Document Accessibility

General Settings

  • Font – There is inconclusive evidence that serifs impact readability for readers with normal or impaired vision; however, federal regulations (ADA, ABA) proscribe sans serif fonts in federal communications. Your disquisition is not regulated by federal regulations, but you may wish to create a compliant document for other reasons using the following sans serif fonts from the list of approved fonts.
    • Arial (size 10)
    • Microsoft Sans Serif (size 10)
    • Tahoma (size 10)
    • Trebuchet MS (size 10)
    • Verdana (size 10)

Tables, Figures, Schemes, and Other Non-text Items

  • Font – Use the same consistent sans serif font in figures, schemes, or other non-text items that is used in the body paragraph text, with a size not smaller than the body paragraph text at 100% view size/zoom.
  • Alt-text – Descriptive alt-text should be set for all non-text items, to aid readers with impaired vision. Alt-text can be set on non-text items by right-clicking it and selecting the “edit alt-text” option from the menu. Alt-text should complement the information about the non-text item from the text. For example, the alt-text in figure 7 above describes the layout of the List of Appendix Tables contained in the image.
  • Color contrast – Whenever color is used in a non-text item, ensure there is a contrast ratio of 3:1 or greater with the surrounding element. For example, a black trace (#000000) in a line graph against a white background provides a contrast ratio of 21:1, whereas a green trace (#00FF00) against a white background provides a contrast ratio of only 1.37:1. The higher the contrast, the more visually distinct each element will be. (You may use this site to test color contrast.) For more information, see the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) published by W3C.
  • Color & complimentary elements – Whenever color is used to distinguish elements in a non-text item, use additional indicators such as symbols or patterns to differentiate visual elements. For example, in a line graph with two traces and a white background, one trace could be red (#AA0000) with a dotted line and the other trace could be dark teal (#008080) with a dashed line.