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Creating Accessible Documents for Everyone
As a content creator, it is crucial to ensure your documents are accessible to a wide audience. Microsoft Word includes an “Accessibility Checker” that helps you identify and fix potential issues that could make your document difficult for people with disabilities to read or navigate. This is particularly important for those who use screen readers or other assistive technologies.
To use the Accessibility Checker, go to the ‘Review’ tab on the ribbon and click on the ‘Check Accessibility’ button [00:19]. The Accessibility pane will open on the right side of your screen and provide a list of potential errors, warnings, and tips. It will flag issues such as images that are missing ‘alt text’ (alternative text), which a screen reader uses to describe the image’s content to a user who cannot see it. It will also check for potential issues with color contrast, table structure, and font choices that might be difficult for some readers to interpret. By addressing these issues, you can make your document much more inclusive and easier for everyone to use.
The Importance of a Word Count
Whether you are a student, a professional, or a freelance writer, meeting specific word count requirements is a common task. Microsoft Word’s built-in word count feature is an essential tool for this purpose.
To access the word count, go to the ‘Review’ tab on the ribbon and click on the ‘Word Count’ button [01:53]. A pop-up window will appear, providing detailed statistics about your document. This includes the number of pages, words, characters with and without spaces, paragraphs, and lines. You can also select a specific block of text and run the word count to get statistics for just that section. This is incredibly useful for ensuring you meet the requirements for a particular assignment or for keeping a business memo or report concise and to the point. The ability to quickly and accurately check your document’s length helps you stay on track and meet your goals.
Measuring Readability for Your Audience
Just as important as word count and accessibility is ensuring your document is easy to read. Word has a powerful, but hidden, feature that can provide a readability score for your work.
Before you can see this score, you must enable it in Word’s settings. To do this, go to ‘File’ > ‘Options’ > ‘Proofing.’ Look for the section titled ‘When correcting spelling and grammar in Word’ and check the box next to ‘Show readability statistics.’ Now, whenever you run a spelling and grammar check on your document, you will receive a readability score at the end.
This score includes two key metrics [06:04]: the Flesch Reading Ease score and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score. The Flesch Reading Ease score is a measure of how easy a document is to read. The higher the score, the easier the document is to understand. A score between 60 and 70 is often considered ideal for most general-purpose writing. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score estimates the U.S. school grade level required to understand the text. For example, a score of 8.0 means that a person with an 8th-grade reading level can easily understand the content.
By using these readability scores, you can tailor your writing style to your intended audience. If you are writing a technical manual, you might expect a higher grade level, whereas a blog post for a general audience should aim for a lower, more accessible score. This tool helps you refine your writing to be as clear and effective as possible.
Optimizing Your Microsoft Word Document: A Guide to Accessibility, Word Count, and Readability was originally found on Access 2 Learn
