Session 2A – Making it right the first time: Creating barrier-free documents
Posted by digitalodyssey on June 10, 2008
Session 2A: Making it right the first time: 
Creating barrier-free documents
Karen McCall, Karlen Communications
Blogged by: Janene Michalak
McCall began her session by stating that most of her business deals with compliance with section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and ensuring that documents and documentation are accessible. In addition, she outlined the reasons why she began to write books on accessible documents. She outlined that the reason she make the accessible PDF book was because she didn’t know how to make PDF documents in Microsoft Word, and found that formatting overlapping created a lot of the accessibility problems.
This session was a hands-on demonstration about how MS PowerPoint 2007, MS Word 2007 and Adobe PDF could be made accessible.
MS PowerPoint:
McCall stressed the importance of creating a template that everyone can use, stating that 90% of the content can be accessible, provided that the default placeholders are being used. If the person creating the PowerPoint presentation uses text boxes, the document becomes inaccessible because the text boxes are layered on the document instead of becoming an integral part of the document. Instead of using text boxes within the design of the presentation, she recommended using placeholders. Likewise, McCall stated that two objects are not accessible:
- dynamically linked information to another Microsoft application, because it comes in as a layer of information, and accessible technologies, like JAWS, cannot read the layer
- an object that is inserted into a slide because of no alt-text tags.
One of the tips that McCall suggested was to think about the overall design of the presentation to figure out in advance where the content will be on the slide, because the layout of the content will alter how the screen reader interprets the information. Specific to MS PowerPoint 2007, McCall illustrated how an image that has an alt-text tag associated with it can be copied to other Microsoft Office programs and the alt-text tag will automatically come along with it.
One point of note was that tagged media on Macs is nowhere near as accessible as tagged media on a PC.
A best practice, according to McCall, about font and size is generally to use the standard default, whatever it is, and let the people with accessible technology adapt to what they need, because the end user has to have the choice about how they will interact with the document. She then demonstrated how font is altered when using a screen reader.
MS Word:
One of the key points that McCall stressed is using templates, where the creator adjusts the style according to needs, but emphasized using structure to the document for navigational purposes. According to McCall, if heading styles are not used, all the information in the document will come across as paragraphs because the screen readers are not able to distinguish that bolded and/or italicized and/or underlined text are to be headings. McCall illustrated this by showing the difference between a bolded heading and using the Heading style, as JAWS was able to navigate the page of the document better through the Heading style being used. Further, McCall stressed that the user can select themes to create styles and can be used, provided that the style is based on a hierarchical structure because the overall structure of headings still remains.
In addition to templates, McCall stressed the use of alt-text tags, particularly with images and tables. Because Word documents are not always necessarily going to be viewed online, the image needs to have a caption, which can be the same as the alt-text tag. However, McCall cautioned that the description within the alt-text tag needs to be concise but accurate – the buffer in the screen reader will crash if there is too much information in the alt-text tag. McCall also recommended providing a caption for the table for the user. Further, mathematical equations need to be written out in long form, as the screen reader will not know that the \ key is the division key.
To end the section on MS Word, McCall illustrated how links in text documents need to be created, by illustrating how to include a link in a sentence, and some phrases not to be used. In particular, McCall illustrated how a user can find links within the document through MS Word and review what the link is. By doing this, McCall was able to illustrate how inaccessible links with names like “Click here” or “Select” or “Go To” because they do not tell the user anything about where they are when taken out of context. She also advised not to write out the entire URL in the document as it breaks the train of thought for those with cognitive disabilities or some vision loss.
Finally, McCall was able to provide an example of good alt-text tag versus a bad alt-text tag by describing a picture of a dinosaur remains with ferns growing through it. Her example was – “dinosaur with ferns through its ribs” vs “this dinosaur skeleton with ferns growing through its ribs illustrates how it does not limit itself and the new growth coming through the ribs illustrates how it breaks barriers”. and she stated that the alt-text tag should be one or two lines at most so it does not crash the screen reader’s buffer.
By reviewing the Digital Odyssey 2008 brochure, McCall illustrated that the PDF document is inaccessible because it has no heading tags; however, she noted that it was created in a way that facilitated access.
She reviewed two additional PDF documents, particularly the Sound Forge 9 manual, and illustrated that none of the headings were tagged, and that ½ of the Step-by-Step instructions were not tagged. One of the points that McCall made was that typically, she works with poorly created documents to begin with, and that document design is an integral part of how to make the document accessible.
McCall also stated that using non-standard fonts makes making PDF documents inaccessible because the tags are not joined.
One of the questions asked was about where this information would fit within the AODA, and it was answered that it would fall under the Information standard because it involves communication. McCall also provided her email address should anyone wish to contact her for more information: info@karlencommunications.com for more info.
