Summary

Office has a built-in Accessibility Checker that scans a document the way an assistive technology reads it, and lists exactly what breaks. This article shows you how to run it in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, how to read what it reports, and which fixes give you the most benefit for the least effort.

In this guide

• 1. Run the Accessibility Checker
• 2. Read the Inspection Results
• 3. Add Alternative Text to Images and Charts
• 4. Use Real Heading Styles Instead of Bold Text
• 5. Fix Link Text, Table Headers, and Contrast
• 6. Set the Reading Order on PowerPoint Slides
• 7. Keep the Checker Running While You Work
• 8. Check an Email Before You Send It

Before You Start

• Microsoft 365, Office 2019, or later. The checker exists in the desktop apps and in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for the web.
• A document, workbook, presentation, or email you are about to send to someone else.
• No admin rights required.

Instructions

1. Run the Accessibility Checker

Open the checker from the Review tab in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

1. Open the file you are about to share.
2. Click the Review tab on the ribbon.
3. Click Check Accessibility in the Accessibility group. In some Microsoft 365 builds the button is a split control — click the top half to run the check.
4. The Accessibility pane opens down the right-hand side of the window with the heading Inspection Results.
5. If nothing is wrong, the pane reads No accessibility issues found. People with disabilities should not have difficulty reading this document.

Note: If your ribbon is collapsed or you use the simplified layout, the button may be hidden behind the ... at the right end of the ribbon. You can also press Alt, then R, then A1 in Word to reach it from the keyboard.

Verification: The Accessibility pane is visible on the right, and the status bar at the bottom of the window shows either Accessibility: Good to go or Accessibility: Investigate.

2. Read the Inspection Results

Understand what Errors, Warnings, and Tips each mean for a real reader.

Results are grouped into three headings. Click any heading to expand it, then click a specific item — the app selects that object in the document so you can see what it is talking about. A Why fix? section at the bottom of the pane explains the reasoning, and Steps to fix offers a one-click action for many items.

Group	What it means	Reader impact
Errors	Content that is unavailable or extremely difficult to use	A picture with no description is silence. A table with no header row is a stream of unlabelled values. Fix these first.
Warnings	Content that is reachable but hard work	A link labelled "click here" tells a reader nothing when links are read out as a list. A low-contrast heading is guesswork on a phone in daylight.
Tips	Content that works but could be better organised	Slide elements read in an odd order, or a long document with no headings to jump between.

Tip: Work top to bottom. Errors are the ones that make content genuinely unavailable, and they are usually the fastest to fix — most are a missing description or a checkbox.

3. Add Alternative Text to Images and Charts

Describe what each image conveys so it is not a blank gap in the document.

Alt text is the single highest-value fix in the list. It is read aloud by screen readers, shown when an image fails to load, and used by search inside document libraries.

1. Right-click the image, chart, icon, or SmartArt and select View Alt Text. The Alt Text pane opens on the right. You can also select the object and use Picture Format > Alt Text.
2. Type one or two sentences in the box describing what the image conveys, not what it contains. For a sales chart, Revenue rose from 1.2 million to 1.9 million between Q1 and Q4 is useful; Bar chart is not.
3. For a shape that carries no meaning — a divider line, a background flourish — tick Mark as decorative instead. The box greys out and screen readers skip the object entirely.
4. Repeat for every image the checker listed. Each one disappears from Errors as you complete it.

Note: Charts need alt text more than photographs do, because the point of a chart is the conclusion. Write the conclusion. If the chart also relies on red and green to separate its series, change the series colours or add data labels — a colour filter on the reader's own machine cannot fix a file, as covered in How to Use Color Filters and High-Contrast Themes in Windows.

4. Use Real Heading Styles Instead of Bold Text

Give the document a structure readers can navigate instead of a wall of formatting.

Text that is bold and 16 point looks like a heading. It is not one. A screen reader announces it as ordinary body text, and readers who navigate by heading cannot jump to it at all.

1. Select the line you intend as a section title.
2. On the Home tab, click Heading 1 in the Styles gallery for a top-level section, Heading 2 for a sub-section, and so on. Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + Alt + 1, Ctrl + Alt + 2, Ctrl + Alt + 3.
3. Do not skip levels — a Heading 3 directly under a Heading 1 reads as a gap in the structure.
4. Check your work with View > Navigation Pane in Word. The pane shows your headings as an outline. If it is empty, none of your titles are real headings.

In PowerPoint the equivalent is a slide title. Every slide needs one, even if you do not want it visible: use the Accessibility pane's Add a slide title action, then drag the title placeholder off the edge of the slide if the design calls for it.

Tip: Heading styles also give you an automatic table of contents and a navigable document outline. The accessibility benefit is the same work you would do anyway — see How to Use Heading Styles and Create a Table of Contents in Word.

5. Fix Link Text, Table Headers, and Contrast

Clear the warnings that make a document technically readable but practically hard work.

Hyperlink text. Screen reader users often pull up a list of every link in a document. A list of six entries all reading "click here" is useless.

