How to make your magazine accessible: print and digital editions

An accessible magazine can be read by more people: readers who are blind or have low vision, have dyslexia or hearing loss, or cannot use a mouse. Most of the work happens once, in templates and export presets, and carries through every issue.

Why it is worth the effort

Accessibility covers auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech and visual disabilities, and helps others too: older people, someone reading in bright sunlight, anyone who cannot play sound, readers with slow or expensive data ^[1].

The legal side depends on what you publish and how you sell it:

• European Accessibility Act (EAA). The European Commission lists e-books and e-commerce among what the Act covers; magazines are not named ^[2]. It applies to products and services placed on the market after 28 June 2025 and exempts service businesses with fewer than 10 employees and under €2 million in turnover ^[3]. If you sell digital issues or subscriptions to EU consumers yourself, check your national law.
• Public bodies. Their websites and apps fall under the Web Accessibility Directive, which requires an accessibility statement and a feedback mechanism for each ^[4].

This is practical guidance, not legal advice; ask a lawyer or the responsible authority for a definitive answer.

Pick a standard and write it into your templates

For digital editions, the reference is W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). W3C encourages its latest version, WCAG 2.2, which is also the ISO standard ISO/IEC 40500:2025 and is used by the 2026 version of the European Standard EN 301 549 ^[5]. Aim for its Level AA, use its measurable values as house rules for print too, and build them into the templates:

• Paragraph styles: every headline and subhead style mapped to a heading level for export; own styles for captions, sidebars and pull quotes.
• Swatches: only text and background pairs that pass your contrast rule.
• Two export presets: press PDF, and screen PDF with tags, bookmarks and links (settings in how to create a digital magazine).

Type size and contrast

Size. WCAG's Resize Text criterion sets no minimum font size; it requires that digital readers can enlarge text to 200 percent without assistive technology and without losing content or functions ^[6]. In print, judge body text and captions on a proof: typefaces with a small x-height look smaller at the same point size.

Contrast. At Level AA, text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background, or 3:1 for large text (at least 18 point, or 14 point bold); logos are exempt ^[7]. Use the same ratios for print.

• Check colour pairs with a contrast checker before they go into the swatches, and confirm them on a proof.
• For text over a photo, measure the lightest or busiest area behind the letters. If it fails, add a solid panel, darken the area or move the text: background images with too little contrast are a listed failure ^[7].
• Watch light grey captions, small reversed type and coloured text on coloured openers.

Never rely on colour alone

Colour must not be the only visual means of conveying information ^[8]. Label chart lines and map areas directly, print the section name next to the section colour, mark required form fields with text or a symbol, and underline links: fields and links identified only by colour are both listed failures ^[8]. Quick test: print the page in greyscale. If a chart stops making sense, it depends on colour.

Headings, reading order, lists and tables

Screen readers read a page in the order the file defines, not the one your layout suggests: an untagged two-column page may be read straight across both columns ^[9].

• Headings. Screen reader users often navigate by headings ^[10]. Nest them by rank without skipping levels, such as from level 2 straight to level 4 ^[11]; in a PDF, heading tags let assistive technology users list the headings and jump to a section ^[12]. Bold body text is not a heading.
• Reading order. Where the sequence affects meaning, it must be programmatically determinable. In W3C's own example, a magazine article's callout sidebars do not change its meaning wherever they are read ^[13], so pick a house rule, such as article, then sidebars, then captions, and apply it everywhere.
• Structure at the source. Layouts with graphics, tables, footnotes or sidebars may not convert in the correct order; W3C calls structuring the document in the authoring tool the simplest fix ^[9]. Thread text frames in reading order and anchor images and boxes in their text.
• Lists and tables. Use real list and table tools, not tabs, and mark header rows.

Alt text that serves the story

Informative images need a short text alternative with their essential information, decorative ones an empty alternative, so screen readers skip them. The right text depends on how and where the image is used ^[14], so write it while editing, next to the caption.

• Say what the reader needs from the image in this article. A portrait in an interview needs the person; the same photo in a feature about workshop tools needs the tools. Do not repeat the caption.
• Treat the cover as informative: what it shows, plus the cover lines, because an image of text needs the same words in its alternative ^[14].
• Give charts, infographics and maps two parts: a short alternative that identifies the image, and a description of the values, trends and relationships, ideally in the article itself ^[15].
• Keep text live. Headlines, cover lines and quotes belong in real text; logotypes are the exception ^[16].
• Edit AI drafts like any other copy. A tool can suggest an alternative, but it sees pixels, not the story (how to use AI for magazines). Which AI models can read images at all is covered in our sister site's guide to multimodal AI.

