C. Accessibility Issues and Word
Imagine using your computer without a monitor, mouse, or keyboard. People with disabilities use computers every day without these devices. They do this by using what is called adaptive or assistive technology. Adaptive technology includes screen readers for people who are blind, screen magnification for people who have visual impairment, Text to Speech (TTS) for people with learning disabilities, voice recognition for people with physical disabilities, and alternate input devices for people who can’t use a standard keyboard.
In this appendix, you find out how to make the documents you create in Word more accessible and thus enable people who use adaptive technology to read them more easily.
Types of Adaptive Technology
People can use several types of adaptive technology to interact with computers and digital documents. Broad categories of devices include the following:
Screen readers—Screen reading combines hardware (sound card) and software (synthesized speech) to provide auditory access to information displayed on a computer screen. A person using screen-reading tools uses the keyboard instead of a mouse.
Screen magnification—This tool magnifies the screen, providing support for full-screen magnification, a lens-like tool, or various types of split-screen access. Most screen magnification software also provides TTS support.
TTS or Text-to-Speech—TTS tools provide auditory access to information displayed on the screen; however, it is not as complete as a screen reader. TTS is meant to provide supportive access rather than alternative access to a computer.
Voice recognition—Voice recognition software works with a sound card to let the user interact with the computer using his or her voice instead of a mouse or keyboard.
Alternative input devices—For people who can’t use a mouse, keyboard, or voice recognition, there are alternative methods of interacting with the computer. Examples of these tools include an onscreen keyboard, IntelliKeys from IntelliTools, single switches, and Morse Code.
These tools can be used in combination with each other. You can, for example, use screen reading and voice recognition together.
File Format and Accessibility
The accessibility and usability of documents depend on the use of a document structure and formatting. The native file format for Word 2007 and later is an XML-based file format, which helps tremendously with usability compared to Word file formats prior to 2007. It helps because eXtensible Markup Language (XML) allows the structure, content, and formatting of a document to be separate, which improves the ability of adaptive software to interact with the document to produce a version that a user with a disability can understand. For example, the person reading the document can choose how the formatting will be implemented and accessed. The structured content can then be repurposed to another XML-based file format, such as tagged PDF, HTML, or DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) with little or no repair.
Creating Accessible Word Documents
Document authors have the power to make information accessible or to create barriers to accessibility. The difference is in the tools used when designing templates and creating documents. The following sections describe some considerations when creating accessible documents.
Headings and Styles
Using styles to format the text in your document can result in a much more accessible document. Adaptive technology can look at a document and find paragraph text, headings, lists, tables, and other structures based on the standard definitions of each of these. Adaptive technology can let the reader know, for example, that a paragraph styled as an H1 heading denotes a major new topic or section of the document. Headings are also the basis for a table of contents, which assists all readers, and the basis for creating bookmarks.
In contrast, if you manually apply formatting to mimic the appearance of a heading, the adaptive technology cannot identify that text as a heading; as far as it is concerned, it’s just a regular paragraph with a large font applied to it. Imagine trying to find the information in this book without the use of headings.
If you don’t like the formatting for the default heading styles provided in the template you are using, you can create additional heading styles. Most adaptive technology will be able to interpret your new heading styles as headings, as long as they are based on default heading styles and have an appropriate heading level configured in the style properties. However, for an extra measure of ease of accessibility, you might prefer to create and modify document themes that redefine the formatting of the default styles, and stick with the default heading styles for a document such as H1, H2, and so on.
To learn more about styles, see “Understanding Styles,” p. 215.
Graphics
You can improve the accessibility of images in documents in two ways. The first is to ensure that images and other objects have Alt Text, or alternative text. Although this tool is identified as a “web” tool, current screen readers can also identify the Alt Text in Word documents.
