Document Accessibility

All papers, theses, and dissertations should be compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, Level AA, a.k.a. WCAG (see NDUS Policy 1203.1, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act). On this page you will find resources for helping you make a compliant disquisition, instructions for resolving common accessibility issues, optional accessibility settings recommended by the NDSU Graduate School, and instructions on updating older templates downloaded before October 2025.

Use the PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC) to test the accessibility readiness of your document. If you are drafting your document in Word, the built-in accessibility checker is useful only as a preliminary check for some requirements, such as finding figures without alt-text. Similarly, checkers in PDF editors are not comprehensive, and you will need to use PAC to check your final PDF.

Finally, be aware that common methods of converting your document to a PDF will leave out some or all required features. Please use our document conversion guide to avoid issues.

Page Contents
  1. Guidelines
  2. Optional Settings
  3. Updating Older Documents
Related Pages
  1. Converting Your Document to PDF
  2. Tables, Figures, Schemes, Etc.
  3. Equations

Your Responsibility As Author

As the author of your disquisition, you are responsible for making your final PDF compliant with the WCAG 2.1 AA digital accessibility requirements. If you are using one of our Word templates that was updated October 2025 or later, employing the template's pre-formatted styles in adherence with the Graduate School Format Guidelines will meet many of our accessibility requirements. However, many requirements rely on you to create accessible content, such as creating a logical reading order with heading levels, creating alt-text for images, and respecting minimum size requirements for text. Some requirements can only be addressed in a PDF editor, such as setting scope for tables and adding alt-text to equations.

We do not recommend remediating your PDF until all formatting and authoring issues have been resolved. Your goal should be to create a pristine source document with no formatting issues and as many accessibility requirements addressed as possible, so that you need only remediate the final PDF once.

Authoring Accessibility

Before you begin your format review, convert your document to PDF and test its accessibility readiness with the PDF Accessibility Checker. Additionally, review our DQKB to find accessibility requirements for each type of content in your document. Address all issues possible within your source document.

Note that PDF editors like Foxit PDF Editor or Adobe Pro have built-in accessibility checkers, but will not reveal all issues. Similarly, Word's built-in accessibility checker is useful as an initial check only, for items like alt-text in images.

Remediating Accessibility

Once you've addressed any formatting issues in your document during your format review, use the WCAG Checklist for Accessible PDFs or the Section 508 Testing and Remediation Guide to remediate any remaining issues in your PDF. If you need a PDF editor to remediate your document, workstations with licenses for Adobe Pro are available in several locations across campus; see below for the full list. The Library's Data Visualization Lab and the NDSU Virtual Lab can both be accessed remotely.

An accessibility checker tests the features of your PDF and creates a report about which tests passed and which failed. We recommend using the PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC) to test your document, as it offers the most comprehensive tests and provides a detailed report on issues that are labeled according to their WCAG tests.

PDF editors like Foxit PDF Editor or Adobe Pro have built-in accessibility checkers, and sometimes show where specific issues are in your document. Compared to PAC, these checkers are less comprehensive, frequently show false negatives, and you may find that some issues are only vaguely defined. Additionally, some issues may not be checked at all; for example, neither Foxit nor Adobe will look for Unicode character compliance. Since you will likely be using a PDF editor to remediate your document, using their built-in checkers can be a handy way to become more familiar with the program, and a PDF editor may offer a more accessible (!) pathway to begin correcting your document over PAC, but you should recognize that correcting these issues will only get you partway to compliance.

If you are using Word to draft your document, Word's built-in checker is useful for pointing out some missing requirements, like alt-text for images. Unfortunately, it has the distinct disadvantage of not checking your final PDF--it's possible for your Word document to be fully accessible but for your PDF to fail the same checks. See the entry in our knowledge base on converting your document to PDF to avoid additional issues.

In conclusion, we recommend using PAC as the authoritative source of compliance issues in your document, but there are advantages to using other types of checkers.

Accessibility Guidelines

The items below are adapted from WCAG 2.1 AA to be specific to your disquisition. Our templates are designed to handle some of these requirements (as well as others not listed here), but some are dependent on your content and others can only be remediated in a PDF editor. If you did not use one of our Word templates to draft your disquisition, you may find it easier to move your content into a fresh template and re-style it from scratch instead of trying to implement all required features.

Optional settings to improve your document to level AAA are noted on this page, below.

