For visitors who use assistive technology to navigate electronic documents, hierarchical headers are the basis for identifying and jumping between sections in the document.

Header 1 (H1) should only be used once for the document title.

Header 2 (H2) can be used for main sections.

Header 3 (H3) can be used for sub-sections within the page's H2 sections.

Header 4 (H4) can be used for further sub-sections within H3 sub-sections.

Title should only be used if you have a separate cover page with the title of your document. 
(Title is not equivalent to Header 1 and should not be used in place of Header 1).

Header Best Practices:

1. Don't choose headers based on font size.
2. Avoid skipping header levels (Example: Having one section's header be an H2 and the next section be an H4 (with no H3's in between) is confusing to visitors.)
3. An SoP Word Template has pre-formatted headers available in the Styles area of the menu.

For visitors using assistive technology, correctly formatted bulleted lists are read out in a way that lets them know which item they are listening to, and also how many items total are in that list. 
For example, the first item in the bulleted list shown below would be read out as: "Bulleted list. Item 1 out 2: Amy advises pre-pharmacy students who are interested in the PharmD program."

1. Don't use pseudo bulleted lists (a bullet icon followed by text) or pseudo numbered lists (numbers followed by text). 
2. For side-by-side lists, create separate lists instead of positioning the lists using indentation/spaces

• Alt text should be a brief phrase or sentence that describes the image. It will be read aloud to visitors using assistive technology who are not able to view the image.
• If you have a decorative element that isn't meaningful to your content (e.g., an globe icon that sits next to a header titled "Geography"), set it as a decorative image.

Underlined Text:

• Avoid underlined text - reserved usage for links only
• Instead of underlines, you can use bold + italics for emphasis

Links:

• Avoid using confusing wording like "click here" or "this link"
• Instead, use clear wording like "view Section D" or or "Submit a Help Desk Request"

You can activate the Accessibility Checker tool in Word -- this can be turned on and left on throughout the duration of your work to catch issues as they pop up.

You'll see issues in the Accessibility Assistant window.

When exporting your Word doc as a PDF, make sure to use the proper settings:

• Choose "Save as Adobe PDF"
  (Don't use "Print as PDF," as this will strip out all the accessibility settings and create a non-accessible PDF.)
  
  
  
• When the Save dialogue box appears, click on the Options button.
  
  
  
• Select the checkboxes for:
  
  • Convert document information
  • Enable Accessibility and Reflow with Tagged Adobe PDF and
    
  • Create Bookmarks
    

    

• Hit Ok. 
  You'll return to the "Save Adobe PDF File As" dialogue window.  Type in a name for your PDF, and hit Save.