The following are tips to keep in mind to help make using Google Docs as accessible as possible. Although Google has come a long way, they aren’t there yet. Follow these suggestions and you will be on your way!

Google Docs is great for general documents made up of text with headers and one level lists. No complicated document structure, tables, or images. Basically for simple documents meant for information, reading, and printing.

It’s not so great for complex documents that contain tables, images, and nested lists. PDF documents should not be created from a Google Docs, and when using the document for the purpose of editing and marking up, there maybe some limitations for someone needing to use a screen reader.

For your more complex documents or if you know that you want a PDF file format, your document should be created in Word first adding in your structure, alt text, tables, etc. Once you have the Word format saved you can then convert to a PDF and upload into Google. A Word document uploaded into Google will retain most, if not all, the accessibility formatting.

A note about images in Google Docs: if you included the purpose or meaning of your image in the text surrounding it, you can leave the alt text empty and format your layout using text wrapping. Text wrapping in Google will cause a screen reader to skip the image.

If the image is something you need read by a screen reader because it has meaning to your content and the principle you are teaching, then make sure that your alt text is meaningful and place the image inline with your text. Using inline will allow a screen reader to recognize the image.

Always remember to check your alt text, sometimes the file name is inserted when you upload an image and will have to delete it out.