Formatting and Styles to Avoid
Formatting Don’ts
The following formatting and object types are not communicated to assistive technology or present significant barriers to some users and should be avoided:
Strikethrough- Highlighting
- Dropcap
- Word Art, Smart Art, text effects (in PowerPoint and Word files)
- Ungrouped related shapes (in PowerPoint and Word files)
- Watermarks
- Symbols, except for the following safe characters:
- @ (the at symbol)
- & (ampersand)
- / (slash)
- © (copyright)
- ® (registered)
- ™ (trademark)
- ¶ (paragraph)
- • (bullet)
- $ (dollar)
- € (Euro)
- £ (British pound)
- ¥ (Yen)
- % (percent)
- ½ (one half)
- ¼ (one fourth)
- ¾ (three fourths)
- ° (degrees)
- Headings inside
<summary>elements (e.g.<details><summary><h3>Dropdown</h3></summary>…etc…). Pressbooks will strip out the<summary>tags. If the<summary>element must act as a heading, leave out the heading tag and assign a role to the<summary>element:<summary role="heading" aria-level="3">
“Formatting and Styles to Avoid” from Accessibility Handbook for Teaching and Learning by Briana Fraser and Luke McKnight is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
