Applying structure to your text

Welcome to Accessibility in 5, a series from UFIT where we explore a quick tip on making your content more accessible in 5 minutes or less. I'm Laura and today's topic is “How and Why to Apply Structure to Your Text.” Last month we talked about readability and we learned how helpful it is to chunk text into smaller or less dense sections. 

 One way of doing that is to insert headings or subheadings into longer documents. This can help people find their place again if they get lost or need to refer back to something later. Supports the reader in understanding how to organize their thoughts on the topic. And, is overall an important best practice for cognitive accessibility, which we'll talk more about next month. 

 But what a lot of people don't realize is that making text bigger, bolding the words, or changing the font do not actually turn text into a heading. That may look like a heading to a sighted user like myself, but that text will be missing important metadata contained in the document that tells assistive technology what is a heading versus normal text. 

 Without this information, somebody who is blind and using screen reading software, for example, will not be able to quickly move through the headings and get an overview of the document, or easily return later to the section they need. Headings also get read by some other types of assistive technology, so you never know who will benefit from this practice. 

 Instead of changing the font size, you can specifically format text as a heading so that everyone can benefit from it. In Microsoft Word, use styles in the home ribbon to designate headings. This will also allow you to use the navigation pane. Most word processors have something similar. You can also designate text as a heading and canvas on websites and in PDFs. 

 When you format your headings, remember to always start with the lowest level available. You will only want to use that level once on that document. Then, nest headings sequentially without skipping a level. For example, if I'm writing a syllabus as a Word document, the first line might be a heading one that says “syllabus for...” and the name of the course. 

 Then I might have level two headings for larger sections, like course policies and assignments, but smaller sections within those would be a heading three. Now, if I skip from a heading 2 to a heading 4, the document will be potentially confusing. One quirk about headings is that some document types like a PDF start with a title. Others like Word documents usually start with a heading 1. 

 If you have a very long Word document like a dissertation draft, then you might use the title, but most word documents won't use it. So far. I have focused on headings, but there are other recommendations for formatting to make your documents easier for people who use assistive technology. One of those is bullet points. Most word processors these days will automatically format lists with bullet points if you write an asterisk or a number at the start of the line. But it always pays to look at the ribbon at the top of the program to make sure. 

 If each line of a list starts with hyphens, but the unordered list button is not selected, someone who’s having the document read to them will have a confusing experience because their assistive technology will just start reading them hyphens with sentence fragments after them. 

 Using bullet points is an easy one to achieve, but it's still worth keeping an eye out to make sure the formatting is accurate. Finally, using symbols that are not simply letters numbers and basic punctuation might be a problem, as sometimes these are not read correctly or at all by a screen reader. This includes things like nonstandard bullet points, currency symbols, some math symbols. 

 Similarly, if you use a hyphen, what you really mean is an m dash that probably won't be voiced the way you intend to be safe. Make sure that you're using symbols that have a Unicode character. You can find these in Microsoft Word by going to insert and then symbol. This makes sure your entire audience has the same shared understanding of your document. 

 Thanks for watching. Accessibility in 5! You can find this video as well as previous ones archived on the CITT website. We'll have more videos that touch on text formatting in upcoming months, such as one about hyper linking and another about tables. Tune in next month to learn about writing for cognitive accessibility.