Part 3: Automating Accessibility in Custom Word Templates

Note: This post is a beginner-intermediate tutorial and assumes you already know how to save and edit a document in Word for use as a custom template file (.dotx). For a beginner’s guide to saving a document as a template see Microsoft’s “Create a Template” tutorial. Additionally, this post is tailored specifically for PCs with Office 365, though most should be applicable for MAC use, as well as older versions of Word.

One of the challenges of producing accessible policy documents for digital use is ensuring the continual consistency and uniformity of those documents throughout the many stages of policy. In a previous post, I discussed how the tedious and ongoing repair and upkeep of our templates, as they passed through the hands and computers of different policy writers, was costing our office a lot of valuable time. In this post, I’m going to show you some of the ways we’ve been able to harness some of Word’s advanced templating features to mitigate user error, automate institutional and accessibility standards, and save our office a lot time by eliminating the same repetitive fixes.

Create Uniform Styles

Creating styles is the easiest way to save time and energy for both you and your users. Any time text or formatting is modified from the standard paragraph text (even just bolded or resized), it should be assigned to an existing style or a new one created. The biggest mistake Word users make is formatting text outside of a style. This is important for both accessibility and elimination of user error. Every time text is formatted outside of a named style, those alterations are coded into the text, making it more difficult to convert to other formats (PDF, HTML, etc.), while also making it a nightmare for screen readers.

Most Microsoft Word users know that Word comes preloaded with their own styles, and if you’ve been following along with my posts on accessibility, you know that using them is a requirement for the creation of accessible documents. However, most casual users are not aware that these styles can be modified and used to act and look however you want them to. In addition, when you create a template (.dotx or .dotm) from a Word document, if done correctly, those styles will appear within the template for use by anyone with the template file.

Whether you’re modifying a current template file or creating a new one, you can alter the styles to meet your aesthetic needs while adhering to accessibility best practices (just be sure your custom styles meet WCAG’s standards on font, size, contrast, and color).

Updating Styles

If your template is already created, you can use the pre-existing text to quickly update Microsoft’s pre-programmed styles to mimic your template’s design. If you’re creating a new template, simply format the text exactly how you want the headings and other elements in your template to look. Then determine the hierarchy of formatted text in your template, keeping in mind that anything formatted differently than paragraph text should be assigned a style. (Remember to assign headings based on WCAG’s standards, and never, ever, skip levels).

To assign a text’s properties to a style, click on any part of that text and then right-click the applicable style in the styles ribbon. Select “Update Heading to Match Selection” from the pop-up menu (see image below). Doing this tells Words to copy all the properties of the selected text (font name, size, boldness; bolding or italics; paragraph spacing, indenting, alignment; formatting; etc.) to the style. Now, rather than a screen reader reading aloud those properties in lengthy detail, it will simply announce it by its selected header tag, which also notifies the reader of its importance within the document.

Follow this step for all your headings and any other formatted elements, and don’t forget to modify the paragraph style to match your template’s paragraph style if it deviates from Microsoft’s default programming.

Note: In Office 365, only heading 1 and 2 are shown by default; however, when you assign text to heading 2, heading 3 is revealed, and so on as each heading is assigned.

Altering Style Settings

If you follow the instructions above, you should be able to easily make and use styles within your current document. However, if you want your styles to persist and be accessible within the template file itself on any computer by anyone with the template file, you need to take one more step.

With each style you modify, right click on its name in the styles ribbon and select “Modify.”

In this menu, you are able to alter any of the properties of the style, including its name, paragraph options, effects, bordering, etc. But the most important setting for templating is to ensure that both “Add to the Styles gallery” and “New documents based on this template” are checked (as shown below).

Don’t forget to save your document as a template file afterward.

Any time a document is created from that template file, it will contain its assigned and customized styles, eliminating the need for tedious and repetitive formatting, and reducing user error from manual formatting. However, to really restrict users from inadvertently muddying your template, you’re going to want to lock down the styles they’re allowed to use, freeing them from the pesky confusion of choice and giving you supreme template control, which I will discuss in a future post.

More Information

This post is part of an ongoing series on web accessibility and Microsoft Word optimization. For further training, see my previous posts (Word Tips one and two, and part one and part two of my series on accessibility.) 

I hope you are finding these posts informative and applicable with your role in policy administration. As usual, let me know in the comments below what questions you may have, topics you would like to see addressed in future posts, challenges you face in regards to document or template creation, or any other suggestions you have to help me tailor my posts to your unique needs.