Digital accessibility in higher education ensures that all students, including those with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities, have equal access to learning materials, platforms, and campus technologies. When universities prioritize accessible design—such as providing captioned videos, screen-reader-compatible syllabi, and keyboard-navigable portals—they move beyond mere legal compliance to foster a truly inclusive academic environment. Ultimately, making digital spaces accessible removes institutional barriers, allowing every student the opportunity to succeed, independent of their physical or cognitive needs.
SUNY Geneseo, “About Digital Accessibility“
The principles of accessible document creation are pretty simple, but actually creating accessible documents can sometimes feel like a bit of a chore. It may feel as though you’re endlessly clicking in side-panels, dropdowns, and dialog boxes in order to, say, select an appropriate heading level, manage a list, or add alt-text to an image.
As we’ve seen, there are a couple of good ways to create documents in Markdown before converting them to Word. Using your plain-text-to-Word workflow of choice, you can remove some of the hassle of accessible document creation.
Under Guiding Principles of Accessibility, Geneseo lists the following:
- Use headings correctly
- Use lists
- Add alternative text to images
As we saw earlier, in Markdown it’s easy to follow these guidelines from the get-go and see visual confirmation that you’ve done so properly.
# Document Title
## A major section
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem.
### A sub-section
Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo.
### Another sub-section
Quisque rutrum. Aenean imperdiet. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Curabitur ullamcorper ultricies nisi. Nam eget dui. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa.
## Another major section
Sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim.
- List item
- List item
- List item
Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim.
1. Numbered list item
2. Numbered list item
3. Numbered list item
The guiding principles also the importance of “using tables wisely.” If your table isn’t too complicated (remember that it should only be used for data, not for page layout), you can easily create it in Markdown.
| Character | Actor | Date of Birth |
| --------- | ------------- | ------------- |
| Odysseus | Matt Damon | 1970-10-08 |
| Penelope | Anne Hathaway | 1982-11-12 |
| Athena | Zendaya | 1996-09-01 |Whether you paste your Markdown directly into Word or paste it into Google Docs and download as .docx, you can use Word’s built-in accessibility checker, or a browser extension with Google Docs, to do any necessary clean-up. You’ll find additional information about creating accessible documents or checking documents for accessibility, whether in Word/PowerPoint or Google Docs, in Geneseo’s CIT Knowledge Base.
Prefer to do the bulk of your editing in Google Docs or Word rather than in a plain-text file? If you have a sense of what your document structure will be — how many sections and sub-sections you’ll require — you can easily flesh out the structure in Markdown, paste your headings into Word or Docs, then fill in the paragraph text and other elements.