Prepping Your Documents for Section 508 Remediation
Show Your Style!
Designing on the fly is excellent for experiencing the fullness of your inspiration! But at some point, you need to interrupt your process briefly to build and assign Styles when you are consistent with your typestyles. Accessibility tags can only be applied to set and active Styles in MS Word® and Adobe InDesign®.
Oh the Colors!
Choose the colors you want, the ones that inspire you. Get that combination or group of colors chosen, then tweak them to have enough contrast based on ADA Section 508 color contrast ratios. “WCAG 2.1 requires a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 for graphics and user interface components (such as form input borders).” WebAIM contrast checker page.
Type Size
Be mindful of type sizes as they relate to color contrast ratios. AA requires at least 4.5:1 for normal text (12pt), 3:1 for large text (14pt or more). AAA requires a contrast ratio of at least 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text.
Hierarchy
Think about (and apply Styles) for a hierarchy of readability. Designers like to group graphical elements together, making the Reading Order tags harder to assign and match the structure tree during PDF remediation.
Pre-Press Best Practices
Always use BP when designing publications. The makers of publishing software (and apps) have a set of best practices they assume you understand and have functional knowledge of. When transferring files between programs like Adobe InDesign® to PDF or MS Word® to PDF, etc., not using industry best practices will make it harder to remediate your document to meet the AA-AAA level rules for posting docs online.
Charts, Graphs, and Tables, Oh My!
When building infographics, charts, tables, etc., make sure you have values assigned to the data and don’t let color be the only way information is conveyed. Blind and deaf/blind people, in some instances, have never seen the color blue, for example. Unless the person was sighted before becoming blind, they wouldn’t know what the color blue looks like or the intended meaning you are trying to convey. This will also effect alt-text descriptions.
TOC for You & Me!
Use the table of content styles correctly. Anything over 9 pages should have extra navigation options included in the design. Those are also valuable for navigation and help generate clickable internal links to the chapter headings in the TOC. Bookmarks in a PDF can be generated with consistent tags already applied to text headings as well.