Whenever you create a Microsoft Excel workbook, you should always take the necessary steps to make it accessible to everyone, especially if you plan to share your work with others. In this guide, I’ll share some tips you can follow to make this happen.
Use Descriptive Sheet Names
One way to make your Excel workbook more accessible is by changing the names of the worksheets. As you can see when you look towards the bottom of your workbook, Excel’s worksheets are named Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3, and so on by default, and this non-descriptive numbering system continues when you click “+” to add a new sheet.
Changing these worksheet names so that they more accurately describe what the sheets contain has multiple benefits:
- Providing clarity and context: Descriptive worksheet names allow anyone with access to your workbook to navigate its contents much more easily.
- Aiding screen readers: Most screen readers read Excel’s sheet names, so changing these to something more representative of what they contain means that people with visual impairments will enjoy a better experience.
- Making formulas clearer: Formulas that reference a cell or named range in another worksheet include the name of that referenced sheet. As a result, formulas with contextualized sheet names—rather than Sheet1, Sheet2, and so on—are easier to understand and parse.
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To rename a worksheet in Excel, double-click the relevant tab, and replace the existing text with the new sheet name. Also, to allow more space for contextualized sheet names, click and drag the lower-ribbon handle to the right.
As well as being descriptive, following these tips will further optimize your Excel sheet names and add further accessibility quality:
- Be concise: Shorter names are easier to process and work with.
- Use underscores: If your sheet names must contain more than one word, use underscores (_) instead of spaces to demonstrate the relationship between the words in all contexts.
- Keep names simple: Stick to using letters, numbers, and—as I explained in the previous point—underscores.
- Aim for consistency: Choose a naming style for all worksheet tabs. In my example above, I’ve gone for single words starting with capital letters.
Remove unused Excel worksheets from your workbook. Empty sheets add unnecessary clutter to your worksheet tabs and might confuse screen readers. Accessibility aside, removing blank sheets reduces the size of the Excel file, thus improving your workbook’s overall performance.
Use and Name Formatted Tables
To put it bluntly, unformatted tables in Excel are a nightmare when it comes to accessibility. In this example, the row and column headers aren’t easily distinguishable from the main data, following the rows across is a challenge, and, presentationally, it’s a sight for sore eyes!
To convert this data into an Excel table, first, make sure the top row of your data contains column headers, thus making your table easier to interpret. Then, select any cell within the data, and in the Styles group of the Home tab on the ribbon, click “Format As Table.”
Then, choose a style with banded rows, as these help people follow the rows in the table from left to right. Also, go for a style whose header row differs from the other rows.
When you choose a table style, make sure the data source is correct and “My Table Has Headers” is checked in the Create Table dialog box, and click “OK.”
Next, in the Table Design tab, review the Table Style Options group to see whether you can further improve the readability of your data. In my case, I’ve checked “First Column” to distinguish it from the main data, and I’ve unchecked “Filter Button” to make the header row less congested.
Another way to make large Excel tables like the one in the example above easier to read is by freezing the row and column headers. In the View tab on the ribbon, click “Freeze Panes,” and choose from the options available.
The final step to making the table fully accessible is giving it a name. By default, Excel tables follow the naming convention Table(Number), and this isn’t ideal for people using screen readers. What’s more, non-specific table names make navigating between tables using the Name Box nearly impossible.
To rename a table, select any of its cells, and head to the Properties group in the Table Design tab. There, select the default table name, and replace it with a more contextualized name. Personally, I tend to name tables “T_(name)”, with the “T” making my tables distinguishable from other named ranges in my workbook.
Table names must always start with a letter, an underscore, or a backslash, and the rest of the names can only contain letters, numbers, periods, and underscores. Also, use underscores to separate words, like in my example above.
Add Alt Text to Graphics
Alternative text—or alt text for short—is a short description of a graphic that helps people with visual impairments fully understand its content. Screen readers read alt text aloud, meaning those who can’t see the details of the graphic can still understand what it contains.
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In Excel, you can add alt text to shapes, pictures, charts, SmartArt, and any other graphic you use.
In most versions of Excel, when you click Insert > Pictures, you have the option to choose whether the image goes in a cell or over the cells. Since alt text only works on pictures placed over cells, make sure you choose this option.
To do this, first, right-click the graphic, and select “View Alt Text.”
