Tabs

Tabs in your original Word document may not line up exactly as you expect when you take them to the Web. Also, a screen reader will read straight across the line, not down a column created with tabs. So be sure your tab-aligned text will make sense when read in that order. If not, use a table.

For example, some people use tabs to arrange a course schedule like this:

Although Word might come close to reproducing that arrangement on the Web, there’s a risk that the alignment will get jumbled. Worse, a screen reader will read across a whole line at a time, like this:

"Week 1 Photography for social reform, the early days Jan. 8-15 Readings: Chapter 2, Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine"

If you want to keep that visual arrangement, you can use a table. Since a screen reader speaks the entire contents of a cell before moving on, it will read the items in the correct order:

The example above shows the table’s borders to demonstrate how this arrangement works. You can hide the borders, though, if you just want to see the text without the boxes. See visual formatting.

• Introduction
• Audio, Video, Plugins
• Colors
• Headings
• Images
• Links
• Lists
• Paragraph text
• Tables
• Tabs
• Visual formatting
• Wright State’s standards versus guidelines
• Wright State’s Web accessibility standards
• Wright State’s Web accessibility guidelines