Hi, Insiders! I’m Shireen Salma, a Product Manager on the Office Accessibility team. Today, I’m excited to share improvements coming to Accessibility Assistant in Microsoft Word and Excel for Windows that help identify hyperlinks that may be difficult to understand or use, especially for people relying on assistive technologies.
Accessibility Assistant now flags inaccessible hyperlinks
Hyperlinks are an essential part of many documents, but not all links provide clear or meaningful information to every reader. Descriptive link text helps users quickly understand a link’s purpose — and is especially important for people using screen readers, who often navigate content by moving between links.
When link text is unclear, overly technical, or presented as long raw URLs or non-descriptive labels, it can make navigation slower and more confusing. To support more inclusive authoring, Accessibility Assistant now flags hyperlinks that are not optimized for accessibility, such as:
- Long, complex, and raw URLs
- Links that lack meaningful or contextual link wording
- Links that are missing link text
With this enhancement, authors can quickly identify and fix hyperlinks that aren’t easily understood by all readers.
NOTE: Accessibility Assistant does not evaluate broken links or enforce specific writing styles. Our goal is to provide helpful guidance that supports accessibility without disrupting natural author workflows.
How it works
- In Word or Excel for Windows, select Review > Check Accessibility. If a hyperlink is inaccessible, you will see Unclear hyperlink text in the Accessibility Assistant menu.
Availability
This update is available to Windows users with a Microsoft 365 subscription and running:
- Word: Version 2503 (Build 19729.20000) or later.
- Excel: Version 2503 (Build 19817.20000) or later.
This feature will be available to PowerPoint for Windows users soon!
Recent accessibility posts
We have heard from some of you that you'd love to be able to keep track of the availability status of accessibility experiences and features we have covered on our blog in the past several months, so take a look below and do let us know if this provides the information you are looking for.
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Blog |
Feature availability status |
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Richer alt text in Word and PowerPoint, powered by generative AI |
Current Channel |
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Better screen reader experience: Audio feedback for 60+ Word keyboard shortcuts |
Current Channel |
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Improved keyboard and Narrator support for comments in Word for Windows |
Current Channel |
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Automatic alt text generation in Word and PowerPoint on Copilot+ PCs |
Current Channel |
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More logical navigation through Word documents for screen readers |
Current Channel |
Feedback
We’d love to hear your thoughts on how this update is working! Open Accessibility Assistant, then select Give Feedback to provide feedback.
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