When the Alt Text pane appears, it may already contain an alt text suggestion. While these suggestions are a good starting point, they aren’t fully optimized for accessibility, because they’re not detailed enough and don’t use correct grammar or punctuation.
So, delete the suggested text and replace it with a description that ticks all these boxes:
- Use plain English: Don’t overcomplicate your language, but don’t be too brief.
- Be clear: A good way to test your clarity is to read your alt text to someone who hasn’t seen the graphic before, and then ask them how closely the graphic matches what they expected to see.
- Use correct grammar: Alt text should be written in full sentences with correct spelling and grammar, including end punctuation.
- Use a unique description: Avoid repeating alt text across more than one graphic.
Following the above advice, I’ll change the alt text in the above example to “Two cats in a field using their tails to make a heart shape.” To save your new alt text, click “X” in the top-right corner of the Alt Text pane.
Use Clear Fonts
When thinking about which font to use in Excel that makes the information easy to read, there are a few factors that come into play.
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Generally speaking, Excel is not a program where you should use fancy fonts, as its purpose is to present data clearly and enable useful analysis. So, using fonts that mimic handwriting, have fancy flicks and serifs, or are stylistic in other ways will only make your spreadsheet less accessible.
You should also choose a font whose letters and numbers are easily distinguishable. For example, while the capital O for some fonts is much broader than the number 0, others make this distinction less clear. For example, Franklin Gothic Book’s letter O is only slightly broader than its number 0, and Georgia’s number 0 looks like a lowercase O. On the other hand, the difference between O and 0 for Aptos, Arial, Baskerville Old Face, Garamond, Rockwell, Segoe UI, Terminal, and Times New Roman is much greater.
The same consideration should be applied when thinking about how fonts differentiate between the lowercase i, the uppercase L, and the number 1. For example, the lowercase L in Courier New is strikingly similar to the number 1, and Arial’s uppercase i is identical to the lowercase L. The best fonts for separating these three characters are Aptos, Tahoma, Verdana, and Comic Sans MS, though I hope you tend not to use the latter in your formal spreadsheets!
Another thing to bear in mind when it comes to using accessible fonts is whether the numbers and text look like they’re condensed. In other words, narrow fonts with smaller-than-usual spaces between characters are usually harder to read. Avoid using the narrow or light adaptations of standard fonts in Excel—like Aptos Narrow—and don’t use typefaces that are narrow by default—like Agency FB, Niagara Engraved, Onyx, and The Hand.
Personally, I stick with Excel’s default font, Aptos, because, on the whole, it ticks all the above boxes. Its characters are easily distinguishable, it uses simple letter and number forms, and it’s easy to read when reduced to small sizes or blown up to a high resolution.
Other Excel Accessibility Tips
While the tips I’ve offered so far will go a long way to making your Excel workbook more accessible, there are a few other small things you can do to finalize your spreadsheets and make them optimal for everyone:
- Add text to cell A1: Since screen readers start by reading an Excel worksheet from cell A1, add something valuable, like a sheet overview or an instruction, to this cell.
- Contextualize hyperlinks: If you use hyperlinks in your Excel workbook, make sure they clearly state where the link will take the reader when clicked. Words like “Click here” don’t add any value, whereas something like “Go to the first sheet for more info” with the words “first sheet” hyperlinked is more useful.
- Use chart elements: If your workbook contains charts, make sure they are well-formatted and include elements like a chart title, axis titles, and data labels.
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- Name ranges: As well as following my previous advice to name your tables, name other ranges in your workbook so that they’re easy to locate and identify.
- Avoid blank rows and columns: If you must have rows or columns that don’t contain data, add some text to help people using screen readers understand your spreadsheet’s structure, like “Blank row.”
Use Excel’s Accessibility Checker
Once you’ve done all you can to make your workbook as accessible as possible, use Excel’s built-in accessibility checker to make sure you haven’t missed anything.
Open the “Review” tab on the ribbon, and click the top half of the “Check Accessibility” button.
Then, in the Accessibility pane, review any suggestions for making your spreadsheet even more accessible. If any issues are raised, click the relative cards for advice on how to fix them.
Alongside making changes to your workbooks to make them more accessible, it’s worth adopting other good practices to make your spreadsheet easy to read, like using consistent formatting, using notes to avoid too much text, and sharing your spreadsheet as a PDF to lock your layout.