Publications and resources
This page is also available in nederlands, français, deutsch and español, a pdf version is also available in Portuguese.
The European Blind Union asks that information is accessible to anyone, including blind and partially sighted people, and at the same time and at no additional cost.
In this publication we focus on the accessibility of printed and electronic documents intended for a broad audience including websites, books, invoices, letters, leaflets etc.
This publication was produced with the contribution of the Community Programme For Employment And Social Solidarity - PROGRESS.
Blind and partially sighted people read in a variety of ways, just like anyone else.
In the first section of this chapter we explain what one should do to make information in electronic documents accessible. The next sections provide details for specific file formats. Readers who are solely interested in website accessibility should read section 4.1 and then move to 4.4. Those who want to learn about accessible spreadsheets read sections 4.1 and 4.6 and so on.
Information is more than text alone. This section outlines some key concepts of accessible information. Step-by-step instructions for different applications can be found in the next sections (4.2 till 4.7).
Indicate the main language of your document. Many blind and partially sighted people use software that reads electronic documents out loud. Since pronunciation rules are language specific this software must know in which language your text is written so that it can select the right voice. If all your documents are in the same language this is a setting that needs to be done only once. If you produce multilingual documents it is even more important to carefully indicate the language of text.
Texts are divided into paragraphs, headings, lists, tables etc. It is crucial that this structure is not only visually laid out but that styles are applied.
Do not create manually individual headings by making them bold and by increasing the font size. Instead, create a style with this layout and apply it to every heading in your document. This will allow blind and partially sighted people to navigate easily through the document, using the heading list, generated by the screen reader. The advantages for you as an author are that it is easy to modify the style instead of all individual headings and that styles allow the automatic updating of your table of contents.
When applying styles, respect the order. As a rule of thumb, use a heading 1 style for chapters and heading 2 styles for sections such as 1.1 and 2.2. If your document contains a 1.1.1 section you should apply a heading 3 style and so on.
For tabular data use the correct table mark-up. Do not use spaces, tabs and line breaks to emulate the visual table layout. Doing so will destroy the lay-out when the text is enlarged or converted into another file format. This will mean that blind people will not be able to navigate through the table.
Illustrations can make your text much easier to understand for sighted people. A blind person however misses all information conveyed in images. A partially sighted person sees your schema or flow chart but might not be able to decipher the labels. A colour blind person sees a pie chart but will not understand it if only colour is used to indicate each section.
A general rule is that all images should have a short description, often called a text alternative. Complex images (such as graphs, schemes, screenshots, maps etc.) require a complete equivalent in text.
Illustrations can be used without any problem as long as they are relevant and non distracting. Text alternatives must assure that all information can be understood without seeing the images.
Although colour coding is an effective visual method to draw the attention of the reader, it may not be the only way to convey this information. Examples might include a flight booking website where ten possible routes are shown but four of them are in red, meaning they are sold out. One solution would be to show available flights only. Another option is to clearly indicate the unavailable flight with the word "sold out" or similar.
Another example is a spreadsheet where certain cells are coloured to indicate these data are out of range. Make sure to label them as such.
A third example is a form that states that all fields marked with an orange border are compulsory. Make sure to also label them with an asterisk or the word "compulsory".
If your information contains audio or video, make sure to make those accessible as well. Introduce the multimedia material so that the reader knows what to expect. When a blind person knows that your video is a virtual tour through a museum without spoken commentary he knows he can ignore it.
Secondly, make sure to provide an alternative. A movie showing a cook preparing a meal will probably need some extra information for blind and partially sighted people. This can be done through audio description (External link) or by providing a transcript of the video. This is a separate text document where you describe what is going on in the video and which information is shown on the screen. It also repeats the dialogs and other important audio information in text.
Blind and partially sighted people cannot read subtitles. If the video is Spanish spoken with English subtitles, provide the English text also as a separate document so that non Spanish speaking people can consult the information as well.
