Almost every inaccessible government PDF began life as a Word document that was never built for accessibility. Fixing structure in the source Word file takes minutes; remediating the exported PDF afterward can take hours per document. If your team creates its own forms, reports, and notices, this is the highest-leverage accessibility habit you can adopt.
1. Use real heading styles
Screen-reader users navigate by heading, jumping from section to section the way sighted readers skim. That only works if your headings are actual Word styles — Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 — applied from the Styles gallery, not text you made big and bold. Use one Heading 1 for the title, then nest 2s and 3s logically without skipping levels.
2. Add alt text to images
Right-click any image → View Alt Text and write a concise description of what the image communicates. If the image is purely decorative, mark it as decorative so screen readers skip it. For a chart, describe the data or trend — not “bar chart.”
3. Build tables the right way
Use Word's Insert Table tool, designate a header row (Table Design → Header Row, and Table Layout → Repeat Header Rows), and — critically — never merge or split cells. Merged cells destroy the row/column relationships a screen reader relies on. Keep tables for tabular data only; do not use them to lay out a page.
4. Make lists real lists
Use the bulleted and numbered list buttons rather than typing dashes or numbers by hand. A real list tells assistive technology “this is a list of five items,” which a row of manual hyphens does not.
5. Write descriptive link text
“Click here” and a raw URL are both barriers. A screen-reader user often pulls up a list of every link on the page; out of context, “click here” means nothing. Write links that describe their destination, like “download the 2026 benefits enrollment form.”
6. Check color and contrast
Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background (3:1 for large text). And never use color alone to convey meaning — if “red means overdue,” add a word or symbol so colorblind readers get the same information.
7. Set the document properties
In File → Info, give the document a real Title, and confirm the editing language is set correctly (Review → Language). These become the PDF's title and language attributes, both of which screen readers announce.
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8. Run the built-in Accessibility Checker
Word ships with a checker: Review → Check Accessibility. It flags missing alt text, bad table structure, low contrast, and more, with inline fix suggestions. Run it before every export and clear the errors. It is not a complete audit — it cannot judge whether your alt text is good — but it catches the mechanical failures.
9. Export to a tagged PDF correctly
When you save as PDF, use File → Save As → PDF (or Export) and make sure “Document structure tags for accessibility” is enabled in the options. Never “print to PDF” — that flattens the document and strips every tag you just built, leaving a file a screen reader cannot read. A properly exported tagged PDF carries your headings, alt text, table structure, and reading order straight through.
The payoff
Every one of these steps takes seconds while you are already in the document. Skip them, and each file becomes a remediation project later — multiplied across the hundreds or thousands of documents a public agency publishes. Author it right once, and accessibility becomes a byproduct of normal work instead of a separate, expensive cleanup.