Requirements:

  • The PDF has a descriptive file name which identifies the document, or its purpose and the Initial View is set to show Document Title. (WCAG 2.4.2)
  • Security settings is set to Allowed for Content Copying for Accessibility. (WCAG 2.0.0)
  • Under the Advanced->Reading Options, the primary language is set correctly in the Language field. (WCAG 3.1.1)

Authoring Resolution:

  • In Word, enter the title of your disquisition under File -> Info.

If you are using a Graduate School Word template, your document title will be set to the template default (e.g., "NDSU Disquisition Template with Non-numbered Headings"). You can change this by navigating to the File -> Info tab and editing the "Title" field. Enter the title of your disquisition in sentence or title case, word-for-word as it appears in your document.

If you are creating a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation, use the same title in your ETD on ProQuest.

Remediation Resolution:

  • Copy your disquisition's title into the Title field under PDF properties.
  • Set the document's primary language in the PDF's reading options.

Open your PDF in a PDF viewer or editor and navigate to the File -> Properties tab. Enter the title of your disquisition into the Title field word-for-word as it appears in your document; the title should be in sentence or title case, not ALL CAPS.

If you are creating a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation, use the same title in your ETD on ProQuest.

Tutorials:

Video: Create PDF Metadata in Adobe

Requirements:

  • When viewing the Tags Pane, tags are visible. (WCAG 4.1.1)
  • Content is tagged correctly. (WCAG 4.1.1)
  • The document is bookmarked in a logical reading order. (WCAG 2.4)

Authoring Resolution:

  • In Word, headings should have an appropriate outline level in their paragraph settings.
  • Convert your Word document to PDF using the export tool.

Remediation Resolution:

  • Use a PDF editor to manually tag and bookmark your document.

In Word, document structure tags and bookmarks are automatically handled through the style settings in our template. If you have altered the style settings in your document, use the style settings in our templates as a reference. Bookmarks for headings are generated from the outline level set in the headings' paragraph settings. For example, major headings should be "level 1", first-level subheadings should be "level 2", and so on. Additionally, printing your document to PDF or using 3rd party plugins to make your PDF will cause your PDF to be created without tags or bookmarks; see our PDF conversion guide for instructions on creating your PDF with all its features intact.

At this time, we do not recommend using LaTeX to produce PDFs. If your document was made in LaTeX, you may need to tag your document manually in a PDF editor or pay for a subscription to Overleaf; more information on tagging can be found at the LaTeX Tagging Project. See our knowledge base entry for additional considerations on equations in LaTeX PDFs.

Tutorials:

Video: Tagging a PDF

Video: Adding Alt-text to Tags

Text: Section 508 Testing & Remediation Guide

Requirements:

  • Text within images should be at least the same size the font in the paragraph text. (WCAG 1.4)
  • If an image must be scaled to fit onto a page, the text cannot be smaller than Times New Roman size 8 (even if you use a different font in your document). (WCAG 1.4)

Authoring Resolution:

  • Generate images with appropriately sized and high-contrast text.
  • Use high-resolution images to avoid pixelation.
  • Scale images to fit margin-to-margin; place wide aspect images on landscape pages.

We recommend making text in images at least as large as the text in your body paragraphs, but images frequently employ smaller-than-normal text in order to fit onto a page. If you must reduce the size of an image to fit it onto a page, the text in that image must still meet the minimum size for all text in your document, which is no less than 4 pts smaller than the paragraph text. Therefore, be mindful of how the image will fit onto a page when creating it, and whether the text within that image will still meet these requirements.

If an image with text is smaller than the width of the page, we generally recommend scaling it to fit margin-to-margin unless doing so would cause other issues. If an image is wider than it is tall, consider placing the image on a landscape page instead. If a figure is composed of subfigures, consider breaking the subfigures out into individual figures that could be scaled larger.

See our requirements on color contrast for text colors in your images.

Requirements:

  • All images, such as figures or schemes, have alternative text that describes its purpose/function. (WCAG 1.1.1)
  • Captions describe the purpose/function of associated images/objects. (WCAG 1.1.1)
  • Descriptive text conveys the purpose/function of images/objects. (WCAG 1.1.1)
  • Equations made with the Word equation editor, non-Unicode characters, and other items tagged as <formula> have alternative text that describes their purpose/function. (WCAG 1.1.1)
  • In-line equations, variables, symbols, or functions outside display equations should use Unicode characters. (WCAG 3.1.2)

Authoring Resolution:

  • Add alt-text to images in Word using the Edit Alt Text function.
  • Use only Unicode characters for in-line equations, variables, symbols, or functions outside of display equations.

