Illinois IT Accessibility Issues

Jon Gunderson, Ph.D.

University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

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What is accessibility?

• Screen Readers: Jaws, Window Eyes

  • Speech

  • Braille

  • Keyboard commands

• Magnifiers: Zoomtext, Magic

  • Size

  • Colors

• Keyboard Access

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What is accessibility?

• PDA, Cell phones

  • Speech

  • Small screens

  • Limited keyboards

  • No mouse

• Graphical displays

  • Increasing pixel density -> 300 dpi

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Why was the web developed?

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The heart of the web: Interoperability

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IBHE Initiative on Accessibility

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Types of People

• IT Professionals

• Instructors

• Students and transient workers

• Purchased

  • Static web resources

  • Web applications

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Resources

• Training

• Functional accessibility

• Evaluation tools

• Authoring tools

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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 Power Point Web Publishing Features

• Limited ability to create text equivalents

• Default format is VML

• Default markup can only be viewed in latest browsers

• Markup does not meet WCAG W3C requirements

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Accessible Repair Process

1. Create materials

2. Check with accessibility tool

3. Decipher accessibility report

4. Fix accessibility problems

5. 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 Model

• Default markup uses universal design techniques

• Authors do not need to know about accessibility

• No extra time involved with creating accessible materials

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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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Informative Image: Maps

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Informative Images: Tables and Charts

• The best way to use tables and charts with PowerPoint is to create them using PowerPoint

• Creating them in PowerPoint makes it easier for the Wizard to convert the slide later

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Features

• Text and graphical

• Keyboard support (Accesskeys)

• Text tables for charts

• Navigation controls

• Orientation information

• Valid HTML

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Next Steps

• Improve Word table support

• Improve Excel headings support

• Text equivalents for graphics

  • Images of tabular tables

  • Organizational charts

• Improved styling options

• SVG output?

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Acknowledgements

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

• Division of Rehabilitation – Education Services

• Trace Research and Development Center
  (NIDRR Grant# H133E980008)

• College of Applied Life Studies

• University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

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How do I get it?

Google for

"Microsoft Office Accessibility"

or

"Powerpoint Accessibility"