Forms are a specific type of document that is very important to make accessible. Since paper forms require hand writing they are by nature totally inaccessible to blind and many partially sighted people. Forms that can be filled in electronically are thus preferred but not all formats are as accessible as others.
The best choice is to provide online forms; please refer to section 4.4.2. to read about accessible web forms.
Forms created in Microsoft Word are accessible as long as the author chooses to leave empty space, dots or underscores to fill out the form. Using the build-in form controls will unfortunately result in a form that is very difficult to fill out with a screenreader.
One could create a relatively accessible form in Microsoft Excel but this is not commonly done.
With Adobe Acrobat it is possible to create PDF forms that can be filled out in Adobe Reader. The same requirements as for web forms apply. Tutorial: creating accessible forms in Adobe Acrobat (External link)
We recommend that you allow people to return the requested information in the format of their choice. Instead of filling in the form, they could send the information in a text e-mail or you can offer to interview over the phone while an operator fills in the form.
Making mathematical and scientific symbols accessible is a more complex story since there is not one technological solution that fits all. Some people prefer to read math on paper in braille, others need large print, some work with a synthetic voice or a combination of speech, large print and highlighting.
Scientific research is ongoing to determine the best way to communicate math content to blind and partially sighted people.
We recommend that authors avoid graphical representations of the mathematical notation (using images of math). This makes it impossible for software to work with the math in your documents.
For math in web pages we recommend using the free and open source MathJax (External link) to render your math, it will make it accessible as well.
In Microsoft Word we recommend to insert math equations with the Mathtype plug-in (External link) . This allows the documents with math to be turned into web pages, DAISY books and embossed in Braille.
Other solutions exist for other document types. Please remember that it is best to follow standards like MathML from W3C (External link) or use the Latex (External link) math type setting language and make the source code available to users who need it.
Printing math in braille should be done by local specialists because the braille notations for math are not internationally standardised. Bear in mind that this manual process can take a lot of time, thus causing significant delays for the person who needs to access the math.
For more information on the challenges of working with math as a blind or partially sighted student, see Access to science (External link) .
In the first section of this chapter it was explained that an accessible document
How to do this is excellently documented by the Accessible Digital Office Document (ADOD) Project (External link) . Guidance is available for users of Word 2013 (External link) , Word 2007 (External link) and Word 2010 (External link) .
An accessible Word document is a good source to produce accessible PDF documents. Your accessibility efforts will be translated to accessibility tags in the PDF document if the following conditions are met:
DAISY is a standard for accessible books. In most cases a DAISY book contains an audio recording of the text. Users of Word XP, 2003, 2007 or 2010 can save their accessible Word document as a DAISY book by installing this free Save as DAISY plug-in (External link) . Bear in mind that the audio will be recorded with a synthetic voice which may not be the preferred option of your listeners.
You need to install a synthetic voice that corresponds to the language(s) of your document. Qualitative voices are not for free and unfortunately not available for all European languages.
In order to tell the plug-in which voice to use to convert your document into DAISY, go to control panel and choose speech. In the text-to-speech tab you can select the desired voice from the list of installed voices.
The text editor called Writer, that is part of OpenOffice (External link) and LibreOffice (External link) , allows you to create accessible documents. However, currently the screenreaders used by blind and partially sighted people do not support the use of Writer very well. Although .odt files can be opened with a plug-in for Microsoft Word (External link) , content authors might want to save their document as a tagged PDF or as a DAISY book.
In the first section of this chapter it was explained that an accessible document indicates the language of its content, is structured with heading styles, lists and tables, contains alternative text for images, has an alternative for colour coding or other visual indicators, etc. How to do this is excellently documented by the Accessible Digital Office Document (ADOD) Project (External link) . Guidance is available for users of Writer (External link) .
If you are using templates, make those accessible first to avoid repeating accessibility efforts in similar documents. In the ADOD document mentioned above this is indeed the first topic.
