Designing Accessible Documents

Much of education and academia is based around the creation and digestion of documents. We write countless worksheets, papers, exams, presentations, emails, statements, syllabi, etc. We might as well be designing these documents to be as accessible, and as convenient and comfortable to read as is it reasonably possible for us to do. Here are some points to consider when designing documents.

Use an Accessible Color Palette

About 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some form of color blindness. In particular this means that your average 20–30 person class will very likely have a color blind student. Because of this you should use a color blind accessible palette when using color in documents. A popular choice is Bang Wong’s conservative 7-color palette from Points of view: Color blindness.

There’s also these nice 12-color and 15-color palettes by Martin Krzywinski. I create most of my class documents in LaTeX, so I’ve redefined most of the standard colors in LaTeX based on an amalgamation of Paul Tol’s vibrant and muted colors palettes


\RequirePackage{xcolor}
\definecolor{purple}{HTML}{332288}
\definecolor{blue}{HTML}{0077BB} %*
\definecolor{cyan}{HTML}{88CCEE}
\definecolor{teal}{HTML}{44AA99}
\definecolor{green}{HTML}{117733}
\definecolor{olive}{HTML}{999933}
\definecolor{yellow}{HTML}{DDCC77}
\definecolor{orange}{HTML}{EE7733} %*
\definecolor{pink}{HTML}{CC6677}
\definecolor{red}{HTML}{CC3311} %*
\definecolor{brown}{HTML}{882255}
\definecolor{violet}{HTML}{AA4499}
\definecolor{magenta}{HTML}{EE3377} %*

The colors marked with %* are vibrant, and so might collide with the other colors which are muted. But overall this palette looks pretty good. You may see how someone with color blindness would perceive these colors using this tool by David Nichols. And if you need to get your hands dirty designing graphics and you need more colors, be sure to use a color-blindness simulator like Color Oracle to test your design choices for visibility. Also check out these resources:

Export all Immutable Documents to PDF

This point is more about logistics and convenience than accessibility. By immutable documents I mean documents like a course syllabus, a course calender, a teaching statement: any document that you intend to be read but not edited. Any such document your create should be given as a PDF. And this is easy to achieve in most word processors: there’s always an Export to PDF option or button.

PDF files are more convenient to deal with than most other file types. They can be opened in any web browser or any one of many free PDF viewers. They can be viewed easily on a phone. They have all the typesetting information of the document embedded in the file so that the document is guaranteed to look the same regardless of what’s installed on the device that opens it. They are just easier to access than .docx files.

Be Mindful of Typography

You want people, your students or your peers, to read the documents you create. It’s polite that you make the job of reading your document as convenient and comfortable as possible. The layout of text on the page should, at the very least, not get in the way of the content of the document, and this is why good typography is important.

Learning the best typographic techniques and practices is a deep rabbit hole you could dive into. If you’re interested and have the time, I recommend first reading Butterick’s Practical Typography. Otherwise, here are some of the more important considerations.

Decrease the line length in your documents

Shorter lines are better because it allows the reader to trace their focus back from the end of a line to the beginning of the next line more consistently. A good standard line-length is between 49 and 90 characters, which is about two to three alphabets long. This can easily be accomplished by editing the page margins or the font size.
Increase the line spacing in your documents

Again, this helps the reader's eye trace to the next line. Plus it just helps the page breathe.
Either indent paragraphs or put space between paragraphs, but don’t do both

The beginning of a new paragraph should be indicated, but not twice.
Have running headers and footers, and page numbers

This provides information to screen reader to help visually impaired folks navigate the pagination of the document.
Format the body text well

When formatting the main body text of your document,
1. pick a non-default font, but don’t pick a goofy one,
2. never use underlines, even for URLs and email addresses,
3. and use bold and italics sparingly, and never together.
Shorten URLs in print, or hide URLs behind a link

If you’re creating a document that could conceivably be printed, make sure any URL in the document is convenient to type. Consider using a URL shortener if you expect the use of your document to be short-term. If your document is intended to be viewed digitally, like in an email or on a webpage, hide the URL behind a descriptive link like I’ve done with all the links on this page. This is necessary because URLs are ugly and typographically distracting.
Give your PDF a title in the meta-data

This also helps visually impaired readers.

Butterick describes how to realize these points in Microsoft Word or in HTML/CSS for the web. For LaTeX here’s a some lines you could add to your preamble that will make your document reflect these points, like in this example:


\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{margin=1.67in, bottom=1.33in}
\usepackage{fourier}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{%
    pdfauthor={YOUR NAME}%
   ,pdftitle={DOCUMENT TITLE}% 
   ,pdflang=en-US% 
   ,colorlinks=true%
   ,urlcolor=blue%
}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\lhead{YOUR NAME}
\rhead{DOCUMENT TITLE}
\cfoot{\thepage}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage{parskip}
\usepackage[all]{nowidow}
\usepackage{setspace}
\linespread{1.167}
\frenchspacing

For more reading on typography, if you want dive deeper down the rabbit hole:

Create Properly Tagged PDFs

This point requires a bit of work to implement. A PDF document can be equipped with additional structure, PDF tags, to make it more accessible to the visually impaired. These tags encode what certain elements of the PDF are (headings, lists, body-text, images etc) and what order they are intended to be read in. This information helps a visually impaired person using a screen reader read your document efficiently.

To make tagged PDFs from Microsoft Office documents, you have to format your document correctly before you export it to PDF. Learning to do this takes a bit of time. Instead of going over the details here, I’ll refer you to the University of Washington’s wonderful guide to Creating Accessible Documents.

Creating tagged PDFs from LaTeX is a even more complicated. The easiest way appears to be using ConTeXt instead of pure LaTeX. It looks like our best hope for a solution with just LaTeX is the accessibility.sty package that was recently put on CTAN. Native tagging support in LaTeX appears to be a work in progress. For more reading on PDF accessibility, see

Use an Accessible Color Palette

Export all Immutable Documents to PDF

Be Mindful of Typography

Decrease the line length in your documents

Increase the line spacing in your documents

Either indent paragraphs or put space between paragraphs, but don’t do both

Have running headers and footers, and page numbers

Format the body text well

Shorten URLs in print, or hide URLs behind a link

Give your PDF a title in the meta-data

Create Properly Tagged PDFs