A practical checklist for making your existing Word templates more accessible
Most Word templates were not built with accessibility in mind. They were built to look good. For the majority of users, they do look good — on screen, in the right version of Office, on a machine with the brand font installed.
For someone using a screen reader, the experience can be entirely different. A heading styled by manually changing font size and weight may not register as a heading at all. An image without alt text is invisible. A table without proper header rows cannot be navigated logically. A document that looks clean and organised visually can be genuinely disorienting for someone relying on assistive technology.
In April 2025, the Australian Human Rights Commission updated its guidance under the Disability Discrimination Act to confirm that accessibility obligations apply to emails, digital documents, and learning materials. WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the minimum standard. Around 5.5 million Australians live with disability. The documents your organisation produces reach some of them.
The good news is that many of the most important accessibility fixes are straightforward, and some can be applied to existing templates without a full rebuild. Here is a practical checklist to work through.
Check your heading structure
Open the template and look at how headings are applied. If they were styled by selecting text and manually changing font size and weight, they are not using named paragraph styles. A screen reader cannot navigate to them.
To fix this, apply Word's built-in heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3) to each heading level, then modify those styles to match your brand formatting. The heading will look the same on screen, but screen readers will now recognise and navigate it correctly.
Test it by using the Navigation Pane (View > Navigation Pane in Word). If your headings appear in the pane, screen readers can navigate to them. If the pane is empty, the headings are using direct formatting and need to be converted to named styles.
Check your colour contrast
Every text and background colour combination in the template needs to meet a minimum contrast ratio: 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (18pt or 14pt bold) under WCAG 2.2 Level AA.
Use a free contrast checker such as WebAIM's Contrast Checker or the Colour Contrast Analyser. Enter the foreground and background colour values and check whether the combination passes. Pay particular attention to lighter brand colours used for body text, watermarks, or subtle backgrounds.
Check your images
Every image in the template should have alt text. In Word, right-click the image, select "Edit Alt Text," and add a description that explains what the image shows or the purpose it serves. Decorative images that carry no informational value should be marked as decorative rather than given a text description.
Image placeholders in templates should include a prompt reminding the user to add alt text when they replace the placeholder with real content.
Check your reading order in PowerPoint
PowerPoint does not present content to screen readers in visual order by default. It presents it in the order elements were added to the slide. A title added after body text for layout reasons will be read after the body text by a screen reader, even if it appears above it visually.
To check and correct reading order in PowerPoint: Home > Arrange > Selection Pane. The order in the Selection Pane is the reverse of reading order — elements at the bottom of the list are read first. Drag elements into the correct order, with the last element to be read at the top of the list.
Check your tables
Tables in Word should have a designated header row that repeats when the table spans multiple pages. This allows screen readers to associate each data cell with the correct column heading. Right-click the header row, select "Table Row Properties," and enable "Repeat as header row at the top of each page."
Avoid merged cells where possible. They create irregular table structures that screen readers navigate unpredictably.
Check your document properties
Every document should have a document title set in File > Properties > Title. This is the first thing a screen reader announces when someone opens the document. "Document 1" or a blank field is not useful. The document title should be specific and descriptive.
When a checklist is not enough
These fixes address the most common accessibility issues in existing templates. A template with deep structural problems, extensive use of direct formatting, or complex layout elements may need a more thorough assessment and potentially a rebuild.
If you would like us to review your current templates for accessibility, send them through as PDFs and we will take a look as part of a free pre-build review.
Sources
Australian Human Rights Commission, Standards and Guidelines for Digital Accessibility (April 2025). humanrights.gov.au
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Disability, Ageing and Carers, Australia (2022). abs.gov.au
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 (October 2023). w3.org
WebAIM Contrast Checker. webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker