checker built into the app. Go to Review → Check Accessibility. A pane lists what it found, most serious first, and points at the exact object. Each finding comes with a fix you can apply on the spot. Work the list until it is clear.
6. Same either way: run the checker every time you finish a document other people will read. It takes about thirty seconds, and it belongs with spell-check at the end of the job.

Try it

Take your practice document. Write real alt text for its images. Rewrite any "click here" links. Find one place where colour carries a meaning alone and add a second signal. Then run Review → Check Accessibility and clear every finding.

Check yourself