Accessible Word and PDF files

Information, products and services should generally be available to everyone, despite any ongoing or temporary barriers that different people might experience.

I help organisations and government departments to design and create accessible and inclusive documentation. In addition to a strong understanding of plain language and accessible design principles, I have completed Vision Australia’s formal Creating accessible documents: Word and PDF training.

I just received the feedback from our team that reviewed the [file] for accessibility. You did great!

Accessible documents

The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are an international standard for making websites, applications and other digital content (like MS Word and PDF files) accessible to people with disability. Such accessibility is a mandatory standard for government agencies and increasingly required for many businesses.

Accessible Word and PDF files are technically well set up and use heading hierarchies, list styles, tagged tables and alt text, among many other strategies, to make sure that they’re easily readable and navigable by a wide range of users. I can help you to create new or convert existing information into clear and functional Word or PDF documents that consider the latest WCAG guidelines.

I use this checklist when working through the technical requirements of making sure a Word or PDF file is accessible. The checklist maps WCAG accessibility techniques against the extensive WCAG 2.2 success criteria (updated October 2023). Techniques provide examples of various ways to meet the guidelines. Applying these techniques helps to meet user needs.

There are plenty of resources and checklists available online, and you can refer to mine (developed for my own use) or search for others. One thing you might notice is that these resources are very technical and highly detailed. For example, see:

In which case, let Writefish help with your accessibility and inclusion requirements.

Rates and costs

As explained on the services page, there’s no simple answer to how much a project will cost. Creating accessible documents is time-consuming because it’s fiddly, and indeed this is sometimes because the technology (like the settings for Word and PDF files) has not caught up with the increasing need to provide accessible documents as standard. The fixes are in many cases manual.

For accessibility documentation, I charge by the hour at $140 per hour + GST. This is in line with the recommended rates for a highly experienced generalist editor like me.

See the rates page for further discussion of project rates, costs and estimates.