Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining today's session, the essential guides to digital accessibility, ensuring inclusivity and compliance.And I'm here really excited to share how we can design and create accessible digital content. Before we dive into the content, let me briefly introduce myself. My name is Juliana Smith. My background is in physical oceanography and data science, and I have now more than fifteen years, of experience in tech. Since 2020, I have specialized in Power BI and user interface design. And for the past eighteen months, I have deep dive into the, digital accessibility framework. I'm the creator of a blog, called Smart Frames UI on the YouTube channel Accessible BI and board member of Northwest Women in STEM, a community interest group here based in the Northwest Of England. Today's session, we're gonna talk, first understanding disabilities and then the importance of digital accessibility, laws and regulations worldwide, digital accessibility and the European accessibility act, understanding accessibility, complying with digital accessibility, making Microsoft Office documents accessible, and then we're gonna wrap up the session.

So let's first understand disabilities. Globally, over one billion people or about fifteen percent of the population live with some form of disability. And disabilities come in various forms and, understanding them help us to create more inclusive designs and experiences. We can group disabilities into three main categories. We have permanent disabilities, which are long term conditions that significantly impact a person's daily life such as blindness, deafness, and paralysis. We also have situational disabilities which occur due to external circumstances, such as holding a baby can limit hand function, or a noisy environment may make hearing more difficult. We also have temporary disabilities, which are short term impairments, such as a broken arm or concussion that improve over time. Beyond these categories, disabilities can also be classified into different types. So we have cognitive and learning disabilities that affect memory and comprehension, while physical disabilities impact movement.

Sensory disabilities influence sight, hearing or touch. And speech and communication disabilities refer to verbal and non verbal interactions. Digital accessibility in digital design means ensuring that products can be used by people with a range of disabilities, and the objective is to eliminate barriers that prevent interaction with digital interfaces. This means that all users should be able to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with digital interfaces. In terms of importance, well, I can list a few. So first of all, most importantly, inclusivity and equal access. By making digital content accessible, we ensure that people with disabilities can fully engage with our platforms. So accessibility removes barriers, creating equal opportunities for everyone to access information, services, and products. And then, of course, legal compliance and risk mitigation. Many countries, have laws mandating digital accessibility. We're gonna be looking to some of these. Next slides.

And implementing accessibility ensures compliance, helping organizations to avoid legal risks, penalties, or reputational damage due to no compliance. Digital accessibility, practice also enhance usability for all users. So we have enhanced user experience, not only for those with disabilities. Features such as mobile friendly designs, keyboard navigation, and high contrast visuals make content more engaging, intuitive, and user friendly, which will lead a better overall experience to everybody. And we have boosted reputation and brand loyalty. So being accessible shows a commitment to social responsibility, which resonates with, many customers, employees, and stakeholders. When people see that you prioritize inclusivity, it builds trust, it enhances your reputation, and fosters brand loyalty. A digitally accessible business positions itself as a forward thinking and empathetic. Finally, we also have expanded market, reach. So globally, over one billion people live with disabilities.

And by prioritizing accessibility, businesses can connect with these often overlooked audience, increasing their customer base. Additionally, accessible designs benefit users with temporary challenges with, for example, injuries or situational impairments, as well as older adults, which will broaden your reach even further. Globally, there are legal requirements mandating digital accessibility, so here are a few examples. In The United States, we have the Americans with Disabilities Act and the section five zero eight of the Rehabilitation Act. In the European Union, we have the European Accessibility Act and the Web Accessibility Directive. Here in The United Kingdom, where I'm based, we have the Equality Act and the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations. In Australia, they have the Disability Discrimination Act.

And in Brazil, they have the Brazilian law of inclusion for persons with disabilities. And failure to comply with these regulations can result in legal consequences such as fines and lawsuits. We can harm the organization's reputation and financial stability. And ethically, we ensure, ensuring accessibility means providing equal access to information and services. Within the European Union, digital accessibility is a legal requirement, and the EAA, which is the, accessibility the European Accessibility Act, It's a EU, that that was approved in 2019, and it is a EU wide directive aimed at improving accessibility across digital and physical products and services.

So it expands, on previous, accessibility laws, such as the web accessibility directive, which are focused mainly on public sector, websites. The European Accessibility Act ensures that websites, apps, ecommerce platforms, banking, transport, and telecom services must be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, and it applies to businesses offering digital products or services in the European Union.

