MS Excel Chapter 1: Text and Fonts
- Daniel LaGrow
Instructions
Section 1.1: Fonts
MS Excel provides you with hundreds of fonts to choose from. Some of them are good to use, but you want to be careful since many are not accessible.
How to choose a font:
Go to the Home Tab.
In the Font Section, click the font dropdown menu.
Choose a font you would like to use.
When using fonts, you want to use fonts that are easily readable and not distracting or fancy. Fonts like Times New Roman, Verdana, and Georgia are examples of good fonts to use. It is not recommended to use fonts like Algerian, Jokerman, or Script MT Bold.
While these fonts look more interesting, users with disabilities may have a hard time reading them.
These fonts are much easier to read.
To keep things simple and easy to read, make sure the font is over 12 points in size. To change your font size,
Go to the Home Tab.
In the Font Section, select the font size button and select the size font you want.
Section 1.2: Text Attributes
Screen readers do not recognize capitalized letters unless certain settings are changed. You do not need to use all caps to emphasize text. Instead, include an additional cue so the reader will be able to know the difference between content.
This list shows unnecessary capitalization in letters. Screen readers will not emphasize the text even when it is in all caps.
This table has all of the states listed with their populations next to them. Now more information has been provided and it will be easier for people to know which states have a population under 1 million.
Use capitalizations to show the IMPORTANT text. Be sure to use capitalizations sparingly.
This list shows unnecessary bold text. Screen readers will not emphasize the text and readers may not be able to tell the bold text from normal text.
This table has all of the states listed with their populations next to them. Now more information has been provided and it will be easier for people to know which states have a population under 1 million.
Section 1.3: NVDA Settings for Text
When you use text that is bold, italic, strikethrough, or underlined, be sure to modify the settings in the screen readers. This will allow the screen reader to tell the reader of any bold, italic, strikethrough, or underlined text. To change the settings,
In NVDA, go to the Preference Tab, then click Document Formatting.
Select the Font Attributes check box in the pop up box. Click Apply in the bottom right corner.
In JAWS, you can examine the font attributes at the cursor, including whether or not there is strikethrough, by pressing INSERT + F.
Section 1.4: Text Visibility, and Overflowing Text
All text must be visible in a spreadsheet. Sometimes when we type in a spreadsheet, the words may become invisible when we go to the next cell. To fix that, click the Wrap Text button to reformat the text to fit in the cell. If the text cell goes on for too long, you can shrink it to a reasonable size. Your text will appear in multiple rows of text. This is okay as long as it is all visible in one cell.
This text is completely hidden. This would be hard for anyone to read.
Wrap Text has been applied and now all of the text is visible and easy to read.
When you have overflowing text, all you have to do is extend the cell. To extend the cell, double click the line between the cell you are typing in and the one next to it. Excel will automatically expand the cell to make the content fit inside.
The sentence is in Cell A1, but it does not fit inside.
Now the cell fits inside Cell A1.
Section 1.5: Symbols and Special Characters
You can use many different symbols and special characters. However, they must always be communicated in regular text as well. This must be done so the screen readers will read the symbol properly to the reader. Here is a list of 15 symbols and special characters that are good to use, as well as the text you should use for the screen reader to read off.
The AT Symbol
The Ampersand
The Slash
The Copyright Symbol
The Registered Symbol
The Trademark Symbol
Paragraph
Bullet
US Dollar
Euro
British Pound
Japanese Yen
Percent
Degrees
One Half
One Fourth
Three Fourths