Remediation Resolution:

  • Add alt-text to the <Formula> tag of an equation or non-Unicode character. We also recommend nesting a <P> tag within the formula tag and copying the alt-text into the Actual Text field.

See our knowledge base entry on tables, figures, schemes, etc. for more information on writing alt-text for images, including instructions for Word. See our knowledge base entry on equations for more information about writing alt-text for equations and tips for making machine-readable equations that don't require alt-text.

Tutorials:

Video: Tagging a PDF

Video: Adding Alt-text to Tags

Text: Section 508 Testing & Remediation Guide

Text: Adding Alt-text to Formula Tags

Requirements:

  • Table headers and data cells are appropriately tagged. (WCAG 4.1.1)
  • Table scope is set correctly for rows, columns, and headers. (WCAG 1.3.1)

Authoring Resolution:

  • Create simple table layouts without merged cells or nested headers where possible.

Remediation Resolution:

  • Use the Table Editor within the Reading Order tool in a PDF editor to generate header IDs, tag cells as headers or data, and associate data cells with their respective row and/or column headers.

Tables in your disquisition should have headers, those headers should correspond to one or more rows or columns of content, and the headers should be tagged <TH>. The relationship between a header and its columns or rows is called its scope--"how much of this table is covered by this header?" If you have complex tables, where headers may span multiple columns, or if you use nested headers, the scope of those headers will also need to be defined.

Currently, there are no authoring solutions in Word that maintain table scope after converting to PDF.

Issues with table headers and scope will most commonly show up in the PDF Accessibility Checker under section 1.3.1. After running PAC on your document, use the guide and videos below to remediate your document. Issues with tags are most often a symptom of a larger problem and do not have a common root.

Tutorials:

  1. Video: Table Tags
  2. Video: Table Scope
  3. Text: Setting Table Headers

Requirements:

Authoring Resolution:

  • Use black font on a light background wherever possible.
  • Test contrast when creating an image.

We recommend the WebAIM Contrast Checker to test color contrast of colored elements against their adjacent colors; generally in your disquisition, this is a color vs. its white page background. Use the eyedrop tool present in the color picker on the WebAIM page or image editing programs such as Microsoft Paint to find the hex or RBG values of your colors.

Paragraph text within your document should be black, with few exceptions. By contrast, page backgrounds must always be white; black text on a white background yields a contrast ratio of 21:1. If you use colored text within your paragraphs, the contrast ratio cannot be less than 4.5:1. Additionally, if you overlay text onto an image or have created an image of text, that text must have a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 to its background. Colored text that is at least four points larger than the paragraph text, such as text in an image, may have a contrast ratio of 3:1.

We recommend (but do not require) a minimum contrast of 7:1 and 4.5:1 for large text. For colored elements in images, such as a trace in a graph, we recommend a minimum contrast of 4.5:1.

Tutorials:

Text: Section 508 Testing & Remediation Guide (pages 14, 22)

Text: WCAG Contrast Ratios for Dyslexic Readers

Requirements:

  • Meaning of color or other sensory characteristics is duplicated in text.

Authoring Resolution:

  • Describe color or other sensory characteristics within captions.
  • Employ additional distinguishing features where possible, such as shapes or symbols on colored traces in a graph.

If your document contains images that employ color to differentiate elements or express meaning, that meaning must be explained in text, such as within the item's caption or within the paragraph text.

As detailed in our formatting wiki, colored text is acceptable in your disquisition under certain circumstances. If you have employed colored text, such as to match colors used in an accompanying figure, the purpose of that coloring should be made clear either in the item's caption or within the paragraph text.

Requirements:

  • Link names describe destination/purpose or describe context.
  • Links have unique names.
  • Tab order matches the visual/logical order of interactive elements.

Authoring Resolution:

  • Include descriptive text in the "ScreenTip" field for hyperlinks.

Remediation Resolution:

  • Add a String key with descriptive text in the <Link> tag.

Our guidelines require that URLs be formatted without color or underline, which makes them indistinguishable from other text; as such, you should only include raw URLs accompanied with descriptive text that makes the destination and purpose of the link clear. For example, including the link in a sentence is sufficient: "The code found in this section can be found on our GitHub repository: https://github.com".