With the compliance deadline set for June 28, 2025, so in just over a month, businesses must start taking action now to avoid penalties and ensure their digital services meet accessibility standards. Let's now try to understand digital accessibility. But here's the thing. Unless we personally rely on accessible features every day, it is incredibly difficult to truly grasp the full scope of what digital accessibility means. It's a bit like trying to explain how vital ramps are if we have never used a wheelchair. We can understand it, of course, but feeling it, living it. That's a different experience altogether. But let's bring this down to something really relatable. For example, we have, text eligibility. So when choosing a font, which is, one of one of the most, one of the first decisions to make is between the font family if we want to use serif or sans serif.

So serif fonts like Times New Roman, they have little feet or the curative strokes at the ends of their letters. You can see here on the, left the Times New Roman And sans serif fonts like Ariel or Verdana, they don't have these extra decorative bits, giving them a cleaner and simpler look. For accessibility, sans serif fonts are generally recommended because they are easy to read on screens, especially at smaller screens. But it doesn't stop there. Even among sans serif fonts, we have to be careful. Some fonts have poor character differentiation. Many certain letters can look almost ident identical. So if you look here, this example on the right, we have the first, Elijah was written with a serif, font. And the two the one in the middle and the one in the bottom, they're both written with, sans serif. The first one is Arial Arial.

You can see the capital I is nearly identical to lowercase l, and, that can create a lot of confusion for readers. On the other hand, we have Verdana, which is the one in the on the bottom, which is sans serif, and it's designed with much clearer differences between the letters. So in Verdana, we can easily tell capital I and lowercase l apart at a glance. And that's the kind of thoughtful design that makes a real difference when it comes to digital accessibility. Now speaking of fonts, let's talk about something that surprised a lot of people, comics Comic Sans. I know, poor Comic Sans is, the font that everyone loves to tease. But in the real world of accessibility, Comic Sans actually has a bit of a fun club, and you might be wondering why. Well, it has excellent character differentiation.

Its slightly irregular handwritten shapes make each letter distinct, reduces the chance of confusing similar looking letters, which can be really helpful for people with dyslexia. And it's also a more relaxed and less formal, font type, making region a little bit less intimidating. While there are, fonts especially designed for dyslexia, for example, we have Open Dyslexic, Comic Sans do deserve a little bit of respect, and we should still use it. There is they couldn't quite understand why the users find Comic Sans, better than the fonts that were designed specifically, for example, for dyslexia. So it's still good to keep in mind that Comic Sans is not that all bad. And then there is color contrast. If you put a light gray text on a white background, it may it might look minimal and stylish, but it can be a nightmare for someone with low vision or color, blindness.

So good accessibility practice means ensuring there is strong contrast between your text and background colors, not just for aesthetics, but to make everyone, make sure that everyone can comfortably read what, you have written. So I have you an example of what is good and bad contrast on both, light and dark background. And although it sounds obvious, quite common to see, the people using the contrast on the bad side in both light and dark background. And then we have, font size. So using a font size, that is too small can create significant accessibility barriers, particularly with people with visual impairments or elderly users, or even those who are viewing the content on smaller devices like smartphones. So you can see here the difference big, big difference it makes by choosing a larger font. So this is something you should keep in mind. In terms of accessibility, if creating a digital document, we should try to avoid fonts below 12 points.

But if you're creating a presentation that's gonna be shown on a screen in a big room, for example, you may even have to use font size above 20 or 30 depending on the font on the screen, size, what is the audience, you know, how many people be how big is the room. So you may have to increase in further the font size. Now can you imagine can you try to explain what is in this image? All we can see is a black rectangle. Now imagine that, what it is for who rely on screen readers to see what is a nice screen. So alternative text is a simple yet powerful tool that helps people with visual impairments to understand images. So it's a written description, that the screen readers read aloud, allowing the users to grasp the meaning of a visual even if they cannot see it. And now can you explain what is in this what is this video about? So that's the same for captions for those with hearing impairments.

Actions and alternative text are two simple but incredibly important tools for making digital content accessible. And, when they are missing, it can create huge barriers for people with hearing, visual, or cognitive disabilities. Now we try to understand, all the barriers the, that we can have. There are ways that there are guidelines that we can follow to ensure that we are creating digital, accessible documents or interfaces. So following these guidelines, like the web content accessibility Guideline, which is known for short as WCAG, is really important. So WCAG are globally recognized standards designed to make digital content accessible to people with disabilities, and it was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium.