An accessible OpenOffice document is a good source to produce accessible PDF documents. Your accessibility efforts will be translated to accessibility tags in the PDF document:
DAISY is a standard for accessible books. In most cases a DAISY book contains an audio recording of the text. Users of OpenOffice can save an accessible ODT document as a DAISY book by installing this free ODT to Daisy plug-in for Writer (External link) . Bear in mind that the audio will be recorded with a synthetic voice which may not be the preferred option of your listeners.
You need to install a synthetic voice that corresponds to the language(s) of your document. Qualitative voices are not for free and unfortunately not available for all European languages.
In order to tell the plug-in which voice to use to convert your document into DAISY, go to control panel and choose speech. In the text-to-speech tab you can select the desired voice from the list of installed voices.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (External link) are the standard for accessible websites. The standard is edited by the World Wide Web Consortium and has been translated into several European languages (External link) .
The key to an accessible website is correct use of HTML for structure and CSS for layout.
In HTML structure elements exist for paragraphs (p), headings and subtitles (h1, h2, ... h6), lists (ul, ol and li).
In a table one should identify the table headers by using th elements. The caption element does what its name suggests.
If a website contains audio or video material, bear in mind that many people do not hear or see it. That is why the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines ask that video is captioned for the deaf and that a text transcript is available. A text transcript is a separate page or document that contains all information from the video or audio: dialogs, sounds, description of visual effects if relevant.
Further guidelines include:
Numerous test tools (External link) are available to check your website for accessibility. Bear in mind that many accessibility requirements cannot be tested automatically. Many countries have a quality label for accessible websites or organisations provide training and web accessibility consultancy.
Creating accessible PDF documents is a two step process:
A PDF document is always a conversion from a source document produced in Word, OpenOffice, PowerPoint, InDesign, HTML or any other source. Consult the other sections in this chapter to create accessible source documents.
A scanned letter or an invitation saved as an image are inaccessible source documents. Converting them into PDF will not magically make them accessible (you would have to use the OCR function in Adobe Acrobat). This is not to be blamed on the PDF technology but on the inaccessible nature of the source document.
PDF documents have tags for structure and other metadata for accessibility. Those tags can be generated automatically by using one of the following conversion tools. Doing so will translate your accessibility efforts in your source document into the corresponding PDF tags.
At the time of writing the following conversion methods are recommended:
To check whether a PDF document will be readable by blind and partially sighted people you can use the free Adobe Reader.
If the above test is negative, i.e. the text file is empty, contains strange characters, missing spaces, too many line breaks or the text appears in the wrong order then try the following:
In general, spreadsheets are relatively accessible for blind and partially sighted people. The main issue is the lack of overview when you listen to a spreadsheet or use a large magnification. Therefore we give some recommendations below:
How to create accessible spreadsheets is excellently documented by the Accessible Digital Office Document (ADOD) Project (External link) .
When you give a talk to an audience of blind and partially sighted people there are some issues to take into account:
The EBU clear print guidelines are described in a separate document. Available in pdf format (January 2017) currently only in English. The document offers basic principles with good practice examples that you can easily apply.
We have focussed a lot on the accessibility of electronic documents. There are however a number of cases where electronic documents would not be satisfactory and where alternative formats are more appropriate, because:
This means providing print in a larger font than 'standard'. A minimum of 16 point should be used for large print documents, but for some blind and partially sighted people up to 20 point text may be required.
As the majority of printed information is generated by word processors, it is possible to print off copies in the font size requested to meet individual needs.
It is recommended that large print be used for any documents aimed at older people who are more likely to have problems with eyesight.
The numbers of blind and partially sighted people able to read braille is small but for these people it is a crucial medium. Almost any information can be put into braille - from bus timetables to music.
