Accessible Web Publishing Tool for Microsoft Office

Jon Gunderson, Ph.D.

University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

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Why was the Web Invented?

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Answer

• Share information between scientists

• Interoperation with computer systems

• Public standards

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What are some of the myths of the web?

• Graphical medium

• Users have no control over rendering

• Authors have all the control over rendering

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Problem

• Instructors are not web developers

• Instructors don't know about accessibility

• More instructional materials on the web

• There are a lot of instructors

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Size of the Problem

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Knowledge of Office Accessibility Techniques

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Problems with Microsoft Office

• Limited ability to create text equivalents

• Default format is VML for Powerpoint

• HTML is pretty dirty and is not valid html

• Markup does not meet W3C WCAG or Section 508 requirements

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Accessible Repair Process

• Create materials

• Check with accessibility tool

• Decipher accessibility report

• Fix accessibility problems

• Repeat process until no problems

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Accessible Repair Problems

• Time consuming

• Difficult to understand reports

• Authoring tools like MS Office do not support editing of markup

• Results are often still inaccessible

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Accessible Design

• Default markup uses universal design techniques

• Authors do not need to know about accessibility

• No extra time involved with creating accessible materials

• Everyone benefits including people with disabilities

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Goals of the Project

• Accessible HTML by default

• No knowledge of accessibility or HTML

• Prompt users for accessibility information

• Automatically generate text equivalents

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Best Practices

• User built-in templates for Powerpoint

• Use styling in Word

• Use Excel and Office for creating charts

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Demonstration of Wizard

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Powerpoint Features

• Text and graphical

• Keyboard support (Accesskeys)

• Text tables for charts

• Navigation controls

• Orientation information

• Valid HTML

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Next Steps

• Text equivalents for graphics

• Images of tabular tables

• Organizational charts

• Improved styling options

• Multimedia support

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Acknowledgements

• National Institute of Disability Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR)
  (Grant# H133G030079)

• Division of Rehabilitation – Education Services

• Trace Research and Development Center
  (Grant# H133E980008)

• College of Applied Life Studies

• University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

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How do you get it?

www.accessiblewizards.uiuc.edu

Google for

"Office Accessibility"

"Word Accessibility"

"PowerPoint Accessibility"