Accessibility in Google Docs

In a previous post I shared about Accessibility in the Classroom.  I want to look at another aspect of that and focus on Accessibility in Google Docs.  There are multiple ways you can improve accessibility within a Google Doc.  I want to look at a few tips to help improve access for your audience.

The first tip is to pay attention to your fonts. Arial, Times, Verdana, Calibri will typically be your best options when it comes to accessibility in Google Docs.  Why?  These fonts are free of extra flourishes or decorations.  They are plain, simple, unadorned and are much easier for someone with visual challenges to decipher.  When you start trying to make it "pretty" you can easily lose part of your audience because of the differences in script and in some cases the device may not even be able to display it in the font you chose.  By using one of these basic fonts you are more likely to escape these issues. You may have some others available on your machine like Helvetica or Tahoma that are going to have the same simple, clean, easy to read style.


The next tip is multi-faceted.  Many of you may already change the font size of the title on a document, but there is a better way to do it.  What I have started doing recently is changing the Style to a Title instead of Normal text.  All you need to do is put your cursor on the line you want to change, go up to Style (which is left of Font and Font Size).  Drop down to Title and it will change the entire line.  Along those same lines, each new topic in your document could be changed to Heading 1 and subtopics would be Heading 2.  At first glance this may not appear to have a significant impact on your file other than changing the size of the text on that line.

Which brings us to the third tip:  Insert a Table of Contents.  When you insert a table of contents it will enable students to quickly navigate to different sections of the document.  Each of the Headings you created earlier will now become a place in the document that students can quickly skip down to.  This is especially beneficial if students need extra time or need to come back to a topic and might normally get lost in the rest of the text trying to find the information they need.


Teaching students to use these same techniques will also help them with outlining and organization within their assignment.