Word Accessibility Principles Part II

Word Accessibility Principles Part II
[Intro name, role, and UDC. Provide brief description of what the UDC does] Example: The Universal Design Center collaborates with various groups on campus to support Universal Design and Accessibility efforts. Our goal is to support the process- accessibility does not happen overnight. Welcome to Word Accessibility Principles Part II. This is a continuation of part one where we are going to go back to what we learned previously but also Kate Sharron, Project Manager Crystal Monroy, Project Analyst Universal Design Center

Training Objectives Explain key features of an accessible Word document Evaluate documents to identify inaccessible features Convert to an accessible PDF Our goal for each of you is to come away from this training with the ability to develop foundational understanding of Universal Design and Accessibility, explain key features of an accessible Word document, and evaluate documents to identify inaccessible features.

Today’s Topics Word Accessibility Principles Part II
Recap of Universal Design (UD) and Accessibility Building accessible documents Hands-on group exercises Final Things to Consider… Our topics for today will cover 3 section and we’ll finish the training evaluating documents as a group.

Our 1st section is Universal Design and accessibility… Universal Design (UD) and Accessibility Building Accessible Documents Hands On Exercise Final Things to consider

What is Accessibility & Universal Design?
The design that is simple, useful and accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities ACCESSIBILITY Universal Design is the design of products and environments that are simple, useful and accommodates all people to meet individuals preferences and abilities. Universal design ties into a concept called universal design for learning to emphasize how learning can be made accessible and effective for all. Accessibility is the ability to access information so that everyone can perceive or view what is being conveyed, operate or interact with information, understand regardless of different learning styles and abilities and be able to access in various platforms and technologies is the ability to access information so that everyone can perceive, operate, understand, and find it robust. P O U R

The Audience What is the variability of the audience? [pause] Who has low vision? [pause] Who is using a sign language interpreter? [pause] Who is using a screen reader? [pause] Incorporating universal design and accessibility means being proactive. Working productively rather the reactively. Benefitting all rather than making accommodations or “less than.”

This will be an overview for creating accessible documents using Microsoft Word 2016 (13?). Accessible documents allow information to be readily available for assistive technology. Screen readers can easily navigate the content when accessibility is considered during the design process. This will not only benefit people with disabilities, but overall usability will improve for all users. Universal Design (UD) Principles and Accessibility Building Accessible Documents Hands On Exercise Final Things to consider

Building Accessible Documents
Links Tables Images Link Text Complex Images Link Styles SmartArt Anchor Links Surrounding Text Method Columns Videos Accessibility Check Headers and Footers Converting to PDF For this second training I am going to go over links and the many best practices that should be considered when adding links. I will be talking about columns and adding tables I am going to talk about images again but these are what are considered complex images and I am also going to talk about Videos as word 16 has a feature that allows users to embed videos into their word docs. I'm going through the accessibility check again And I'm going to talk about converting to PDF Resource: Word Checklist

Before we start… Page Structure Images Color Contrast
Styles Panel Headings Styles and Formatting Lists Images Color Contrast Accessibility Checker

Links Is my link text clear? How should I style my links?
Can I add jump links? Links can help redirect a viewer to related content. When you provide a link make sure the link text clearly describe where the link is going to take user. Often use are phrase such as “click here” or “more information”. Those statements do not provide a user with enough direction on where the link is going to lead them to. In addition, screen reader users are able to navigate a webpage via links only. It will be confusing to them to hear various links that say “read more” “read more”. They may think it is the same link. If you are adding a link, the best practice is to use the title of the link destination as the link text. If the title is too long, use words or phrases to sum up the title.

Can I add jump links? When you add link, the links should always appear visually different from regular text in your document. However, you should not use color only to differentiate links from regular text. When color is only used, people with visual impairments such as color blindness will not be able to differentiate the link and the regular text. In the example (explain statement 1 and 2). Best practice is to use a combination of color and underline to differentiate links. Also, going back to color contrast, make sure the link color used has enough contrast with the background color of the page.

Can I add jump links? When you add headers to your document, you can create more than just links to other resources in your document. You can also create internal links or “jump links”. Jump links can be added to take a user from one main topic header to another. Again it shows how the styles panel really does help enhance your document in ways you would not expect.