1. Right-click the link and select Edit Hyperlink, or select it and press Ctrl + K.
2. In the Text to display box at the top, replace the generic wording with the destination — the 2026 expense policy instead of click here or a raw address.
3. Click OK.

Table header rows. A header row tells the reader what each value means as they move across a row.

1. Click anywhere in the table.
2. In Word and PowerPoint, open the Table Design tab and tick Header Row in the Table Style Options group. In Word, also open the Layout tab and click Repeat Header Rows so the header carries onto every page.
3. In Excel, select your data range, click Insert > Table, and tick My table has headers. Give each sheet tab a meaningful name while you are there, and delete blank sheets — the checker flags both.

Contrast. The checker reports Hard-to-read text contrast when foreground and background are too close.

1. Click the flagged item in the Accessibility pane to select it.
2. On the Home tab, use Font Color to darken the text, or change the fill behind it. Aim for solid black or a dark grey on white rather than light grey, and avoid coloured text on a coloured fill.
3. Never use colour as the only signal. If red means overdue in your table, add the word Overdue as well.

6. Set the Reading Order on PowerPoint Slides

Control the sequence in which a screen reader announces the contents of a slide.

A slide is a canvas, not a page, so PowerPoint reads its objects in the order they were added — which is rarely the order you laid them out in.

1. In PowerPoint, open the Accessibility pane with Review > Check Accessibility.
2. Click Reading Order in the Accessibility ribbon tab to open the Reading Order pane. On builds without that button, use Home > Arrange > Selection Pane instead.
3. The pane lists every object on the current slide. In the Reading Order pane the list runs top to bottom in the order it will be read; in the older Selection Pane it runs the opposite way, bottom to top.
4. Drag items into the sequence a person would read them — title first, then the body, then any supporting graphic.
5. Move to the next slide and repeat. Reading order is per slide.

Verification: Press Tab repeatedly on the slide in editing view. The selection moves through the objects in reading order, which lets you confirm the sequence without a screen reader.

7. Keep the Checker Running While You Work

Catch problems as you create them instead of auditing the whole file at the end.

1. With the Accessibility pane open, scroll to the bottom and tick Keep accessibility checker running while I work.
2. The status bar at the bottom of the window now shows a live indicator: Accessibility: Good to go when the file is clean and Accessibility: Investigate when something needs attention.
3. Click that status bar indicator at any time to reopen the pane.

This turns a 20-minute audit at the end into a few seconds per image, which is the difference between a habit and a chore.

8. Check an Email Before You Send It

Run the same check on an Outlook message so the accessibility work survives the send.

An accessible attachment inside an inaccessible email still loses the reader at the front door.

1. Start a new message or reply.
2. In classic Outlook for Windows, click the Review tab in the message window, then Check Accessibility.
3. In new Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web, click the Options tab in the compose window and then Check Accessibility. If the ribbon is in its simplified layout, the button sits behind the ... at the right end.
4. The Accessibility pane opens beside your message. Fix the same three things that matter most: alt text on any pasted image or screenshot, real heading styles rather than bold text for section titles, and link text that describes its destination.
5. Outlook also shows an amber notification bar across the top of the compose window when it finds problems, with a Fix it action.
6. Send the message.

Tip: Pasted screenshots are the most common accessibility problem in email, and the fix takes ten seconds. Right-click the image, choose View Alt Text, and describe what it shows — including any error message text in the picture, so it can be searched and read aloud.

Troubleshooting

TIP

A document that passes the Accessibility Checker is also a better document on a phone. Real headings collapse and expand, alt text loads before images do, and high-contrast text survives sunlight. Most of this work pays for itself on the reader's commute, screen reader or not.

Symptom / Error	Potential Cause	Solution
Check Accessibility button is missing	Older Office version or collapsed ribbon	Look behind the ... at the right end of the ribbon. In Office 2016 and earlier the checker lives under File > Info > Check for Issues > Check Accessibility.
Pane reports no issues but the document is still hard to read	Checker cannot judge wording or layout	The checker tests structure, not clarity. Review headings, paragraph length, and font size yourself, and put a number on the prose with Word's readability scores — see How to Check Word Count and Readability in Word. Contrast below the threshold is reported; borderline contrast is not.
"Picture or object not inline" warning	Image is set to float with text wrapping	Select the image, open Picture Format > Wrap Text, and choose In Line with Text so it stays in the reading sequence.
Alt text box is greyed out	Object is already marked as decorative	Untick Mark as decorative in the Alt Text pane, then type the description.
Reading order changes back after editing a slide	New objects are appended to the end of the order	Reopen the Reading Order pane after adding anything and drag the new object into position. Check the order as the last step before sharing.
Checker flags a table you cannot change	Table was pasted as a picture	A picture of a table has no rows or headers. Paste it again as a real table, or add alt text that states the key figures.

Related Articles

• How to Use Heading Styles and Create a Table of Contents in Word
• How to Check Word Count and Readability in Word
• How to Use Color Filters and High-Contrast Themes in Windows
• Understanding Windows Accessibility Features — A Quick-Reference Guide
• How to Use Narrator (Screen Reader) in Windows
• How to Enable Live Captions in Teams and Windows
• How to Enable Reading Mode in Your Browser

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