Accessibility Consequences of incorrectly formatting Columns in Microsoft Word

IN order to ensure screen reader users can properly access content in multiple columns in a document, proper formatting techniques must be used so that the screen reader actually knows the content is in columns. IN the following video, we demonstrate how screen reader reads content in a few cases using incorrect formatting.

In the first example in the video, we demonstrate what happens when tab stops are used to visually separate content. Normally, tabs are used to indent paragraphs, so the screen reader treats them as a space character. The screen readers voice the content from left to right, meaning that one line from the left column is read, followed by one line on the right.

Correctly creating columns in Microsoft Word

In the following video, we will show how you can create columns that programmatically advertise themselves as such to screen readers, and other accessibility tools. This form of columns has a number of advantages, especially compared to the first option we demonstrated in the previous video. One of the largest is that you can set the width of columns, which will then automatically reflow as you add and remove content.

The first example in this video shows how you can create columns from existing content.

The second example shows how you can create columns to design a blank page.

Third Video

In this third video we demonstrate how a screen reader interacts with a properly designed table.