Links and navigation

A link's purpose must be clear from its text, or from the text with its context. Assistive technology can list all links on a page ^[17], so "here" and "more" tell a listener nothing. For the issue, add:

• a linked table of contents, and a way back to it from every article;
• bookmarks generated from the headings, with the PDF set to show them when it opens ^[18];
• a descriptive document title, such as magazine, issue and date, shown in the window title bar ^[19];
• a short web address next to every QR code in print.

Tagged PDF and PDF/UA

Export the screen PDF with its own preset. The standard for accessible PDF is PDF/UA (ISO 14289); a PDF made to conform to it can be reflowed and zoomed for readers with low vision, W3C notes ^[20].

Before an issue goes live, check that:

• all real content is tagged, in reading order;
• running headers and footers, separator rules and decorative images are artifacts, which assistive technology skips ^[21];
• every informative figure has alternative text ^[22], and the document language and title are set ^{[23] [19]};
• every page contains real text. Scanned page images are inherently inaccessible; after OCR you still have to correct recognition errors, tag the content and check the reading order ^[24], which matters most for back issues.

Fix problems in the layout file: repairs made only in the PDF are lost at the next export.

Video, audio and motion

Media can serve more readers: captions also help people who process written information better than audio ^[25], transcripts people who take in text more easily than sound and pictures ^[26]. For every video, podcast or animation:

• Captions for prerecorded video with sound (Level A) ^[27]. Edit automatic captions: they do not meet user needs unless confirmed fully accurate ^[25].
• Transcripts for podcasts and other prerecorded audio (also Level A), right under the player or linked from there ^[26].
• Controls for anything automatic. Audio that plays automatically for more than three seconds needs a pause or stop control, or its own volume control ^[28]. Content that moves automatically for more than five seconds beside other content needs a way to pause, stop or hide it ^[29].
• No flashing more than three times in any one second, unless below the general and red flash thresholds: flashing can trigger seizures ^[30].
• Animation readers can switch off. Motion as a page scrolls can trigger vestibular (inner ear) disorders, with dizziness, nausea and headaches. WCAG's Level AAA asks that motion triggered by interaction can be disabled unless essential, and W3C suggests following the reduce-motion setting of the browser or system ^[31]. Check whether your viewer's page-flip effect does.

Audio description and keyboard access to players: see how to create an interactive magazine.

Language settings

Set the main language of every PDF and digital issue: in a PDF, the /Lang entry lets screen readers load the correct pronunciation rules ^[23]. Mark passages in another language too, even single words, except proper names, technical terms and words that have become part of the surrounding language ^[32]: in magazines, mostly quotes, titles of works and multilingual issues.

Test the reader and every issue

A tagged PDF does not help if the viewer around it shows only page images. Test your web reader or app for keyboard use, visible focus, zoom without lost content and real text for screen readers; if it fails, link an accessible version from every issue. Viewnamic adds a structured text version of every publication on the same URL for screen readers and small screens ^[33]; it states no WCAG conformance level, so test it like any other reader, and ask any vendor for its accessibility documentation before you sign.

Tools can only assist: they cannot check everything and can give false or misleading results ^[34]. Combine them with checks by hand, then tick off the accessibility checklist before release:

1. Automated check after every export. The free PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC) checks many PDF/UA and WCAG requirements, and its screen reader preview shows structure and reading order ^[35].
2. Quick manual checks. W3C's Easy Checks cover basics such as alt text, headings, contrast, keyboard focus and zoom; a page can pass them and still have significant barriers ^[10].
3. Screen reader and keyboard. Listen to one full feature with the screen reader built into your computer or phone, then use the keyboard only, and zoom to 200 percent.
4. Readers. Where you can, ask readers with disabilities to test an issue; fix recurring problems in the templates.

Publish an accessibility statement

W3C advises that a statement contains at least a commitment to accessibility, the standard you apply, such as WCAG 2.2, and contact details; known limitations and the environments you tested in are useful additions, and W3C offers a generator for a first draft ^[36]. Link it from every issue page, offer an accessible file or large print on request, and log requests: repeated ones show where the regular edition needs work.