Your annual report is the most expensive communication you produce. Weeks of writing, rounds of design, board review, and professional photos tell donors what their money made possible. Yet few organizations stop to ask a basic question: is it an accessible annual report and is it one that every supporter can actually read?
But if your report is a designed PDF like most documents, there’s a strong chance it can’t be read by donors who use screen readers, struggles on every phone it’s opened on, and loses low-vision readers by page two. One in four U.S. adults lives with a disability. For a document whose entire job is demonstrating your values, an inaccessible annual report quietly argues against you.
Building an accessible annual report doesn’t require abandoning beautiful design. It requires a few decisions made earlier in the planning process.
Why annual reports fail accessibility so often
Annual reports fail for a predictable reason: they’re designed as print objects and exported as afterthoughts. The designer works in InDesign or Canva, and then the PDF gets exported with default settings. But nobody checks what a screen reader encounters, which is often a single, silent wall of untagged graphics.
The three most common failures:
Untagged PDFs: A tagged PDF has an invisible structure, including headings, reading order, alt text, that assistive technology navigates. An untagged PDF is a picture of a document. Most exported PDFs are untagged by default.
Text locked inside graphics: That gorgeous full-page impact spread where the numbers are part of the artwork? Screen readers get nothing. Zoom users get blur.
Decorative typography over readability: Thin fonts, low-contrast color pairs pulled from the brand palette, justified text in narrow columns, 9-point body copy. Beautiful at arm’s length on a designer’s monitor; punishing for everyone else.
How to make an accessible annual report, in order of impact
1. Publish a web version even if it’s a simple one
The single highest-impact move: put the report’s content on an ordinary web page. Real text, real headings, images with alt text. Web pages are natively more accessible than PDFs and here’s why: they work on phones, they’re searchable, and they can be updated. Keep the designed PDF as the companion piece; the web page is the accessible front door.
Many of the strongest nonprofit reports now lead with the web version entirely. It also gives you something a PDF never will: analytics on what people actually read.
2. If the PDF is the main event, make it a tagged PDF
Ask your designer for an accessible export, the phrase to use is “tagged PDF with a defined reading order and alt text on all meaningful images.” InDesign does this well when set up correctly. If the answer is a blank look, that’s useful information about your vendor.
Test it yourself in two minutes: open the PDF, press Ctrl/Cmd+A to select all. If you can’t select the text because it’s one giant image, neither can a screen reader.
3. Free the data from the design
Every chart and infographic needs its takeaway stated in real text: in the alt text, in a caption, or in the body copy. “Program spending grew to 84 cents of every dollar” is one sentence. Write it once and every reader gets it, including the funder skimming on a train.
4. Raise the floor on typography
You don’t need to abandon your brand. You need minimums: body text no smaller than 11–12 points, strong contrast between text and background (it should be 4.5:1 but use a free checker if you aren’t sure), no long passages over photos or textures, and left-aligned text instead of justified. These constraints are invisible when met. Readers only notice them when they’re broken.
5. Write the report in plain language
Accessibility isn’t only visual. Reports stuffed with sector jargon exclude readers with cognitive disabilities, readers whose first language isn’t English, and honestly, tired readers of every kind. Short sentences and everyday words aren’t oversimplifying your messaging; they’re opening the door.
The accessible annual report budget conversation
“Accessible design costs more” is true only when accessibility arrives as a retrofit. Remediating a finished 40-page PDF is expensive. Deciding at kickoff that the report will have a web version, a tagged export, and readable type costs almost nothing. It’s the same work, done with different defaults.
Put one line in next year’s design brief: “The final deliverables include an accessible web version and a tagged PDF.” That sentence is the whole reform.
Frequently asked questions
Do funders actually care about an accessible annual report?
Increasingly, yes. Especially government funders (accessibility is a legal requirement for public entities) and foundations with disability inclusion in their portfolios. An accessible report signals operational maturity.
Is a PDF ever okay?
Yes but only a tagged PDF is a legitimate accessible format. The problem is the untagged default, and the assumption that one designed file can be the only version.
What about printed reports?
Print has its own accessibility practices including minimum type sizes, contrast, matte paper to reduce glare. Offer the content in accessible digital form for anyone who requests it.
Make your accessible annual report reach everyone
Your annual report exists to build trust. Making it readable by every single supporter, regardless of ability, isn’t a technical chore. It’s your mission, applied to your own storytelling.
If you’d like a second set of eyes before the next report cycle, that’s exactly what we do. Book a free discovery call and we’ll look at last year’s report together. You’ll leave with the three highest-impact fixes for the next one, whether or not we work together.
Gillan Ritchie is the autistic and ADHD founder of Wired Mind Media, a strategic communications agency serving nonprofits, government agencies, and higher education. With 14+ years in strategic communications, her lived neurodivergent experience shapes how the agency builds digital ramps into communications — so your message reaches everyone.