Columns How can columns help my document?
Columns help visually organize and condense information on a page. Screen readers can read the content organized in columns.

Headers and Footers Should I included headers and Footers in my document? Headers and Footers are not always read immediately to screen reader users. However, if a screen reader user wants to look at the header there are methods for them to do that. When you have a header and footer always consider the following, if you have a meaningful image such as maybe a logo, we recommend to include an alt text to the logo on the first image at least. We wanted to comment about headers and footers because we use them often in our documents and a lot of people do not know what to do with them. That way you just considered it in one. The thing with headers is when you convert to PDF, unless if you have an image with alt text, these items are usually ignored.

Tables Can tables be used to organize my document?
Does my table need a description? Does my table need headers? How can I style my table? Tables should only be used to visually organize cross-referencing information. It is often seen that tables are used to organize the layout or design of a page similar to a text box. The problem with this is that screen readers cannot tell that the table is used for layout purposes and may confuse the sure when content is organized in this way. Therefore only use tables if you need to organize structured information such as data

Does my table need a description? Does my table need headers? How can I style my table? In Word, it is recommended to provide a table description. A table description is similar to alt text and it is just a summary of what the table represents. Adding the description ensure screen reader users can grasp the significance of the tables

Does my table need a description? Does my table need headers? How can I style my table? In word, you have to make sure your table headers are properly defined. Under table style options, go to “header row” and/or first column make sure those items are check Then under the table tools go to the layout tab and make sure the date a group “repeat header rows”… selecting this will provide the tag that indicates the top row is a header column.. Always make sure that in the design tab you have the “header column” or “first column” table style options selected. Then go to the layout tab and select “repeat header rows”. A screen reader should now know that the column or row headers are headers and will give the table the proper tags when converted to PDF.

Does my table need a description? Does my table need headers? How can I style my table? Be careful when you are styling and adding and inserting rows and columns to the table. Some table styles may not be easy to convert for PDF and the accessibility of the table may be lost when this occurs. Try and keep your table as simple as possible. Use the style panel to better organize the table. Disclaimer: word 16 has come out with a lot of new features especially with tables. It is possible that the issues encountered before with tables may have been addressed.

Images What are complex images?
Does smart-art need a text alternative? What is the surrounding text method? Can I add accessible videos into word documents? images include graphs, charts, diagrams, and illustrations are considered complex images. These are images that most of the time present lots of information in a visual format. Most often they need a description that can be understood by visual and non-visual users. When you add a complex image, The best alternative for word is to add a caption with a complex image as opposed to alternative text. Surrounding text method: it is preferred to include an explanation of the text in the surrounding body of text.

Simple and Complex Images
Graphs, Charts SmartArt Videos Logos Decorative Images Images What are complex images? Does smart-art need a text alternative? What is the surrounding text method? Can I add accessible videos into word documents? Smart art has been around in word for many years and when you add smart art a text description of the smart are image is needed because assistive technologies cannot really navigate into the areas in the smart art. Therefore you need a text description for smart art that describes the smart art graphic and also describes what is conveyed in the graphic. Our recommendation to write Alt text for smart art is first to put the name of the graphic (which can be found by hovering over the smart art you are interested in in the smart art graphic window or you can go to the Microsoft website where the name of the graphic is displayed. Take away: whatever you input in smart art, you will need a text description that conveys what ever is in the smart art graphic

Does smart-art need a text alternative? What is the surrounding text method? Can I add accessible videos into word documents? One of Australia’s most remarkable natural gifts, the Great Barrier Reef (shown in the image above) is blessed with the breathtaking beauty of the world’s largest coral reef. The Reef contains an abundance of marine life and comprises of over 3000 individual reef systems and coral cays and literally hundreds of picturesque tropical islands with some of the worlds most beautiful sun-soaked, golden beaches. At times alternative text and caption are not the most appropriate method to describe an image. As such, the description of the image can be conveyed within the surrounding body of the text. If you do this, include the words “In the image above”, “..below”, etc. that way the user knows you are describing the image that did not have alt text and caption within the paragraph.

