CP 3.1 – Use styles

To ensure users can navigate and understand the nature of your digital content there are a few attributes that you need to set against important elements.

These should be set up as ‘styles’ in your Word template. When correctly set up, applying these styles will set both the visual appearance and the correct attribute of the text, telling assistive technology that for example, you are on a heading or a list.

You can use the styles element in the ribbon but you may find it a lot easier to open the styles panel, which will then sit on the right-hand side of your document – the button to open the styles panel is next to the styles section on the ribbon.

Always choose styles from the pre-defined list and avoid specifying your own font sizes, colours, borders, and so on. This will ensure that your document is consistent in appearance and properly tagged with structural information.

If you do not have a defined set of styles, ask your design team to create one for you.