Part of the Backstage view, Microsoft has built in a handy little checker that will reveal which parts of your Excel, Word and PowerPoint files will cause problems for people with disabilities such as impaired vision. For example, it will tell you if pictures lack Alt text, highlight headings that are too long, and point out if the document doesn’t use heading levels in a logical way.

It’s easy to check a document: click on File in any of those applications, then Info. Clicking “Check for Issues”  and you’ll see a trio of options: Inspect Document (eg for hidden text you may not want others to see), Check Accessibility and Check Compatibility (the features in your document that won’t work with previous versions of Office).

We’re interested in the middle option, and you’d hope to see a message something like this (see the right-hand pane):

With only a certain amount of irony, checking the Accessibility Compatibility of Microsoft’s own reviewer’s guide for Office 2010 threw up 243 errors (eg missing Alt text), 44 warnings (eg repeated blank characters) and 146 tips (eg verifying the order of information in tables).