Part 1: Creating your Course Syllabus in Microsoft Word
- Daniel LaGrow
Instructions
Introduction
This article series presents five steps for creating a fully accessible course syllabus in Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. Before starting, we recommend reviewing the earlier chapters of our Adobe Acrobat series. Step-by-step instructions for each process are available throughout the series or in the video version of this sample project.
This guide focuses on demonstrating the creation process rather than covering every detail of Acrobat. To avoid redundancy, our articles provide less information than the video version, and assumes you are already familiar with the previous chapters. If you're working on your own project, we highly recommend watching the video version, where each step is explained in greater detail while referring to these instructions.
Step 1: What Should an Accessible Syllabus Look Like?
Inaccessible Syllabus Example
The first thing we need to do in our process is look at an old syllabus and understand what makes it inaccessible. In our example, I have a syllabus from a class on the Principles of Bracketology that is offered here at SUNY Fredonia. Some of the issues include:
The font is too small, and fully justified in some paragraphs. In addition, the line spacing is too narrow.
There are a lot of unnecessary uses of bold, italic, underlined, or all cap text.
There are lots of blank line gaps between sections and paragraphs.
Headers are typed using all caps. No real headers are applied either.
Lists are not applied to content listed.
There are no real tables, instead the tab key is used to imply the use of a table.
Links are not descriptive and in some cases only URLs are provided.
Images do not have an alternative text.
There is no Table of Contents included.
In short, there are a lot of accessibility issues with this course syllabus. In our second example, I have a more accessible version, and will explain why these changes are necessary. Instructions on how to make these changes are in our series on Accessibility Practices in Microsoft Word.
The old syllabus has regular text font set to Arial, size 11. This text is within the WCAG accessibility requirements, however, it is recommended to have the text bigger because readers may rely on the zoom feature to see the content. In our new syllabus, I increased the size to 12. Now the font is a little bigger and it will be easier to see. I also have a preference for Times New Roman, so I made that the new font. Arial is an accessible font to use.
Many sections in the old syllabus are fully justified, causing large and uneven gaps between words. This is an issue for accessibility because it would be very hard for a person with dyslexia to read the content. In the new syllabus, I justified all of the content to the left and now all of the word spaces are even.
The title of the old syllabus includes over five separate lines, and are in all caps, there is also no title style applied. We do not need the content set up this way because the screen reader will read the content one row at a time. In the new syllabus, the title content is all together separated by commas and dashes. A title style has been applied and the text is justified to the left. Now the title will be read much faster with less keyboard usage.
The headers in the old syllabus are not real headers. They are regular text with all caps and bigger font than the regular text. The new syllabus has heading styles applied to the headers of each section. Heading Level 2s for most of the section headers, and Heading Level 3s for the titles of sections within a section.
The image in the old syllabus does not have an alt text. In the new syllabus, I included an alt text that says “SUNY Fredonia Logo.”
In the old syllabus, the lists are just lines with text. There are no bullets or numbers. In the new syllabus, a real list was created with the contents inside. Now when we get into Acrobat, we can tag this content as an actual list.
In the old syllabus, tables were created using the tab key. While it does look like a table, it is not a real one. Usually, we should content designed for tables as real tables. There are several pieces of content that could be turned into real tables and be easily accessible, including the sections for Grading, Letter Grading, and possibly the Grading Procedures sections. This is because they would only need simple two column tables. For Grading, one column could be for the name of the grade, and another for percentage. In that kind of situation, it is fine to create a table for this. The Course Schedule near the end of our syllabus is much more complicated. This is because no day in a schedule is the same. You may have lots of things happening for a single day or just one event. If you wanted to make a table for a day with lots of things happening, you would need one column for the date of the class, then another for the contents. You will then need to create a bullet list for the content of the day. When you convert this content into Acrobat, both the table and the list need to be tagged which causes a lot of extra work. It is more efficient to just have a bullet list under each day for the events happening like we have in the new syllabus. While it does take up more pages than a simple table, it will be much easier to tag and screen readers will have an easier time reading the lists instead of a table.
The links in the old syllabus are primarily URLs and not descriptive. For the new syllabus, every link is descriptive and an unlinked URL is next to them in parenthesis. When a screen reader reads the old links, the screen reader will read one letter at a time. The new links will make screen readers read the description of the link. The unlinked URL will still be read one letter at a time, but the important part is that the person using a screen reader gets to access the link before the URL. The URL is also important if you create physical copies of your syllabus. Now students will have more ways to access the link than before.
Both the old and the new syllabus span over several pages. You may want your students to go read to a certain section for class or to pay attention to certain sections. A table of contents is very helpful for this because it provides links to the sections in the syllabus. Just make sure that the table of content’s heading is set to Heading Level 1, and that the font matches the rest of your document. Also, try to make sure your title, image, and table of contents all fit on the first page. If you do need to make the table of contents stretch into the second page, it is fine, but may look a bit less organized. The screen reader will not be affected though.
Keep in mind that these changes were made on a fresh Word document. If you want to copy and paste your content to a new document, make sure your text styles are not applied during the move, only apply the styles in the new document. This makes it easier for screen readers to read your content.
Step 2: Saving as a Tagged PDF
When your course syllabus is complete in Microsoft Word, it is time to export the syllabus to Adobe Acrobat. To export your document:
Click on the File Tab in the top left corner of Microsoft Word.
Click the Save As Adobe PDF option.
In the Save As PDF File As box, click on the Options button and uncheck the Enable Accessibility and Reflow with Tagged Adobe PDF.
Click Save. After a few minutes, your document will appear in Adobe Acrobat.