Accessibility checker — Nixt Writer docs

The accessibility checker looks for problems that stop people reading a document with a screen reader, or with low vision: pictures without alt text, tables without header rows, skipped heading levels, vague link text, text that is hard to see, and more. Each finding says what is wrong and what to do, and most take you to the place in the document.

Open the checker

On the Review tab, in the Accessibility group, click the accessibility button.

The Accessibility pane opens at the right. Click the button again, or the × at the top of the pane, to close it.

You don’t need to run the checker. It checks the document again after every change, so the pane and the button’s tooltip always reflect the document as it is now. The tooltip says Accessibility — nothing to fix, or Accessibility — followed by the number of findings, and how many of them are serious.

Work through the findings

Each finding in the pane has:

A coloured bar on its left edge: red for a serious problem, amber for a warning.
A short title, such as A picture has no alt text.
A sentence saying what is wrong.
A sentence in italics saying how to fix it.

Serious problems are listed first.

To fix a finding:

Click the finding. If it is about a particular place, Writer puts the caret there — in the paragraph, or in the table cell.
Make the fix, as described below.

The finding disappears from the pane as soon as the problem is fixed.

When there is nothing to report, the pane says “Nothing to fix. This checks what can be checked — alt text, header rows, heading order, link text and contrast — and not whether the words are any good.”

What the checker looks for

Finding	Level	What it means	How to fix it in Writer
A picture has no alt text	Serious	A screen reader announces that there is a picture, and nothing about it.	Put the caret next to the picture, then use the alt text button in the Picture group on the Insert tab. See Add alt text.
A table has no header row	Serious	A screen reader can read a cell’s value but not which row and column it belongs to.	Put the caret in the table’s first row and turn on the header row in the Table group on the Insert tab. See Header rows.
The document has no title	Warning	Someone switching between open documents hears the file name, which is rarely the document’s real title.	Click More › Document properties… and fill in Title.
Nothing is marked as a heading	Warning	The document has more than 300 words and no headings, so a screen reader user can only go through it from the top, line by line.	Give section openings a heading style. See Paragraphs and styles.
A heading level is skipped	Warning	A heading jumps more than one level below the one before it — for example a Heading 3 straight under a Heading 1 — so the outline has a level missing.	Change the heading to the next level down (the finding names it), or add the missing level above it.
A header cell is empty	Warning	A cell in a header row has no text, so the cells under it are read without a column name.	Type a column name, or turn the header row off for that row.
A link says only followed by the link text	Warning	The link’s text is one of: “click here”, “here”, “read more”, “more”, “link”, “this”, “this link”, “download” or “see more”. Screen readers can list links on their own, where several links saying the same thing can’t be told apart.	Change the link’s text to say where it goes. See Edit or remove a link.
Text is hard to read against its background	Warning	The contrast between the text colour and what is behind it is below the minimum. The finding gives the measured ratio and the minimum.	Make the text darker, or the background lighter. See Contrast.
A chart has no title	Warning	A screen reader announces the chart as a graphic and reads none of its numbers.	Give the chart a title in the program that made it.

The checker looks at body text and at the text inside table cells.

Contrast

The contrast check uses the WCAG contrast ratio, which ranges from 1:1 (no contrast) to 21:1 (black on white).

Text	Minimum ratio
Normal text	4.5:1
Large text: 18 points or bigger, or 14 points or bigger and bold	3:1

The checker compares the text colour with the first of these that applies:

The text’s highlight or shading.
The paragraph’s shading.
The table cell’s shading.
White.

Text with no colour of its own is treated as black.