Does smart-art need a text alternative? What is the surrounding text method? Can I add accessible videos into word documents? Word 16 allows you to embed videos and I wanted to bring up a couple of things about that. At the moment embedded videos are not accessible to screen reader users or users navigating with a keyboard or some other navigation device other than a mouse. We do not know when this will be fixed or if it will be fixed in a future version of word. For those of you who really want to embed a video in word, our work around to the innacciablity for screen reader and keyboard users would be to put the link of the video underneath the video itself. That way whoever cannot access the video, they can at least access the link to the video. Also when you embed a video you need to add a text alternative to the video. Apple-Accessibility-Sady video

Check for Accessibility
Can I check for Accessibility in Word? Word Accessibility Checker can check for issues and categorize them by the impact on the viewer. Errors: this content will be very difficult or inaccessible to people with disabilities to view Warnings: this content, in most cases, will be difficult for people with disabilities to view Tips: this content is available to people with disabilities, however better organization is suggested

Converting to PDF How can I convert my accessible document to PDF?
What options should I be familiar with to convert to PDF? You can save your pdf by clicking “save as PDF” or through the Acrobat tab on your word 2016 version.

Converting to PDF How can I convert my accessible document to PDF? (cont.) What options should I be familiar with to convert to PDF? You can save your pdf by clicking “save as PDF” or through the Acrobat tab on your word 2016 version.

What options should I be familiar with to convert to PDF? Make sure the tag “enable accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF” is checked. This will make sure all the header tags and emphasized text created through the styles panel are transferred to the PDF file.

What options should I be familiar with to convert to PDF? (cont’) if you save through the Create PDF button in the Acrobat tab, there is another button called Preferences. When you click that under “enable accessibility..” there is another checkbox called “enable advanced tagging”. This checkbox enhancing the tagging process especially for items like tables, text boxes.

I’m going to walk through each question we covered and show what it looks like in Word. I’m using Word ___________ [fill in version] so, depending if you have a Mac or PC and various version, your Word may look slightly different. But all the mechanics are the same. [Open the Word testing document and show how to make adjustments to page structure (headers, styles, and , images, and color contrast Universal Design (UD) Principles and Accessibility Building Accessible Documents Hands On Exercise Final Things to consider

Hands On Exercises Material Needed Walk through of Exercise:
Printed Handout with Exercise Instructions Document on your Computer Walk through of Exercise: Evaluate the document on our computers Go through all the exercises as a group: Make edits to the document Check for Accessibility Share Out [Review directions for group task] Evaluate documents as a group I will go through all the excurses on the screen so you can follow along as I go through. You can also go through the document on your own and independently work through the exercises. If you have questions or you get stuck simply follow along. We have a digital copy of the documents. For digital copy, go to [set up document sharing platform].

We have covered all the major areas we aimed to for this trainings. I hope you have learned something new in this training. For closing I want to briefly recap what we have learned: Gone through what UD and accessibility is and how they relate to our institution We briefly learned about the accessibility efforts of high end cooperation's such as Microsoft We covered some of the 5 most important things you can do to enhance your document We went over how you yourself can evaluate your own document for accessibility. Universal Design (UD) Principles and Accessibility Building Accessible Documents Hands On Exercise Final Things to consider

Final Things to Consider…
Improvements are constantly being made on Microsoft Word to enhance the experience for users with disabilities Other Microsoft Office Products have accessibility features too! PowerPoint Always add Alt Text Add headings Consider your reading order Excel Add text descriptions to charts and tables Descriptive link text Add unique names to each excel sheet tab

Universal Design (UD) Principles and Accessibility Building Accessible Documents Hands On Exercise Final Things to consider We have covered all the major areas we aimed to for this trainings. I hope you have learned something new in this training. For closing I want to briefly recap what we have learned: Gone through what UD and accessibility is and how they relate to our institution We briefly learned about the accessibility efforts of high end cooperation's such as Microsoft We covered some of the 5 most important things you can do to enhance your document We went over how you yourself can evaluate your own document for accessibility.

Resources UDC Website Word Document Accessibility Tutorial
UDC Word Checklist Describing Images

Thank you!

Microsoft: Technology Opening New Doors for People With Disabilities
I have another video on Microsoft that I would like to share. This is from Microsoft EU but it really shows Microsoft commitment to accessibility at a global level. I am only going to play a few minuets of the video - Microsoft Accessibility Promotonal video

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