Accessible Excel spreadsheets

Check your spreadsheet

You need to do manual and automatic checks to see how accessible your Excel spreadsheet is.

Government Digital Service (GDS) estimate that automated checks only find 40% of accessibility issues.

Manual checks

Before you publish your spreadsheet online, check:

• The structure, layout and formatting is correct and logical
• You've used tables correctly
• Colour contrast is sufficient
• Informative images have text description
• Link text makes sense by itself and you've followed the process for internal links in your spreadsheet.
• Your document title and file name are unique and descriptive

Automated checks

Microsoft Office has a built-in checker for each of its programs like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The tool helps you check how accessible your document is and can help fix some errors, but not all. It's not a guarantee of an accessible document. You must follow all the manual checks listed above.

Microsoft Support explain how you can improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker.

How to save your spreadsheet

Make sure you save your spreadsheet as an Excel file (eg .xslx), and not a .csv file. Csv files do not support a lot of the accessible formatting you need to apply.

If you apply protection settings to your spreadsheet or an individual sheet, make sure the settings allow users to select locked and unlocked cells, so they can navigate it using a keyboard.

We recommend making sure your spreadsheet is at 100% zoom and you position your cursor in cell A1 on the first sheet when you save it. This will help users orientate themselves when they open your spreadsheet.