Links to sources within a bibliography/works cited section do not need accompanying descriptive text.

Requirements:

  • The tag’s property associated with the language change shows the selection’s language or corresponding two-letter code.

Remediation Resolution:

  • Use a PDF editor to edit the tags of non-English text. You may need to re-tag the text in these sections to avoid tagging English text incorrectly.

If your document contains content that is in language other than English, change the language in the properties of that content's tag. This requirement does not apply to binomens or other scientific names.

Tutorials:

  1. Video: Tag a PDF with Multiple Languages
  2. Text: Section 508 PDF Testing and Remediation Guide (page 21)

Optional Settings

The following items describe settings you may wish to use in your disquisition to improve its accessibility from WCAG 2.1 AA to WCAG 2.1 AAA. (TRIPLE A BABY!) These settings are optional.

Font – There is inconclusive evidence that serifs impact readability for readers with normal or impaired vision; however, federal regulations (ADA, ABA) proscribe sans serif fonts in federal communications. While your disquisition must is bound by federal law on other accessibility settings, your disquisition is not a federal communication and you are not required to use a sans serif font. However, you can create a compliant document using the following sans serif fonts from our list of approved fonts.

  • Arial (size 10)
  • Microsoft Sans Serif (size 10)
  • Tahoma (size 10)
  • Trebuchet MS (size 10)
  • Verdana (size 10)

Requirements:

  • Text is not fully justified (aligned to both the left and the right margins). (WCAG 1.4.8)

We recommend left-aligned paragraph text in all disquisitions, as it allows readers to use their peripheral vision to more easily read your text. Additionally, it avoids irregular spacing between words.

These settings are stricter versions of our existing accessibility requirements.

  • Font – Use the same consistent sans serif font in figures, schemes, or other non-text items that is used in the body paragraph text, with a size not smaller than the body paragraph text at 100% view size/zoom.
  • Color contrast – Whenever color is used in a non-text item, ensure there is a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 or greater with the surrounding element. For example, a black trace (#000000) in a line graph against a white background provides a contrast ratio of 21:1, whereas a green trace (#00FF00) against a white background provides a contrast ratio of only 1.37:1. The higher the contrast, the more visually distinct each element will be. (Use the WebAim Contrast Checker to test color contrast.) For more information, see WCAG 1.4.6 Contrast (Enhanced).
  • Color & complimentary elements – Whenever color is used to distinguish elements in an image, use additional indicators such as symbols or patterns to differentiate visual elements. For example, in a line graph with two traces and a white background, one trace could be red (#AA0000) with a dotted line and the other trace could be dark teal (#008080) with a dashed line.

Requirements:

These requirements are more restrictive versions of Contrast (Minimum) from WCAG 1.4.3. Higher contrast colors allows text and images to be more easily distinguished, improving readability for all readers.

Updating Your Document from an Older Word Template

If you have written your disquisition without using one of our Word templates or one of our templates from before October 2025, your document will likely be missing important accessibility features. Use the instructions below to update your document.

These instructions assume you are using our "NDSU" styles to format your content and refer to those style by name; if your document does not have our styles, follow the instructions from either contributor on this page to import them into your document. If you are not using styles at all, we highly recommend you do so; without styles, you will need to manually set the formatting of your content piece by piece. (You are welcome to edit our pre-formatted styles to suit the conventions of your discipline or your personal taste, within the constraints of the Format Guidelines.)

Once you've finished updating your document, review our general accessibility requirements on this page and resolve any remaining issues.

  • Set all major heading styles to be outline level 1.

In the style pane, right-click the appropriate style and select "Modify". In the Modify Style dialog box, click the Format dropdown box at the bottom left, and select "Paragraph". On the Indents and Spacing Tab of the Paragraph formatting dialog box, change the option for "Outline level:" to "Level 1". Confirm your changes in both these dialog boxes.

You can test whether your changes were correct by navigating to a major heading and mousing over the text. If your changes were successful, a chevron should appear before the text--clicking the chevron will collapse all the content in that chapter. If the chevron does not appear, the text may not be formatted using that style; click the text, then click the style in the style pane to apply the style.

