Office Accessibility Center > Accessibility support for Sway
The accessibility features in Sway help make your content available to more people. This topic tells you what’s available today, but please check back—Sway is evolving.
Note: When you use Sway, we recommend that you use Microsoft Edge as your browser.
In this topic
Explore the Sway user interface
With Sway, you can create interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more. You provide the content, such as text, images, videos, and embedded items, and Sway does the rest, making sure that your finished layout looks beautiful on virtually any device.
Sway is a web app that includes these top-level pages:
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The Home page (sway.office.com), where you can get tutorials, examples, and related links. You don’t have to be signed in to Sway to view the home page.
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My Sways, which lists all the Sways associated with the account you used to sign in. This includes Sways that you’ve created and any Sways that have been shared with you.
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Authoring, the view where you create or edit a selected Sway.
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Play, where you can view your Sway like a slide show.
When authoring in Sway, you work in four main areas:
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The top navigation bar, which includes Play, Share, and app-level options.
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The menu bar, which displays Insert.
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Storyline, where you add, import, edit, format, and arrange the content of a selected Sway. To add a piece of content, insert a Card. To display certain Cards together in the finished Sway, make a group.
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Design, which shows you what your finished Sway looks like.
Tip: If you are using keyboard shortcuts to navigate, to move the focus through these areas in Windows, press Ctrl+F6. On the Mac, press Control+Fn+F6. For more details, see Sway keyboard shortcuts.
Turn on Accessibility view
When viewing a Sway, you can turn on Accessibility view. This view displays a high-contrast style for easier reading, disables any animations, and supports keyboard navigation for use with screen readers.
To turn on Accessibility view:
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If you’re using a mouse or touchscreen, on the More options menu (shown as three dots on the Sway toolbar), choose Accessibility view.
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If you’re using a screen reader, on the More options menu, when Accessibility view is selected, you hear “Displays this Sway in a high contrast design with full keyboard functionality and screen reader access to all content.”
Note: If Internet Explorer blocks the Sway.office.com pop-up box, a notification message appears. To move the focus to the notification, press Alt+N and then, to allow the pop-up box, press A. You may need to enable Accessibility view again.
What does Accessibility view do?
When you turn on Accessibility view in Sway, here’s what happens:
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The entire Sway is loaded into memory to allow Assistive Technology to access all of the content and provide jump locations (for example, a jump to the next heading).
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The color scheme changes to black and white to provide high contrast for text.
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The navigation switches to vertical scrolling to make it easier to navigate the Sway with a keyboard or with Assistive Technology.
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The layout is presented vertically to allow users to focus on one piece of content at a time.
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Specialized groups (for example, grids, slide shows, stacks, or comparisons) are broken apart to provide easier access to the content.
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Interactive elements are marked with focus indicators to allow keyboard-only users to know what has the focus.
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Excessive animations are removed to reduce unnecessary distractions and to aid Assistive Technology.
How to use Accessibility view
While viewing any Sway:
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To navigate through any selectable options, on your physical or on-screen keyboard, press the Tab key.
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To zoom a selected image in your current Sway, press Spacebar. To close the image and go back to the Sway, press Esc.
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To search for text within a Sway, use the Search box. On the More Options menu, choose Find, and then type your text.
How to view closed captions when available
When a Sway video or audio card has closed captions, you'll see a CC symbol in the bottom right of the screen.
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Press the Play button to start the media player, then immediately press the Pause button.
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On the media player, select the closed captions symbol to open the closed captions menu.
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Select the language of closed captions you would like to see. From the closed captions menu, you can also adjust how the captions will look on the media player in Settings, or turn the captions off.
Send feedback
We'd love to know which accessibility features are most important to you. See How do I give feedback on Microsoft Office? to learn how to share your thoughts. We're listening.
Technical support for customers with disabilities
Microsoft wants to provide the best possible experience for all our customers. If you have a disability or questions related to accessibility, please contact the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk for technical assistance. The Disability Answer Desk support team is trained in using many popular assistive technologies and can offer assistance in English, Spanish, French, and American Sign Language. Please go to the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk site to find out the contact details for your region.
If you are a government, commercial, or enterprise user, please contact the enterprise Disability Answer Desk.
See Also
Make your Sway design accessible to people with disabilities