And these standards are categorized based on four main principles, which are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust, and they're commonly known as poor, where perceivable means that the users can recognize and use services or tools with the senses available for them.

Examples include the use of alternative text for non text content, like images and icons, and the use of captions for videos. And then we have operable. Operable means that the user interface components and navigation must be operable. So all functionalities are available from a keyboard and should provide users enough time to, read and use the content. And then we have understandable, where the information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable. And this involves making text readable and comprehensible, ensuring the user interfaces appear and operate in predictable ways, and also helping users to avoid and to correct mistakes. And finally, we have robust, where content must be robust enough to be interpreted in a reliable way by a wide variety of assistive technologies, such as screen readers.

WCAG 2.2 is the most recent version. It's been officially used since October 2023, and the draft for WCAG three point zero is already available. WCAG outlines three distinct levels of compliance. So we have level a, level double a, and level triple a, and these levels represent different degrees of accessibility that digital content should meet. Level a, addresses the most basic accessibility features suitable for some but not all users. Level AA addresses the most common barriers for users, aiming to make content accessible to a wider range of people. And level AAA addresses the highest level of accessibility, providing the most inclusive experience for all users, including those with significant disability disabilities.

And as I mentioned, it is very important to follow these, data card to ensure that we are not only creating more accessible, but it's also for legal, it's a legal requirement. And in terms of, legal compliance, the most commonly mandated, level of compliance is double a. And in terms of the WCAG three point zero, which is in development, it aims to provide a more flexible and comprehensive approach to accessibility, covering a broader range of technologies and and user needs compared to WCAG 2.2. So we are really looking forward to see the version three point zero. Now let's try to, let's look into how we can make our digital documents. So if you're using Microsoft Office to create PowerPoint or Word documents, Excel, Power BI, how we can make these documents, more accessible by using the, core principles. So first up is perceivable. So when we say that something must, be perceivable, we mean that users need to be able to take in the information somehow. Right?

And in Microsoft Office, there are several, simple but powerful ways to make our content more perceivable. One of the most, important is using alternative text for images, charts, and graphs. In Word or PowerPoint, when you insert an image, you can right click and choose edit alt text. The key is to describe what the image conveys, not just to say image or picture of a graph, but what the graph shows. If you have only a decorative image, you can mark them as decorative within, PowerPoint or, word. And if you do that, the screen readers will skip them. That way, users don't get overwhelmed with unnecessary informations. Another big one is color contrast.

So Microsoft tools have built in accessibility checkers that can warn you if your text, color and background don't have enough contrast. For instance, avoid light gray text on a white slide, for example, on a white background. Stick to the rule of thumb. If you have a light background, use darker fonts. And if you have a darker background, you're gonna need to use a lighter font. And it may look trendy to have gray on a white background, but it it will be very hard to read for users with low vision. And good contrast make your content perceivable to a much wider audience. And we can we should aim for contrast ratio, of at least 4.5 to one for body text, which is up to 17 points.

And if we have font above 18 points or if in bold, above 14, that contrast ratio should be a three to one. And this follows the level of compliance double a. We also can use free tools online where we can, check the contrast ratio, such as WebAIM and the adult color contrast checker. And then we should not forget about headings and styles. When we create headings using Word's styles panel, so we have this panel that says heading one, heading two, and so on. We are not just formatting the text to make them look pretty. We are building a logical structure that helps screen readers to announce the layout.

It's much better than manually making the text bigger and bold, for example. And the same goes for tables. Avoid using tables for layout purposes. Instead, use proper tables with clear column headers. Finally, we have captions. So captions are important. Very, very important as I try to show you a video without audio and without captions, you could not understand. So for those with hearing impairments, or some, cognitive impairments, captions are really important. So if we insert a video into a PowerPoint presentation, if we just embed it, for example, make sure it has captions available, or you can also provide a transcript. That way, you can make sure that everybody can perceive the information regardless if they have any kind of impairment. Next one is operable.