To produce braille, one needs a braille printer and a software that converts the text into a format that can be send to the printer. Organisations who do not have access to a braille printer can order braille documents from an external agency (see section "Who can help?").
An audio version of your information does not only benefit blind and partially sighted people but is also ideal for people with learning difficulties, low literacy levels or those who may have problems with their hands.
DAISY is an international standard for accessible books. DAISY talking books can be recorded by a synthetic voice or read by a human voice.
For novels and other prose the human voice is the only acceptable option. Basic desktop recorders and microphones can be used for in-house production. However it is advisable to use an external transcription company for multiple copies, long documents, complex information and for professional quality.
For technical documents, catalogues, manuals, newspapers and rapidly changing information, an audio version produced with a synthetic voice is acceptable. However, keep in mind that a qualitative synthetic voice is not available for all European languages.
Free software is available for Word and OpenOffice to convert a document into a DAISY book, recorded with a synthetic voice. Make sure your document is accessible before trying to produce the DAISY version. Instructions are provided in section 4.2.2 for Microsoft Word and in section 4.3.2 for OpenOffice.
Electronic books are not in the first place an alternative format such as large print, braille and audio described above. The reason why we include them here is that they have the potential to provide blind and partially sighted people cheaper and faster access to more books. Two main problems need to be addressed:
E-book formats, reading devices and copyright issues are a rapidly changing topic. Since this goes beyond the scope of this publication, we refer to the RNIB website (External link) for updated information.
Check the information you produce and prioritise it. Some of the information should be available from the outset in different formats to standard print. Other information should be made available in different formats when a customer requests it.
When you produce information in a range of formats from the outset, they should be of equivalent quality, and available at the same price and at the same time as the standard print. This means that when you are planning a publication, it is essential to plan the production of the alternative formats at the same time as planning your standard print version.
Once you have produced your alternative formats, you need to let your customers know they are available. Unfortunately, many blind and partially sighted people have low expectations of getting information in a way that they can read, so they don't ask for it. This is often misinterpreted by organisations as a lack of demand.
The production of alternative formats has an additional cost. However, this cost is probably very small when compared with how much your company or organisation spends on standard print information.
Throughout Europe many organisations build up know-how in the field of digital accessibility. They can assist you in:
Contact EBU and specify what you are looking for in which country and they will provide you with the contact data of organisations nearby to help you.
This publication was last updated in August 2017. Since then new software may have been released or described features may not exist any longer.
It is not the intent of this publication to be a complete training handbook on creating accessible documents. We deliberately opted to keep the text brief and to refer to other sources for in depth explanations. What we describe is not the only way to make your information accessible. We tried to offer solutions that are not overly complicated and where possible don't require expensive software.
Comments, corrections or suggestions for updates on the contents of the publication can be send to the EBU office.
This publication is edited by the access to information commission of the European Blind Union. Rather than reproducing the text we encourage to link to it instead. Currently the publication is available in English, nederlands, français, deutsch and español. We invite organisations or individuals to translate it in their language. This will be coordinated by the EBU office so please inform them of your intension to translate.
This document is supported under the European Community Programme for Employment and Social Solidarity - PROGRESS (2007-2013).
This programme is managed by the Directorate-General for Employment, social affairs and equal opportunities of the European Commission. It was established to financially support the implementation of the objectives of the European Union in the employment and social affairs area, as set out in the Social Agenda, and thereby contribute to the achievement of the EU2020 Strategy goals in these fields.
The seven-year Programme targets all stakeholders who can help shape the development of appropriate and effective employment and social legislation and policies, across the EU-27, EFTA-EEA and EU candidate and pre-candidate countries.
PROGRESS mission is to strengthen the EU contribution in support of Member States' commitment. PROGRESS will be instrumental in:
EBU (European Blind Union) is a non-governmental, non profit making European organisation founded in 1984. It is one of the six regional bodies of the World Blind Union. It protects and promotes the rights and the interests of blind and partially sighted people in Europe.