Why this matters more than most people realise

When you send a report, a set of meeting notes or a client proposal, you probably assume everyone will read it the way you do: on a decent screen, at a comfortable size, with the words appearing clearly. That assumption holds less often than you might think. Around one in five people in the UK report a disability, and plenty more have temporary or situational needs — a cracked laptop screen, a busy train carriage, a migraine, a pair of glasses left at home. Accessible documents are simply documents that survive those conditions.

They are also quicker to read, easier to search and simpler to update. Good accessibility practice tends to make life easier for everyone, not just the people it was designed to include. If your role involves typing up meeting notes, formatting transcripts or preparing client paperwork, you are often the last person to touch a document before it goes out. That puts you in a strong position to get it right, and most of the changes take seconds once they become habit.

Choose fonts that everyone can read

Font choice is the first thing readers notice, even if only subconsciously. Decorative typefaces, very thin weights and long passages in italics all slow reading down and can make a document genuinely difficult for someone with dyslexia or low vision. Stick to clean, familiar sans-serif fonts such as Arial, Calibri, Verdana or Tahoma for body text. These have straightforward letter shapes and generous spacing.

Size matters as much as style. Twelve point is a sensible minimum for printed documents, but if your work is read mainly on screen, consider eleven or twelve point with a little extra line spacing — somewhere between 1.15 and 1.5 — rather than squeezing more onto each page. Avoid long stretches of capitals, because words set in all caps lose their shape and become harder to scan. Use bold for emphasis rather than italics or underlining, and keep sentences reasonably short.

Get the contrast right

Contrast is where well-meaning documents often fall down. Pale grey text on white looks elegant on a designer's monitor, but it can be nearly invisible to someone with reduced vision and may disappear completely when printed on a tired office printer.

A simple rule helps: dark text on a light background, or light text on a dark background, with a clear difference between the two. Black or very dark grey on white or off-white is the safest combination. Avoid using colour alone to carry meaning. If you mark urgent items in red, label them as urgent too, because colour blindness affects roughly one in twelve men and one in two hundred women. When you do use colour, keep it to a handful of shades and check them against each other rather than assuming they will read as distinct.

Write link text that tells people where they are going

Screen reader users often pull up a list of links and navigate from that list alone, without the surrounding sentence. A document full of "click here" and "read more" becomes a list of meaningless phrases. The same problem hits anyone skim-reading on a phone.

Instead, describe the destination: "download the 2024 fee schedule" or "read the expenses policy in full". Keep it short enough to scan but specific enough to be useful. If a document is likely to be printed, mention the destination in words as well so nobody is left hunting for a web address. The same principle applies to file names — "Client report final final v3" tells nobody anything, whereas "Smith proposal March 2025" does.

Structure is part of accessibility

Structure is what allows someone to move around your document instead of reading it from top to bottom. Use the built-in heading styles in your word processor rather than manually enlarging and bolding text. Screen readers can then jump between sections, and reformatting the whole document becomes far quicker for you.

• Use proper heading levels instead of bold paragraphs pretending to be headings.
• Turn lists into real bulleted or numbered lists rather than typing dashes and line breaks.
• Add a short description to any image, chart or diagram that carries meaning.
• Give tables a header row, and keep them simple — one idea per column.
• Label transcript speakers consistently, and add timestamps where readers may need to trace a comment back.

Check before you send

A few minutes of checking catches most problems. Most word processors include an accessibility checker that flags missing image descriptions, low contrast and skipped heading levels. Run it, then read the document on your phone or zoom in to 200 per cent and see whether anything becomes awkward.

Read it aloud, or use the built-in read-aloud feature, to catch sentences that trip you up. Check the file name and document title, and make sure any template you reuse has been tidied rather than inherited with somebody else's formatting. If you are preparing documents on behalf of a colleague or client, it is worth asking whether they have a preferred format, font size or colour scheme — many organisations have a house style for exactly this reason.

None of this requires special software or a design qualification. It requires attention, a little repetition and the willingness to think about the person on the other end. Do that consistently and your documents will be clearer, kinder and more professional — for every reader, whatever their needs.