Plan requirement
| Subscription | Suite Team or higher, Knowledge Professional or higher |
| Access | Agent, Admin |
Accessible articles are easier for everyone to read. Five habits cover most of it, and each one is a control already sitting on the editor toolbar rather than extra work you have to remember.
The five
1. Real headings, in order
Use the Heading selector rather than bolding a line, and do not skip levels. Screen readers navigate by heading, so a reader who cannot jump between sections has to read everything. Bold text looks like a heading and is not one.
2. Alt text on every image
Describe what the image shows and why it is there. The description is also what appears when the image fails to load, which happens to sighted readers too.
Two practical points. In an article the alt text is set in the source code editor, on the img tag itself; a content block has an ALT button on its own toolbar. And a decorative image gets an empty alt rather than a description of it: alt="" tells a screen reader to skip it, while writing "decorative image" makes it read that out loud.
3. Link text that describes the destination
The link dialog has a Text on link field; that is where this is decided. Screen reader users often scan a list of links out of context, so a page of "click here" is unusable while "setting up your business hours" works.
4. Do not rely on colour alone
The Text color and Text background color selectors are easy to reach and easy to overuse. A red word means nothing to somebody who cannot distinguish it, so say what you mean in words as well and let the colour reinforce rather than carry it.
Links are the case where this bites most often. A link should carry a non-colour marker as well, an underline or an icon, so that somebody who cannot pick the colour out of the surrounding text can still see it is a link. And avoid using an image as a link; where you must, its alt text has to say where the link goes.
5. Real lists and tables
Use Bulleted list and Numbered list rather than typing dashes, and use Table only for tabular data. A table used for layout is read aloud cell by cell and makes no sense.
Structure components carry the same rule
Accordions and tabs hide content until a reader acts. That is fine for genuine alternatives and poor for anything everybody needs, because a reader who does not notice the control concludes the answer is not there. Callouts stay in the flow, which is why they suit anything that must be read.
Why it is worth the habit
Beyond the obvious: real headings help search and help an AI agent understand your content, descriptive link text helps everyone scanning, and short lists help somebody reading on a phone in a hurry. There is no version of this that only benefits a minority.
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