accessibility in microsoft word: using the tools
TRANSCRIPT
Jim DicusInstructional DesignerBellevue College
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Accessibility in Microsoft Word: Using the tools. By Jim Dicus. Thank you for watching this brief presentation about Microsoft Word.
StylesThe Accessibility CheckerReferences
Presenter
Presentation Notes
This presentation covers the basics of Styles in the Microsoft Office suite and includes the location of the Styles tool and the Accessibility Checker. There are linked resources to the cited content that will be listed at the end of the presentation. These resources are also in the online workshop, but they are handy to use when designing a course.
Officially called Heading Styles, we use this tool to
“Create a uniform heading structure through use of styles in Word. This allows screen readers to navigate a document and improves accessibility for everyone.”1
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Styles are one of the single most important tools for creating accessible documents, and are usable on basically all content creation platforms that are accessible. According to the National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE), users can “Create a uniform heading structure through use of styles in Word. This allows screen readers to navigate a document and improves accessibility for everyone.” In Microsoft Word, the Styles tool is located on the right side of the ribbon under the home menu tab. It is important to understand that styles create a hierarchical series of headings in the document to allow screen readers to navigate the document correctly for the end user. What this means, basically, is that styles allow the creator to build a navigable outline for the document. Think of this as an interactive Table of Contents.
Microsoft Word includes a resource to check the accessibility of a document.
It identifies accessibility issues and suggests possible solutions.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
The Accessibility Checker is a very powerful tool that we will be using in this workshop. A very unfortunate problem with this tool is that it is not included with the Mac version of Microsoft Office. We see a clear example of how market competitiveness and proprietary software ultimately harms the end user in this example. For Mac users, you will simply have to use a Windows-based computer to be able to access this feature. For PC users, the Accessibility Checker tool is located in the Info settings of the document under the File menu in Word. On the left side of the screen will be three square buttons, with the middle button labeled, Inspect Document. Click that button and select Check Accessibility from the dropdown menu. This feature will run the Accessibility Checker and will generate an accessibility report.
The Inspection Results
If the document contains accessibility issues, they will be displayed here for the user to correct.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
After running the Accessibility Checker, Word provides an Inspection Results list on the right side of the document. These results have corresponding links in the list to allow for quick navigation to the error, in addition to including suggested changes. As you work through the list of accessibility errors, they will be checked off this menu. Continue working until there are no errors on the list. A quick note about the list is that it will also display suggested changes that aren’t necessarily errors, only something that will be strange when read by a screen reader. Among these are full URLs as the screen readers will read the entire URL instead of simply the name of the link, so be aware that there are formatting suggestions for hyperlinks also that aren’t actual errors, but do sound strange when read by a screen reader.
1. NCDAE Cheatsheet for Microsoft Word 20132. Quality Matters
Presenter
Presentation Notes
The National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE) provides plenty of helpful resources that relate to accessibility. In addition to their resources, there are great “Cheatsheets” there to use as guides and tips for accessible document creation for commonly used programs like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat. Quality Matters (QM) created a set of guidelines to assist with online course design. These guidelines, or Standards as called by QM, are a way to ensure high quality course creation for both consistency and student retention.
This PowerPoint was designed for the Bellevue College Office of Instruction to be used in training purposes.
If you have questions or comments, please contact Jim Dicus.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
This PowerPoint was designed for the Bellevue College Office of Instruction to be used in training purposes. If you have questions or comments, please contact Jim Dicus.