Law Reviews & Journals: Research and Publishing Guide

Digital versions of law review/journal publications should be created in such a manner that people with disabilities are able to engage with the articles as fully, equally, and independently as people without disabilities.

While that may sound like a daunting task, creating accessible law review/journal articles in Word can be largely accomplished by following the accessibility guidelines listed below.

Headings

• Properly created headings allow users of assistive technology to quickly navigate through an article and understand its structure.
• Use Word's heading styles to create article section and subsection headings. Do not simply highlight text and increase the font size or make the font bold.
• Headings are hierarchical and levels should not be skipped.

  A correctly-formatted heading structure:

  • Heading 1
    • Heading 2
    • Heading 2
      • Heading 3
    • Heading 2

  An incorrectly-formatted heading structure:

  • Heading 1
    • Heading 2
    • Heading 4
      • Heading 3
    • Heading 2

 

• Heading 1 should be used only for the title of an article.  It should not be used elsewhere in the article's headings hierarchy.

Footnotes

• Use Word's built-in footnote function to insert footnotes.

Lists

• Use Word's built-in bulleted and numbered list functions to create lists. Do not use tabs and indents to create a list.
• Use lists for short blocks of information. Don't use lists as a way to organize lengthy sections or subsections of an article.

Links

• Assistive technology allows users to skip from link to link in an article without reading the surrounding text, so link text should be understandable outside of its immediate context.
• Use link text that describes the link destination or the link's purpose or function.
• Don't use generic phrases such as "click here" or "read more" for link text.
• If the link destination is a PDF rather than a web page, include that information at the end of the link text. For example, Attorney General's Report (PDF).
• Avoid using the URL for link text unless necessary, such as when following Bluebook citation rules.

Tables

• Tables can be difficult for assistive technology to navigate. Consider whether the information in a table can be conveyed as effectively in a list or a paragraph.
• Avoid nested tables and blank cells.
• Add a defined header row to each table.

Spacing

• Use the increase and decrease indent tools to move text. Don't use multiple spaces tabs or spaces.
• Use the line spacing option to create space before or after paragraphs and headings rather than using multiple hard returns (the Enter key) to add space between sections of text.
• Insert a page break when content should be shifted to the next page rather than using multiple hard returns (the Enter key).

Additional Accessibility Principles

• Use Word's built-in table of contents feature rather than manually constructing a table of contents. This will create a paginated table of contents based on the headings in the article.
• Avoid underlining text for emphasis. Underlining should be reserved for link text.
• Create an alt text description for any images inserted in an article.

Accessibility Checker

• Use Word's built-in accessibility checker to identify accessibility issues with a article. The checker will not catch all accessibility issues, so be sure to manually inspect your articles.
• Documents must be saved in the .docx format before using Word's accessibility checker.

Word Accessibility Resources

The following resources provide in-depth how-tos on creating accessible Word documents.

Accessibility Assistance

Law review/journal editors should contact Sean Felhofer for assistance with accessibility questions and concerns.