M365 PlaybooksMicrosoft 365 apps · Teams · SharePoint· Maintain
Keep content accessible over time
Purpose
Keep accessibility from fading once the rollout is over. New authors arrive, templates drift, Microsoft adds features, and some barriers sit in the platform itself. A light rhythm of sampling, listening to barrier reports and reviewing settings keeps content usable and shows progress where it has to be reported.
Overview
A monthly sample of real content, a working barrier report channel, settings kept current, and progress reported yearly.
- Effort
- About 2 to 3 person-days a month
- Duration
- Ongoing; first cycle in 4 weeks
- Complexity
- Low
- Who's in the room
- Accessibility lead, communications lead, Microsoft 365 Apps admin, champions
Risk of not doing it
Without a rhythm, accessibility quietly erodes, and barriers are found by the people they exclude rather than by the organization.
Key activities
The plan in order: what must be true first, what to decide, then how to configure the pilot and production.
Prerequisites
Accept there's no tenant-wide report
Microsoft 365 checks accessibility one document at a time; there's no admin report of accessibility issues across the tenant. Monitoring therefore means sampling content and listening to people who meet barriers, or adding a third-party tool. Be clear with leadership about this early, so nobody expects a dashboard that doesn't exist and the sampling effort is funded instead.
Make the feedback channel work
Agree who triages barrier reports, how fast people get a response, and how fixes are recorded. Reports are the most direct evidence you have. When a report is resolved, tell the person what changed, even if the fix is a workaround; people who see that reporting works keep reporting.
Write a short checklist
Base it on your standard, but keep it to what a non-specialist can check in a few minutes: headings, alt text, reading order, link text, contrast, table headers, captions and plain language. A checklist that takes an hour per document won't be used.
Decisions
Decision: How do you sample?
Pick a small, regular sample: the most-viewed intranet pages, documents sent outside the organization, and recent recordings. Check them against your short checklist, not just the checker, since the checker doesn't catch everything. Include at least one item a month reviewed by someone who uses assistive technology; their experience catches what checklists miss. Ten to twenty items a month is enough to see patterns without becoming a project.
Options
- No sampling
- A monthly sample of high-traffic and external content
Recommended default: A monthly sample of high-traffic and external content
Decision: What happens to older content?
Remediating every legacy document is rarely realistic. Fix high-traffic and external content first, offer alternate formats on request, and let older content be fixed when it's next edited. Say this plainly in your accessibility statement or intranet guidance, so people know how to ask for an accessible version and how quickly they'll get it.
Options
- Remediate everything
- High-traffic and external first; alternate formats on request
Recommended default: High-traffic and external first; alternate formats on request
Decision: Add a third-party checking tool?
Microsoft 365 has no tenant-wide accessibility report, so organizations with a lot of published content sometimes add a third-party tool that scans documents or pages. Start with sampling; it shows whether the volume and the patterns justify a tool, and what it would need to check.
Options
- Buy a scanning tool first
- Sample first; add a tool if volume and patterns justify it
Recommended default: Sample first; add a tool if volume and patterns justify it
Pilot configuration
Run the first sample
Sample one month's content, record what you find by type (headings, alt text, contrast, captions, link text), and trace each pattern to its cause: a template, a team, or a gap in training. Share the results with the teams whose content was sampled, framed as what to fix next rather than as a score.
Track platform issues
Some barriers are in Microsoft 365 itself, not in your content. Record them, raise them with Microsoft, for example through its Enterprise Disability Answer Desk, and tell affected people about workarounds. Review the list at the quarterly settings review, since Microsoft updates can fix issues or introduce new ones, and remove workarounds people no longer need.
Production configuration
Review settings each quarter
New accessibility features arrive with Microsoft 365 updates. Each quarter, check the checker and alt text policies, Teams caption settings and templates against what's now available. New features can change what the checker flags or what captions support, so update the guide and templates when settings change.
Refresh templates and training
Update templates when patterns in the sample point to them, and keep accessibility in onboarding so new authors start with the habits. When a template changes, tell the people who use it what changed and why, so they don't keep older copies.
Report progress yearly
Summarize sample results, barrier reports and what changed. Where your obligations require progress reports, this becomes their evidence. Keep it short: what improved, what didn't, and what you'll do differently next year.
Make it enforceable
Policies keep the checker and alt text defaults in place, but content quality depends on authors, so the monthly sample and barrier reports are the real controls.
Partly enforced. The gaps are a risk until a mechanism covers them.
Operating rhythm
Monthly: sample content
High-traffic and external content against the checklist. Record findings by type and by team, so patterns are visible over time.
Move on when: Patterns have owners and dates
Monthly: review barrier reportsChange: Explain
Responses on time, fixes recorded. Check that every report has had a response and that fixes are recorded with their cause.
Move on when: No report is left without a response
Quarterly: review settings and templates
New features, policy settings and templates. Compare policies with new features, and update the guide when anything changes.
Move on when: Settings match what's available
Yearly: report progressChange: Inform
Sample trends, reports handled, changes made.
Move on when: Leadership has seen the summary
Common challenges
If youWait for complaints
What tends to happenBarriers are found by the people they exclude, often too late.
A better approachSample content monthly, even a small amount.
If youCount checker warnings as the measure
What tends to happenContent passes the checker but is still hard to use.
A better approachSample against a short manual checklist and include people who use assistive technology.
If youTreat platform issues as content issues
What tends to happenAuthors are blamed for barriers they can't fix.
A better approachTrack platform issues separately and report them to Microsoft.
If youFix only what's reported
What tends to happenThe same barrier appears again in the next document from the same template.
A better approachTrace each finding to its cause and fix the template, guide or setting that produced it.
If youLet the owner role lapse
What tends to happenSamples stop, reports go unanswered, and nobody notices until a complaint arrives.
A better approachKeep the accessibility lead named in the operating rhythm and review it yearly.
Checkpoints
Pilot
- Is there a sampling plan and a first sample?
- Does the feedback channel have a response target?
- Has leadership agreed that sampling, not a dashboard, is how progress is measured?
Production
- Are samples and reports reviewed monthly?
- Are settings reviewed quarterly?
- Is progress summarized yearly?
- Do people who reported barriers hear what changed?
Success measures
Capture a baseline before you start, or you won't be able to show the change.
| Measure | Where you see it | Good direction |
|---|---|---|
| Sampled items meeting the checklist | Monthly sample | Up |
| Barrier reports answered within target | Feedback channel | Up |
| Open platform issues with workarounds | Platform issue list | Steady |
| Repeat findings traced to a template or guide fix | Monthly sample | Up |
Ready-to-use text
Sampling checklist
Headings used | Alt text present and meaningful | Reading order sensible | Link text meaningful | Contrast sufficient | Tables have headers | Captions or transcript for video | Plain language | Checker run with no errors
Additional reading
Changelog
Changelog (1 version)
| Version | Date | Author | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sev Derghazarian | First version. Facts checked against Microsoft Learn on 2026-10-15. |