Few of us would argue against making sure everyone can use the content we create online and in digital documents, yet I’m constantly surprised by how much more there is to learn. The push for accessibility has heightened over the past few years, and the new(ish) ADA rules for web and mobile content are a big part of the reason. But digital accessibility isn’t new. It just hasn’t become second nature like it should.

Help is here.

Taking a few simple steps to make your content more accessible supports inclusivity, draws a wider audience to your business, and keeps you in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. There’s no downside, and the upsides are huge. The following five essential considerations are a great place to start.

Color contrast can support or strain your vision. Stark contrast causes a halation effect (or halo vision) that blurs the text and makes your eyes work way too hard. For those with myopia or astigmatism, the effect is heightened. The opposite isn’t helpful, either: Colors that don’t contrast enough run together into mush. All of which means you need to pay careful attention to the contrast ratio when choosing colors.  

Checking your contrast ratio is an easy fix, and PowerPoint and Word will do it for you. In fact, running “check accessibility” (in the Tools menu) can save your viewers a lot of literal headache. You’ll get a list of suggested improvements to make your deck or Word document as easy as possible to view, hear, and understand.  

If you’re creating web content, the following tools are essential. And remember: The ratio is non-negotiable. “It rounds up” won’t do it. See where your brand colors stand with one of these:  

Your chart looks terrific. You have a “do” column in a beautiful teal shade and a “don’t” column in red to mean trouble. But have you clearly stated through text which is which and what those colors mean? If not, screen readers, which interpret text and images for visually impaired users, won’t have the information they need to make sense of your beautiful composition.  

It’s not enough to add a general description, like “avoid the actions in the red column.” To ensure your point supports screen-reader capabilities and can make it through to users, differentiate your content clearly in the column heads with text. Doing so goes a long way toward ensuring everyone in your audience can grasp your meaning.  

Using color effectively isn’t necessarily intuitive. Harvard University offers this effective breakdown so you can avoid common mistakes without getting a graphic design degree.  

A bit of text describing an image goes a long, looooong way. Most important, alt text brings visually impaired users in on what your image shows by giving screen readers the right cues. Using alt text also saves your bacon when an image fails to load by sharing with users what they’re missing. And that’s not all: Alt text helps drive SEO by giving browsers more detail.  

Writing alt text is straightforward (just like you want your description to be):  

A couple of examples: 

No need to overthink it. Your objective is simply to give enough information that the image helps support your text even if it can’t be seen. You usually can accomplish that mission in a single sentence. Find more insight into alt text here.  

When’s the last time you listened to a video or story on social media? Most of us do not. In fact, up to 85% of users keep the sound off when they’re scrolling. (TikTok is an exception, fair enough.) If you want users to get the full impact of a video—any video—captions are your answer. If you think a transcript does the job, I have bad news for you.  

Transcripts have their place—they’re perfect for when you want to review material or pull details from it—but they just don’t do the same job as captions. Polar bears and Pomeranians are both great animals, but there’s only one I’d take as a pet. Same deal with captions versus transcripts: Each gives you a text rundown of content, but captions are the right choice for giving viewers your entire message as they watch a video without sound. They’re synced and appear right on the screen so they can’t be missed.  

There’s a lot to know about making captions work for you and your users. It’s more than I can cover here, but I can tell you that the Described and Captioned Media Program guide is terrific, and accessibility expert Meryl K. Evans offers essential pointers for captioning live events.  

As you probably have noticed, creating accessible content is more about how your web or document elements function than how they look. You can make accessibility look great! But you can’t fake it ‘til you make it.  

That is, it’s not enough for a bit of copy to look like a heading. You and your audience benefit from applying the correct style to each block of text and each cell in a table.  

Properly structuring your data in a logical sequence (using nested headings, for instance) gives clear, stable cues to your readers. And for screen readers, having these cues is essential to properly interpreting content. That’s true for tables, too, which also need true headings (rather than cells styled as headings). Tables bring additional challenges, too. For example, actions like merging cells are absolute chaos for a screen reader, which lacks the capacity to apply content properly when it can’t rely on cell borders.   

Check out this guide to learn more about accessible document structure.  

Essential.  

Seriously. Not only is meeting accessibility standards required for many entities, it’s the right thing to do to ensure you’re leaving no one out when you create content. Imagine the frustration of receiving a document or visiting a website only to learn that it excludes you. I can help you navigate the guidelines, but hearing from someone who relies on assistive technology shows you how much they matter—check out this video, and get in touch for help making sure your content is built to accommodate every user.  

When it comes to your digital benefits materials, are you taking the right steps to ensure your communications are accessible to all employees?  

If you’re not sure—or know they aren’t—you could miss critical opportunities to engage your workforce. MJ can help you create inclusive, accessible benefits communications. Reach out to learn more.