Your document may have more than one major heading style. By default, documents created in the auto-numbered version of the template have two major heading styles: one for unnumbered major headings (such as those in the prefatory or appendix material) and one for numbered major headings (for chapter titles). Repeat the instructions above to set the outline level for all major heading styles.

Before you submit your document, apply the appropriate style to all major headings except the title of your disquisition and the major heading for the Table of Contents; see the next section for additional considerations on formatting the title of your disquisition and the Table of Contents major heading.

  • Set the title of your disquisition to outline level 1.
  • Set the major heading for the Table of Contents to outline level 1.

There are two major headings in your document that must be formatted as major headings but should not appear in your Table of Contents: the title of your disquisition and the major heading for the Table of Contents itself. If you have set either of these elements to be in the same style as other major headings in your document, they will appear in your Table of Contents the next time it is updated. While you can manually delete them from the Table of Contents, we recommend the following to avoid potential issues.

In order to set the title of your disquisition and the major heading for the Table of Contents to outline level 1, you can:

  1. Copy the title or Table of Contents major heading from one of our templates into your document, or
  2. Manually set the title of your disquisition and the major heading for the Table of Contents to be outline level 1, or
  3. Create a new major heading style for these two elements.
Copying a style

To copy the style from an existing template, download one of our templates and copy the template's Table of Contents major heading into your document, replacing your existing Table of Contents major heading. Afterwards, you should see a new style in the style list called "NDSU X: UNLISTED MAJOR HEADING", and the Table of Contents major heading should have this style applied already. Next, go to the very top of your document and apply the style to your disquisition's title.

Manually adjusting the paragraph settings

To manually set your title outline level 1:

  1. Select your title on the first page of your disquisition
  2. Right-click your selected text
  3. Click Paragraph
  4. Set the outline level to "level 1" on the Indents and Spacing tab of the Paragraph formatting dialog box.

Repeat this process for the Table of Contents major heading.

Creating a new style

To create a new style, click anywhere within the title of your disquisition, then expand the style pane (double arrow at the right of the pane) and choose "Create a style"; alternatively, you can open the styles window using CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+S and clicking the "A+" button at the bottom left. In the new style dialog box:

  1. Give the style a name you will remember, such as "NDSU X: UNLISTED MAJOR HEADING".
  2. Change the "Style based on:" field to the "NDSU 0" style in your template, such as "NDSU 0: MAJOR HEADING/CHAPTER TITLE" or "NDSU 0: UNNUMBERED MAJOR HEADING".
  3. Leave all other settings as is.

Apply the style to your title, if it was not automatically styled after creating the new style. If the title was not automatically styled, the style will have been applied to wherever your cursor was when you finished creating it. After getting the title set, navigate to your Table of Contents major heading and apply the style. Applying the style may remove the bold formatting from the major heading; if so, select the major heading and re-apply the bold from its font settings or hotkey CTRL+B.

  • Set all subheading styles to have an appropriate outline level.

The subheading styles in your document may not have their outline level set correctly. In the style pane on the Home tab,

  1. Right-click a sub-heading style and select "Modify" to open a new dialog box.
  2. In the Modify Style dialog box, click the Format dropdown box at the bottom left, and select "Paragraph" to open a new dialog box.
  3. On the Indents and Spacing Tab of the Paragraph formatting dialog box, change the option for "Outline level:" to the level appropriate for its heading level--major headings are "level 1," and subheadings follow from there.
    1. For example, first-level subheadings should be set to "level 2," second-level subheadings should be set to "level 3," and so forth.
  4. Confirm your changes in both these dialog boxes.

You can test whether your changes were correct by navigating to a subheading and mousing over the text. If your changes were successful, a chevron should appear before the text--clicking the chevron will collapse all the content in that section. If the chevron does not appear, the text may not be formatted using that style; click the text, then click the style in the style pane to apply the style.

Repeat this process for all subheading styles. Once you have updated your subheading styles, check that all the subheadings in your document have the correct style applied to them.

Your document will require further changes to be conformant with the WCAG guidelines. See the shortlist in Your Responsibility as Author above for the most common issues, such as adding alt-text to images.

How Can I Tell When My Template Was Made?

In your Word document, navigate to File -> Info and look in the comments field. If it is empty or has a date before October 2025, you will need to follow the instructions from our guide to update your document.

Center for Writers

Email: ndsu.cfw@ndsu.edu Phone: (701) 231-7927 Campus location: Library 16 Contact Page Manager