Accessible MS Office templates

Many organizations need to deliver accessible documents nowadays, mostly because a created pdf has to be uploaded to a (semi-)governmental website.

To let employees create those pdf-files you need good templates.

We from Joules Unlimited are specialist in creating accessible templates for MS Word and PowerPoint.

What is needed to get this process under control?

1. create an accessible design of the documents. Your designer can do this. This design work is very important because the documents will get the look and feel of your brand. Your logo is on the document, the brand colors are used, fonts are defined according to your stationary. And of course the design follows the restrictions of accessibility like color contrast, readability. This will be done by the designer.
2. The design files (mostly adobe illustrator/indesign) will be sent to Joules Unlimited. We check the design and give a quote for building the template(s)
3. After approval of our quote we will develop the MS Word and or PowerPoint templates (see below).
4. The templates delivered are maximal optimized for accessibility. Employees can create content and save the document as an pdf. This pdf will be immediately 100% accessible or after short adjustments.

In case the employees don’t have experience with accessibility, you may have to develop that process. There are many possibilities for this. Anyhow when they know how to create accessible documents, you need to have good templates available.

Start the above four steps today! You can even ask us for a quote when the design is not yet done. Integrate our knowledge in your accessibility project!

Is it possible to create accessible pdf with MS Word or MS PowerPoint?

Yes! MS Word documents and PowerPoint presentations can be saved as an pdf, which is accessible.

Joules Unlimited developed several techniques resulting in the best possible templates, optimized for accessibility.

Tag reading order vs Architectural reading order

There are 4 reading orders of a pdf (see also this page).

Two are important when creating pdf files with MS Word or PowerPoint:

1. Tag reading order, also known as Label reading order
2. Architectural reading order, or construction reading order

Many accessibility specialists dream about having these two reading orders similar to each other, because then most screen readers will read the pdf in the desired order. Besides this order is the same as people read when they read the pdf by themselves.

Tag reading order matches Architectural reading order

Good news: Joules Unlimited developed a technique to define the (tag) label reading order matching the architectural reading order!
This is really unique!
Using MS Word templates or PowerPoint presentations build by Joules Unlimited gives you the guarantee the tag reading orders matches the architectural reading order.
These templates are the perfect basement of all of your accessible documents.