A style is a set of formatting characteristics that you can apply to text in your document to quickly change its appearance. When you apply a style, you apply a whole group of formats in one simple step. For example, you may want to format the sections headers of a report to make them stand out. Instead of changing the headings one by one, you can give them a style and change them all at once. A Table of Contents can be quickly added to a document if you use Word's Heading styles.
From an accessibility standpoint, styles create a page structure that screen-readers can interpret. While you can enlarge a font and make it bold, a screen-reader will not recognize it as a heading without one of the Heading styles applied to it. Without page structure, it is difficult for users with disabilities to quickly navigate documents. A more effective way to get the same results is to apply a heading style.
When you start Microsoft Word, the new blank document is based on the Normal template, and text that you type uses the Normal style. Within the Normal template, there are a number of default heading styles, which you can use to give your document a hierarchical structure. The image to the right shows a Microsoft Word document formatted using the default heading styles. A screen-reader would be able to interpret the different sections since they have the appropriate heading styles applied to them.
Screen-reading software applications recognize Word's Heading styles 1 through 9, list and bullet styles. The screen-reading software does not recognize the Title style, so it would be better to use the Heading 1 style for a Title and use the Heading 2 style for the first heading level in the document, followed by a Heading 3 and so on. You should never skip heading levels.
Word comes with dozens of built-in styles. By default, Word only shows you a few of them. To use all the styles, you need to see a full list.
It is very important that when you use styles, that you do so correctly. Use the appropriate style for its intended purpose, e.g., Heading 1 for top level headings and Heading 2 for the next level. Do not skip from Heading 1 to Heading 3 because you like the way Heading 3 looks compared to Heading 2! You're adding structure to your document and separating content from the structure.
In addition to using styles correctly, use only the built-in styles provided by Microsoft because some assistive technologies will not be able to interpret custom styles. Remember, you can customize the pre-defined styles for the appearance you want.
If you think the default styles are a bit bland, don't give up hope! While styles are great for accessibility, they're best known for their robust control of the look and feel of a document. You can modify any of the default styles to fit your taste.
Some styles affect a paragraph (paragraph style), some affect individual characters or words (word style), and some styles can affect both paragraph and character styles. To determine the style type, there is a character to the right of the style name in the Styles pane. The character (or characters) displayed will indicate what type of style it is (i.e., paragraph or word). Paragraph styles will have a backwards "P" next to the name and word styles will have an underlined "a" next to the style name.
To apply a style to a paragraph, click anywhere in the paragraph to be formatted and click the name of the style you would like to apply (do not click on the down arrow next to the name of the style).
To apply individual character or word styles, select the text you would like to format then click on the name of the style you would like to apply (not on the down arrow next to the name of the style).
