Microsoft Word Accessibility | 2025 Updates

Today’s post highlights recent updates to Microsoft Word that improve document accessibility when converting to PDF. Title and heading styles now export to PDF as heading tags! Along with that, you can take control of list styles to make your documents more consistent and screen-reader-friendly.

Video Guide

Title Style Now Exports as H1

In the past, when you used the Title style in Word and exported the document as a PDF, it didn’t convert properly. It would show up as a regular paragraph tag (<p>), even though you meant for it to act like a heading. This was especially true if you used the Acrobat PDF toolbar or a third-party tool.

Now, if you save your Word file using File > Save As > PDF, Word correctly maps the title style to an H1 tag. This makes a huge difference for people using screen readers because it preserves the document’s structure.

One thing to watch out for: If you still use the Acrobat toolbar to export, Word won’t apply the H1 tag. So for best results, stick to the built-in Save As feature.

Customize Heading Styles for Consistency

You can also customize the appearance of your heading styles to match your needs. For example, let’s say you want all Heading 3s to be 28pt, bold, left-aligned, and underlined.

Here’s how you do it:

Apply the Heading 3 style to some text.
Make your formatting changes (font size, bold, alignment, underline, etc.).
Right-click the Heading 3 style in the Styles pane.
Choose Update to Match Selection.

Word will now apply that formatting to every Heading 3 in your document.

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Create Custom List Styles to Avoid Breaks

Long lists that continue onto another page can cause problems when you convert your Word document to PDF. You might find the list tags broken up, which can confuse assistive technologies.

To fix this, create a custom list style that keeps the items together:

Select your list content.
Open the Styles pane and click New Style.
Name your style (for example, “List Styles Custom”).
Click Format at the bottom, then choose Paragraph.
Go to the Line and Page Breaks tab and check Keep lines together.
Click OK to save everything.

to create a custom list style that keeps the items together, you can enable an option to keep lines together when creating a new style from formatting.

With this setting in place, Word will keep your list items intact across pages, and your PDF tags will stay clean and readable.

Thanks to this new update, Microsoft Word now exports the Title style as an H1 tag, making it easier to create accessible documents. And with a few extra steps, you can fully customize your heading and list styles to ensure everything stays structured, readable, and inclusive.

Let me be your champion for inclusion. I offer tailored solutions (and self-paced courses!) to ensure your documents meet and exceed compliance expectations. For more detailed insights, tutorials, and in-depth discussions on accessibility and related topics, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel: The Accessibility Guy on YouTube. Subscribe for regular updates!