How to Make Word, PowerPoint, and Excel Files Accessible

Most inaccessible PDFs were not born as PDFs. They started as a Word document, a PowerPoint deck, or an Excel workbook, and the accessibility problems were baked in before anyone pressed Export.

This matters because of where the effort goes. Fixing the source file takes a fraction of the time that remediating the exported PDF does, and it fixes every future export at once. If you remediate only the PDF, you will remediate it again next quarter when someone updates the source and re-exports.

The one habit that fixes the most: real headings

If you change nothing else, change this. Use the built-in Heading styles instead of making text big and bold.

Visually there is no difference. Structurally there is all the difference in the world. A screen reader user navigates a long document by jumping between headings, the way a sighted reader skims. Text that is merely large and bold is invisible to that navigation — the document becomes one undifferentiated wall.

• Use Heading 1 for the title, Heading 2 for sections, Heading 3 for subsections.
• Do not skip levels — H2 to H4 with no H3 breaks the outline.
• Change how a heading looks by modifying the style, not by overriding the text.

When Word exports to PDF, these styles become the PDF’s tag structure. Manual formatting exports as untagged text that someone then has to fix by hand.

Word

Alt text on every meaningful image. Right-click, Edit Alt Text. Describe what the image conveys in context. Genuinely decorative images should be marked decorative — see writing alt text that actually works.

Real tables, used for data only. Insert real tables rather than aligning text with tabs or spaces. Mark the header row (Table Design → Header Row) so screen readers can announce which column a cell belongs to. Never use a table purely for visual layout — it will be read cell by cell in an order that makes no sense.

Meaningful link text. “Click here” and a bare URL tell a screen reader user nothing when links are listed out of context. Write “read the 2026 compliance schedule” instead.

Set the document language. Review → Language. This tells screen readers which pronunciation rules to use. For multilingual documents, mark the passages that differ — otherwise Spanish text gets read with English phonetics and becomes incomprehensible.

Give the document a title. File → Info → Title. This becomes the PDF title, which is what a screen reader announces when the file opens. Without it, users hear the filename.

Run the built-in checker. Review → Check Accessibility. It catches real problems, but treat a clean result as a floor rather than proof — it cannot judge whether your alt text is useful, only whether it exists.

PowerPoint

Decks have their own failure mode: reading order.

Every slide has an underlying object order that a screen reader follows, and it is set by the order objects were added — not by where they sit on the slide. A deck that reads perfectly to the eye can be announced in nonsensical sequence.

• Check Home → Arrange → Selection Pane on every slide. The list reads bottom-to-top in the order a screen reader will announce it.
• Use the built-in slide layouts. Placeholders from a real layout carry structure. Text boxes dropped onto a blank slide carry none.
• Give every slide a unique title. Slides are navigated by title. If you do not want it visible, keep the title placeholder and move it off-canvas — do not delete it.
• Alt text on images, charts, and SmartArt. For a chart, the alt text should convey the finding, not the file name: “Bar chart: Spanish requests grew from 12% to 34% of total volume, 2023–2026.”
• Do not put essential information only in the notes field unless the notes ship with the deck.

Excel

Spreadsheets are the most frequently skipped and often the hardest to use with assistive technology.

• Name your sheet tabs. “Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3” is no navigation at all.
• Define header rows and use Table formatting so relationships are announced.
• Avoid merged cells. They are among the most disruptive things for screen reader navigation.
• Do not leave meaning in formatting alone. A red-filled cell means nothing to a screen reader. Add a status column with a word in it.
• Give every chart a title and alt text.
• Set a print area and remove empty filler rows and columns used for spacing — they read as blank and suggest the table has ended.

Exporting to PDF without destroying the work

All of the above survives the export only if you export correctly.

• In Word or PowerPoint, use File → Save As → PDF and ensure “Document structure tags for accessibility” is enabled in Options.
• Do not print to PDF. The “Microsoft Print to PDF” driver produces a visually identical file with no tags at all — every bit of the structure you just built is discarded. This single mistake accounts for an enormous share of the untagged PDFs we are asked to remediate.
• Verify the exported file, because export is not lossless. See our guide to PDF remediation.

A realistic order of work

You probably have thousands of documents. You cannot fix them all, and you do not have to fix them all at once.

1. Fix your templates first. Every future document inherits the fix.
2. Train the people who create documents on headings and alt text. Two habits prevent most problems.
3. Remediate by traffic and consequence — the enrollment form, the benefits notice, the public meeting packet. Not the 2019 newsletter nobody opens.
4. Set a rule that new documents ship accessible, so the backlog stops growing while you work through it.

Prioritizing by impact is covered further in our PDF remediation guide, and the obligations behind it in Section 508 vs ADA vs WCAG.

Getting help

Taika provides PDF & document accessibility, Section 508 remediation, and accessibility assessments. We also handle documents in 300+ languages, where accessibility and translation requirements arrive together.

To find out where your document library stands, request an assessment.