Structure with real headings
Use the document's heading styles rather than making text large and bold. Screen readers navigate by heading structure, and manually formatted text provides none.
Keep the hierarchy sequential: a level three heading should follow a level two, not a level one.
Text, not pictures of text
A scanned document without a text layer is invisible to a screen reader. Running recognition over scans is the single largest accessibility improvement available for archives.
Avoid putting essential information inside images such as charts and infographics without also stating it in text.
Alternative text and links
Describe what an image conveys, not what it depicts. For a chart, state the finding rather than "bar chart".
Purely decorative images should be marked as such so they are skipped.
Write link text that makes sense alone. "Read the 2026 accessibility report" works; "click here" does not.
Colour, contrast and layout
Never use colour as the only way to convey meaning. Add a label, a pattern or a symbol.
Aim for at least 4.5 to 1 contrast between text and background for body text.
Check the reading order of complex layouts. Text boxes and columns often read in an order that makes no sense aloud.