The changes needed to make OpenDocument 1.0 accessible were relatively minor. The OASIS OpenDocument Accessibility Subcommittee did a gap analysis of v1.0 based on these criteria:

• Support for W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
• Interoperability with assistive technologies
• Preservation of structural semantics 
• Increased usability of presentations over that available in today's office document formats

As OpenDocument v1.0 was largely based on W3C standards, the required changes were minor. They included:

• Alternative text for non-text objects 
  
• Proper association of captions to captioned content
• Encoding of pagination information
• Preservation of table semantic structure imported from other file formats
• Proper encoding of authored table header content
• Author-defined logical navigation of page objects in presentations
• Provision of alternative text hints for hyperlinks

OpenDocument version 1.1 adds alternative text to document elements such as drawing objects and image map hot spots; preservation of structural semantics such as headings in tables: and associations between drawngs and their captions. The OASIS OpenDocument Accessibility Subcommittee took the opportunity to provide not only short alternative descriptive text but also lengthy descriptions for the same objects should additional help be needed for users who are blind, low vision, or who suffer from cognitive impairments. To improve the usability of presentations, OASIS also added the provision for the author to supply a keyboard navigation order. Users who are blind may be confused when accessing a slide because the keyboard navigation order does not match the visual flow of the slide.