Thesis accessibility requirements

The law governing digital services (306/2019) requires that all public sector bodies must provide accessible web services. This law implements the European Union’s accessibility directive (2016/2102). Publications to Humak’s public web services must also abide by this law starting from 23.9.2020. The law also concerns Humak’s theses, that are published in the Theseus web library – this concerns most of the theses.

A drawn paper airplane flying.

The law governing digital services (306/2019) requires that all public sector bodies must provide accessible web services. This law implements the European Union’s accessibility directive (2016/2102). Publications to Humak’s public web services must also abide by this law starting from 23.9.2020. The law also concerns Humak’s theses, that are published in the Theseus web library – this concerns most of the theses. The law’s purpose is to make sure all citizens can utilize digital services. Text to speech -programs for the visually impaired must be able to interpret digital text without difficulty. For this reason, all pictures must include alternative (alt) texts. Accessibility also encompasses other important factors, such as the contrast of the text, use of colors, and clear structure and wording.

To ensure accessibility, everyone writing a thesis must follow certain principles and procedures:

  • text format
  • charts, shapes and colors
  • writing a good alternative text
  • adding subtitles to audiovisual material
  • adding an alternative text to a picture
  • Use formats defined in the thesis template (headers, running text etc.)
  • Use clear and easily understandable language. A well written text is already clear and concise, which makes it accessible.
  • Do not use headers, footers or footnotes. If what you’re writing is not important enough to be included in running text, you can leave it our completely.
  • Check the document’s language setting (Check File > Options > Language) and choose a language in which you are writing.
  • Write a title for your Word-file. (File > Info > Properties > Title). The title should be the name of your document. For example: Last name First name Name of thesis.
  • If you want to emphasize something in the text, use bold rather than cursive. Usually bolding is not necessary.
  • Wrap images around text, or text-to-speech programs skip over them. Wrapping pictures gives them their own space within the text, and a text-to-speech program can find them. Instructions on how to wrap images.
  • Do not use highlight colors in text.
  • Do not use dim contrasts in charts. Visually impaired people might have difficulty separating text or shapes from the background.
  • If you use highlight colors in charts, take into consideration that colour-blind persons have difficulty telling colours apart. For this reason, the use of reds and greens together is not advised.
  • When using numbers, use Arabic letters (1,2,3) for a numbered list. Roman numerals (I, II, III) are read as the letter “i” in text-to-speech programs.
  • When creating a chart, use Word’s default tools (”Add chart”). Use the chart’s top row as a header. You do not need to add an alternative text to a chart made this way on Word if its structure is regular and simple.
  • When copying a chart or a diagram from another program, a text-to-speech program recognizes it as an image. This means you have to create an alt-text (alternative text) for the picture. Creating a chart in Word is usually easier than copying one from elsewhere, and alt-texting it.
  • When making charts, avoid combining rows or columns in parts of the chart. Text-to-speech programs can’t recognize combined rows or columns when reading the text.
  • Do not use charts as a way of formatting text. If you need to divide a text into multiple groups, use Word’s own layout setting.
  • All graphs and pictures must always contain an alternative text (alt text)
  • A good alt text is concise and specific. The length of the text does not have a hard limit, but it is recommended that an alt text would be no longer than 125 characters (excluding spaces).
  • When a text-to-speech program recognizes a photo, the program says it has recognized a photo. Because of this you don’t need to title an alt text as a photo or a graph.
  • Always end alt texts with a dot. That way a text-to-speech program takes a short pause before moving onto the next part of the text.
  • Every picture included in the text must be explained in some way. Pictures in theses are always relevant to the topic at hand, so it is very important to use alt texts in all pictures and graphs.
  • Place a picture as near as possible to the text that it references.
  • Alt text only describes the picture. There is no need to repeat things already mentioned in the caption. Alt texts shouldn’t be too vague either. Alt text needs to convey the picture’s meaning. For example,
  • not like this: “A diagram which shows how satisfied people are with a service.”
  • Alt texts should instead read like this: “20 percent are extremely satisfied with the service, 35 percent are satisfied, 20 percent are mildly satisfied, 42 percent mildly unsatisfied and 3 percent are extremely unsatisfied.”
  • Don’t use subjective words like “beautiful”, “Interesting”, etc.
  • When using alt texts to describe pictures, it is important to describe the contents of the picture, and not every detail. For example, this picture’s alt text could be: “A cat is sitting and looking at a bowl filled with water on a pedestal, a fish swims in the bowl.”

A grey cat is sitting and looking at a bowl filled with water on a yellow pedestal, a fish swims in the bowl.

  • Videos must include subtitles. Audios (recordings, podcasts) must include text transcriptions (content in text format) as an alternative text.
  • In addition to subtitles, videos must include alternative texts, where audio content is presented in text format and the visual contents of the video are described.