Operable means users can interact with the document using different, methods. For example, you have, digital documents, you have keyboard accessibility. Right? That is a really big deal. So think about not everyone uses the mouse. Some people rely entirely on keyboard shortcuts or navigation keys. If your document is structured well using headings, lists, and proper tab orders, it becomes much easier to jump through content logically. In PowerPoint, for instance, you can set the tab order for objects on each slide. Otherwise, someone navigating with the tab key might jump randomly from the footer to the chart to the title, making a confusing mess. Or we can set the tab order by select arrange, selection pane, and then we drag the objects into the logical order that you actually want your users to consume the report.

If you're a Power BI user, for example, we also have to manually check, if the tab order is correct, and we have to ensure that it's in a logical way. So we need to go to the selection pane and click on tab order and use the arrows to move each element, to the correct order. And then we have avoid time based content change unless it's absolutely necessary. Animations in PowerPoint that flash or disappear too quickly can be hard for people who needs more time to read and react. So keep animation simple and predictable. And then we have, clickable links, which are very important. We have to make sure that hyperlinks have meaningful text. So instead of writing click here, you can use read our accessibility guide. So people using screen readers, they will know exactly what the link will do.

In Office apps, you can easily edit the display text when we add a hyperlink. Lastly, don't trap your users. If you create a form, ensure that people can tab in and out of the fields logically. Getting stuck in in in accessible form is very frustrating, so just test it, make sure that you can move from one form to another. Now on to understandable. Understandable means that users should be able to comprehend the information easily and that interaction should behave in expected ways. First, we have in Microsoft offers the option to set the language, and this is key. If your document is in English, set the correct language on the review language, and this ensures that a screen reader has pronounced the words correctly.

If you switch language, make document mark that section separately. Otherwise, the screen reader might completely mispronounce it. When writing text, we also should use plain language whenever possible. So avoid jargons or overly complex sentences or unexplainable, unexplained acronyms. So if you must use specialist, specialist terms, define them early on. You can also create a dictionary in your document explaining what each one of those terms are. You can even run your document through Word's editor tool, which checks for conciseness and readability. And consistency matters too. So if you're creating, for example, PowerPoint or a Power BI document, use consistent layout across different slides, across different tabs. The title should always be in the same place, and the navigation queues should also be consistent.

And this will reduce cognitive load and make it easier for everyone to follow along without feeling lost. And if you have forms and instructions, the the they have to be crystal clear. So if you create a word or a power up form, for example, make sure you provide clear guidance like enter your full name rather than just name. For required fields, mark them obviously and explain any error in plain language. Avoid mysterious pop ups saying invalid entry. That doesn't explain. Feedback is also part of understanding, understandable design. If users interact with an Excel spreadsheet with the input data, Make sure that the error, messages or formula results are easy to understand, and they're not hidden behind, confusing reference that like this example that we have, hash value, without any explanation.

Next item, we have robust. Robust means that your content, should be robust enough to work with current and future technologies, including assistive technologies. One of, one easy way to boost robustness is to use built in features whenever possible. For example, don't create your own, heading. Example, don't create your own heading by just making the font bold and larger manually. We can use words heading styles as I mentioned before. Similarly, use, table tools rather than drawing tables using shapes or text box. And this will ensure that the underlying document structure is clean and also machine readable. Avoid embedding important text inside images. If you must include a chart or graph as an image, always provide proper alternative text, but even better, keep key information outside the image as a selectable, readable text when you can.

And then check compatibility. So Microsoft built in accessibility checker, that goes you can found it under review, check accessibility, is your best friend. It will flag issues and explain why they matter, often offering quick fix suggestion. And in Excel, make sure that name ranges are used instead of complicated cell reference. So you can see here the example that I have the column profit that is using the reference the header reference is using price and costs other than, say, e two and f two. Right? It will make our spreadsheets more understandable and adaptable for different screen readers and accessibility tools. Finally, file formats matter. When sharing documents, choose formats that maintain accessibility features. For example, a properly structured Word document exported to tagged PDF keeps heading and alt text intact. Unstructured PDFs can become black holes of lost information if they are not handed properly.

And to wrap up, in society, accessibility ensures that everyone, regardless of abilities, can fully participate in social, educational and professional activities. It promotes equality by removing barriers that prevent people with disabilities from accessing information, services, and opportunities. Make your Microsoft Office documents accessible doesn't have to be overwhelming. If you think about the core principles, which are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust, you will be well on your way to creating documents that open doors rather than closing them. By following these practices, we can create accessible WCAG compliant documents in Microsoft Office applications. Please visit the WCAG website for more details on how to make your digital content accessible. Thank you.