Accessibility of APA Style

APA is committed to ensuring accessibility for all users. This page addresses the accessibility of the APA Style format. If you provide disability services for a postsecondary educational institution in the United States or Canada and need accessible materials, including APA Style books like the Publication Manual, for a student with a documented print disability, visit the ADA alternative format requests for students with disabilities page.

The Web Accessibility Statement for the APA Style website is also available for interested parties.

Accessibility is covered in the introduction (p. xviii) to the APA Publication Manual, Seventh Edition

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This guidance is new to the 7th edition.

Making APA Style accessible

The APA Style team worked with accessibility experts at David Berman Communications to ensure that APA Style guidelines as presented in the Publication Manual (7th ed.) are compliant with Web Content and Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA standards.

Our style guidelines have been developed to address the needs of users worldwide who access works in APA Style in a variety of contexts and modalities. APA encourages users to make refinements as needed to meet the needs of their specific communities.

Accessibility topics

  • Accessible typography: Learn about accessible fonts, capitalization, quotation marks, spacing at the end of sentences, and serial commas.
  • Accessible headings: Learn about the purpose of headings and how to use heading styles to create accessible documents.
  • Accessible URLs: Learn to present URLs accessibly in reference list entries and the text both in print and online.
  • Accessible use of color: Learn to use adequate color contrast in figures to allow users living with color-vision deficiencies (also called “color blindness”) to understand the material.

The APA Style team will add new topics over time to address other areas of concern to users.

Contact the APA Style team

If you have further questions or suggestions about accessibility and APA Style, please contact us.

Date created: June 2020