Open a document in Word’s Office 365 version or Word 2019

  • Right click a picture

  • Choose “Edit alt text”. 

  • A field pops up in which you can write the alternate description.

If you’re using a 2016 version of Word, you can add the alt text this way

  • Right click the picture which you wish to edit • From the drop-down menu choose “Format picture”.

  • Choose “Alt text”.

  • Add alt text into “Description”.

  • Leave “Header” empty, a text-to-speech program won’t recognize it.

If your Word 365 version won’t support the method described above, and you don’t have a 2019 version of Word, do the following

  • From Word’s top menu choose “File”.

  • Choose “Information”.

  • Choose “Check for problems”.

  • Choose “Check accessibility”.

  • Look at the menu that appeared on the bottom right that says “Check accessibility”. It will tell you what part of your document is not accessible.

  • Move the cursor to the point where the problem is mentioned.

  • Click the arrow that is pointing down

  • A menu will appear on the screen, where you can type an alt text.

  • Do not use the automatic fill option, it’s rarely good enough.

  • When the problem disappears, it means your text is accessible enough.

  • Lastly the program will notify you that there are no more problems.

Note: The image-like formatting (line and logo) and page text on the cover page of the thesis are placed in the header and footer, so that screen readers usually do not recognize them. Images are also marked as “decorative” so that the screen reader will not read them if it detects them (which is the way it is intended). Some versions word processors may indicate that the cover page and page text do not comply with the accessibility guidelines. However, this announcement can be ignored.

Before you publish a document, make sure that your Word document is accessible. Then it will also be accessible in pdf-format.

If you are working on your thesis with the browser version of Word, it does not support all the features of the desktop version of Word. In this case, the form settings may not work properly and you will not be able to make accessibility settings. Therefore, use the latest desktop version when you finalize the look of your thesis to fit the layouts. Humak students have access to the Office 365 package and a desktop version can be downloaded from portal.office.com.

You should first define the language used in your thesis. You can adjust your language settings on Word from the Language section. If you have to change the language, don’t forget to adjust it for your entire document. You also may define a language for a specific section of your document by marking it with the cursor. Note: For Finnish-language degree programme theses written in other languages than Finnish, a Finnish abstract must be included. This is not required from English-language degree programme theses.

You can check accessibility like this

  • Click “Review” from Word’s top ribbon menu.
  • Select ”Check accessibility”.
  • If the document has problems, fix them. Give your document a descriptive title.

Theseus’ publishing instruction determine that theses should be named: First name_Last name.pdf. For example: Student_Simon.pdf. A document must be named like this.

Despite this you can give the document a more descriptive name by choosing “file > information > properties: heading” from the Word menu. Note that your document heading is different from your document file’s name. Thus, this heading can be for example: Student Simon Thesis, followed by your thesis title if it is fairly short. If the title is long, you can write e.g. just your heading and not include any possible subheadings. 

Transforming a Word document into a pdf format

  • Don’t use the “Print pdf” function, if it appears.
  • Choose “File” > “Save As” > Choose save location > Pick format as PDF
  • Before pressing “Publish”, choose “Settings.”
  • From the settings, choose the option “Document format settings for accessibility options”.
  • Check that you have “PDF/A compatible” option checked. You can see this from the same view.
  • On some programs you will see a setting called “best for electronic distribution”. If you have that setting available, choose it.
  • Accept the settings and press “OK”

Creating an accessible pdf document with a Mac 

  • Open the pdf file you created with Mac’s Preview program.

  • Select File > Export.

  • Choose pdf as the file format and check the box for ‘Create pdf/a’.

  • Save the file.

In case you can’t convert to a  pdf/a directly when using a Mac, you can use Adobe Acrobat Pro to convert a pdf to a pdf/a. The program is not free, but a free trial version is available. Other similar programs include the free Libre Office or Scribus. One option is to open the word file on a pc and add accessibility formats using it and finally save it there as a pdf/a. For more information, visit the Microsoft Support website.

If you’re using Adobe Reader, you can make sure that the alternate text is attached to the image. When you hover over the image, a pop-up window should appear over the image, displaying alternate text. If you’ve made patterns or charts in Word, it’s a good idea to convert them to an image format (such as png) first, making it easier to add alternate text. Adobe Reader also shows if the text is in PDF/A format.  If it is, a blue bar appears on screen saying a PDF/A format has been detected.

NOTICE: DIFFERENT PROGRAM VERSION TERMS AND COMMANDS MIGHT DIFFER FROM THE ONES IN THIS DOCUMENT

For more information:

Theseus’ guide to accessibility 

Microsoft’s guide to accessible documents 

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Last modified: July 11, 2024