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University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Creating Accessible Documents in Word Processing and Presentation Software

Learn how to make your documents and presenations accessible to a wider audience.

Google Docs Accessibility

Now that you’ve practiced fixing a document in Word, you have the basic skills to be able to design accessible documents in other formats.

Many of basic features in Google Docs are the same; here is how you can find and access these tools.

Headings: these are accessible from toolbar; the default will be set to "normal text."

Google Document with headings menu highlighted. Another screenshot shows an example document with properly formatted headings.

 

Document summary / Table of contents feature: from the Insert menu, scroll to the very bottom and choose "Table of contents."

Table of contents feature in Google Docs with an example screenshot of a generated table of contents.

 

Accessibility checker: unfortunately, Google Docs does not have a native accessibility checker. That said, you can download an extension called Grackle Docs that will check the accessibility of your Google Docs and make it easier for you to export your Google Docs as accessible PDFs!

  • To install this extension, navigate to Extensions > Add-ons > Get add-ons > Search for Grackle Docs.