Embedded Files
Accessibility for Academics
Google Docs has a simple but effective style tool, with a good default set, and easy ability to customize styles.
Style Sets
Style Sets
In most software, content authoring or text editor tools contain style sets that are pre-configured combinations of text formatting. Often they are seen in toolsets as a set of links or buttons, labeled something like title, heading 1, heading 2, heading 3, paragraph or normal, and sometimes specialized text styles like subscript or subtitle. Feature-heavy desktop publishing applications such as Microsoft Word might contain dozens of these style sets, and may sub-categorize them in "text" and "paragraph" styles. Google Docs, D2L's editor, and other web-based rich text editors may have simpler style options, but you may be able to customize the style sets and in any case, they usually offer excellent choices for both attractive formatting and accessibility. Often users, websites and publications refer to these style sets simply as “headings,” since usually numbered heading levels populate even the simplest style sets, and are the most commonly used styles.
Formatting By Hand
Formatting By Hand
College instructors use various forms of markup (without calling it that) in assignment instructions, lesson text, and especially syllabi. It is frustrating when students ask the same questions over and over when the answers are in the syllabus. It tempts us to resort to boldface, italics, underlining, ALL CAPs, and even colors as callouts, which are provided through toggle features on toolbars. Some faculty development in the past even encouraged such tactics.
We also might format headings and subheadings by first choosing a different font from a dropdown, then choosing a different size from another dropdown, and then choosing some combination of color, boldface, or other formatting, each with a click or two of the mouse. This creates, we think, eye-catching headings that help students navigate our instructions.
We might refer to this as formatting "by hand," in the sense that we choose every formatting step each time, for any word, phrase, heading, sentence, or paragraph we format away from the default. That we so often format text laboriously, using single tools, isn't surprising; these were some of the earliest tools in word processors. And some software or sites, such as MS Outlook, still foreground these tools while style sets are an additional click away in another menu or ribbon.
In comparison, styles can be thought of as a set of configurations that, once developed by the software maker or end user, can more quickly format text at scale. But users often format by hand out of habit, without realizing that this is less compatible with accessibility software such as screen readers, and in the long run, much more more work for the writer themselves!
Should you stop using individual formatting toggles and dropdown menus altogether? If you want creative but inconsequential accents for most users, that is no problem. However, you should not rely on their formatting alone to convey significance in your text, since that will not carry through assistive technologies. And different colored text may not mean anything to a colorblind student. If you feel that your students need these callouts, ask yourself if you will hold them responsible for portions of syllabi or instructions that do not have this formatting. If so, then the formatting is of little help anyway. Better to emphasize the importance of syllabus content in a classroom or video review of the syllabus. And aside from these concerns, by-hand formatting is less efficient for you.
Microsoft Word's individual formatting tools.
D2L's individual formatting tools.
Style Sets: Benefits for Creators
Style Sets: Benefits for Creators
Creators use style sets to quickly set apart different bits of text in a document or web page, establishing some phrases or lines as headings and subheadings, and perhaps highlighting important passages. When composing this site, the simple style sets available in Google Sites made establishing the headings very quick, after all the formatting - font, size, and color changes - were done once for the entire site in the site-wide theme editor.
In other software, changing or even creating new style sets is easy. Then, configuring individual words, phrases or passages is one or two clicks. Changing the formatting on all text sharing a style, across the entire document, is just a matter of editing the style rather than having to find, highlight, and reformat each passage or heading.
Many other efficient features also take advantage of style sets. Word processors, such as MS Word or Google Docs, typically have a table-of-contents tool that simply cobbles together a table of contents by referring to all text the user formatted with heading styles. (It may then add page numbers, and attractive formatting as well.) When a user changes the document, and the corresponding headings, the table of contents updates automatically to match. An example of this feature can be seen on this page!
This table of contents was written by the Google Sites software, and added with a single button click, after the page was completed. It uses the headings on the page to complete the table, and will update automatically if the page is ever changed.
How Screen Readers Use Headings
How Screen Readers Use Headings
Screen readers (and some other assistive technologies) use headings while often ignoring (at least by default) other forms of formatting. This is because headings are some of the earliest features in the underlying computer code that powers the internet and other software, and because they remain the most efficient formatting toolset for professional writers and editors.
If you set up a beautiful style set to format your documents and web pages, that can be a great professional branding practice. However, know that most stylistic choices, just like with formatting text with the "by-hand" formatting tools, will not be available through screen readers. That's fine, so long as you do not rely on style formatting alone to convey significance.
While headings and subheadings are not always appropriate in long-form text, they can assist all students in finding what they need in, for example, a syllabus or multi-part assignment instructions, and can particularly assist visually impaired students to navigate these kinds of course documents, generally.
The default style set in Microsoft Word 365. Word has an extensive toolset that allows users to create their own style sets.
Screen Readers Identify Headings
Screen Readers Identify Headings
Perhaps most important is that screen readers will point out when text is formatted as a heading. By contrast, in default configurations screen readers will not point out bold, italic, or other individual format changes to text, because to do so would make reading text aloud more cumbersome. So when creating headings, subheadings, or other signpost features in a document, use the built in styles menu to choose the text formatting you need.
Heading Levels
Heading Levels
When indicating a heading style, screen readers also indicate it's level: Heading 1, versus Heading 2 or Heading 3. Use heading levels in order, with your most important headings at level 1, and subheadings level 2, 3, and so on. Do not skip levels, since that may have a screen reader user wondering if they somehow missed a heading level above that just identified. If you don’t like particular heading sizes or other formatting, the software may allow you to modify the defaults for each heading level, or create your own heading style set altogether.
Keyboard Navigation with Headings
Keyboard Navigation with Headings
As important as reading text out loud, screen readers allow for keyboard navigation without resort to a mouse. For example, screen reader users can quickly skip from heading to heading with a single keystroke, which is an alternative to typical users' scrolling and scanning a web page or document for a particular passage.
In this video, a screen reader reads allowed various phrases formatted in different ways. Notice that only "A Real Heading" is preceded by a callout of it's special formatting: "Heading 1."
This is a typical, and sensible configuration for screen readers.
Headings Only
Headings Only
Given the above advice to use heading styles, you may reasonably conclude that you could use them just to call out important paragraphs or sentences. (Typically, text editors won't let you use them to call out individual words or phrases within a paragraph.)
But this is a bad idea; screen readers will indicate to users that the paragraph is formatted as a heading, which can be confusing if they are relying on headings to mean specifically headings and subheadings. What's more, you forfeit the ability to use heading style-dependent tools such as table of contents.
For example, return to the table of contents above: notice a link that says:
Hand in your papers by Friday, October 12th.
Hand in your papers by Friday, October 12th.
That's because the sentence just above is formatted using Google Site's "subheading" style. This could be confusing for someone with a screen reader, who wonders if the assignment instructions had more to say, below that "heading," about the assignment deadline.
Again, it's worth asking if there are better ways to emphasize important points to students, other than shouting at them through text formatting.
Time to Style
Time to Style
If you haven't used styles in composing text in the past, now is the time to start. It's a crucial element in making your text more accessible. The above discussion focused primarily on screen readers for visually impaired students, but subdividing technical or procedural writing, such as syllabi and assignment instructions, is a helpful practice that helps all students, across the landscape of neurodiversity, stay on-task and on-target in your course.
Plus, using styles is working smarter; craft your style set with high-contrast, appropriate spacing and non-serif fonts, and create a professional brand for your office. Then, each document can look consistently polished with no extra effort beyond choosing the appropriate style at headings.
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