Excel Accessibility: Basic Steps for Creating Accessible Sheets
Excel can sometimes be a little tricky to make accessible. Below is a list of steps for creating a simple, accessible Excel document:
- Add important content to Cell A1. Include descriptive text that clearly explains how all students can navigate and access the content in the sheet. Be specific so that screen reader users can fully understand the information. Then, wrap the text. This will make Cell A1 slightly wider, which can also help when printing the content if needed.
- Under the Home tab, add a heading by selecting a cell style, select Heading 1.
3. Format all content as a table. To do this, select the content you want to include in the table. Go to the Insert tab and select Table. In the Create Table dialog, make sure to check My table has headers, then click OK. This will automatically apply a table style.
Note: You can choose a table style and specify headings from the Table Design tab after creating the table.
Note: Under the Home tab, in the Alignment section, you can align the data left, right, or center to format the table as desired.
4. Name the table. The name of the table has to be one word.
5. When you are done editing the table, specify the end of the table by writing some notes like "End of the table". If you don’t want it visible to all students, change the text color to white. This ensures screen reader software can still recognize where the table content ends.
Note: Be careful not to include this sentence in the table. To ensure it is not part of the table, add the ‘end of the table’ text one line below the table. After completing this, you can delete the empty line from the Excel sheet.
6. Name the sheet at the bottom of the page, then save it to your desktop or OneDrive.
7. As the final step, create metadata by selecting File > Info > Properties, then choose Advanced Properties. Add the document’s Title and Author. You may also add Subject and Keywords, though these are optional.
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