Caution
If an image also functions as a hyperlink, it is more important for readers to know where that link is redirecting them to than what the image is about. Combining information about both the image and the hyperlink in the Alt Text—for example, providing Alt Text such as “Photo of a rural landscape. Links to antique store home page”—means that the readers have to listen to the description of the image before they can make the decision to follow the hyperlink. This wastes the readers’ time. Therefore, if an image functions as a hyperlink, include only the hyperlink’s description in the Alt Text, or at least place the hyperlink’s description first.
A second way is to provide a caption for each image, equation, and table. Captions are important and often overlooked in digital documents. Alt Text is usable when someone is viewing the document on a computer, but if the document is printed, the person reading the print version also needs information about the image. You can’t just point your finger at an image on a printed page and have Alt Text appear!
To learn more about Alt Text, see “Adding Alt Text Descriptions,” p. 424.
To create figure captions, see “Using Figure Captions,” p. 422.
Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks can also present issues when you’re trying to find information quickly in a document. How you approach links depends on the expected form of access to the document you are creating: print, print and digital, or just digital. Current screen readers have keyboard commands to list links on a digital document.
Suppose, for example, that you are using a screen-reading program and you hear “http://www.texthelp.com/wrg.asp?q1=products&q2=rwg.” Would you know where you were going? Would you want to listen to each piece of the URL to find out where it would take you? Probably not. Similarly, for people with learning disabilities who might be confused by the stream of letters, would you want to take the time to break down the URL in order to understand where it was going? A better solution is to use contextual or text-based links. Make sure the underlined text of the hyperlink in the document describes the link’s destination in plain language.
A problem also occurs if the hyperlink text starts with phrases such as “go to” or “follow this link to go to.” When a person using adaptive technology asks for a list of links in a document, he or she will have the same problems as when all links begin with the web address: listening to unnecessary text and being unable to use the first character of a link to locate it in a list of links.
What about documents that are both printed and viewed digitally? Typically, users will not be following a link with a printed document, but they might take the document with them to another computer and need the full URL to access a link. Rather than including the full URL in the body of the document, consider inserting the full URL as a footnote, endnote, or part of a bibliography. This will provide both forms of accessibility.
To create hyperlinks in a document, see “Working with Hyperlinks,” p. 592.
Tables
Tables present a barrier to information when they are used to format an entire document. Use tables only to present and organize information that needs to be in tabular format. Do not use a table just to create multicolumn layouts in the document.
To improve the accessibility of your tables, insert them with a specific number of columns and rows identified rather than drawing them. If you draw a table, you might end up with an inconsistent number of rows or columns in part of the table, and this presents a problem for most adaptive technologies.
If a table wraps to the next page, it can be helpful to repeat the heading rows. The Repeat Header Rows command is found on the Table Tools Layout tab.
Another accessibility issue involves allowing rows to break across pages. To prevent rows from breaking across pages, select the table, choose Properties from the Table Tools Layout tab, click the Row tab, and uncheck the Allow Row to Break Across Pages option.
To learn more about controlling table behavior when it breaks across pages, see “Preventing a Row from Breaking Across Pages,” p. 368.
When adjusting the spacing in cells to accommodate text or to provide a specific amount of spacing around text, modify the cell margins rather than insert blank lines in a cell. For someone using TTS or screen reading, each of those blank lines will be read as “blank.” This disorients readers because they won’t know if there is something wrong with their adaptive technology, the document, or both. It is also annoying to listen to seemingly endless instances of “blank, blank, blank” just to get to that one nugget of content. Cell margin settings are on the Cell tab in the Table Properties dialog box (click the Options button to see them) or on the Table Tools Layout tab.
To learn more about cell margins, see “Setting Cell Margins,” p. 365.
Sometimes a document author will use a single-cell table instead of paragraph borders to isolate and bring visual focus to an important concept. This, again, can be a problem with adaptive technology. To make a paragraph stand out with a border, select it and click the Borders button on the Home tab. You can also adjust the color and effects of a paragraph border. There is no reason you have to use a table to set a paragraph apart.
To create paragraph borders, see “Applying Paragraph Borders,” p. 205.
Table captions should also be used to provide a description of what the person reading the table data will find within the table. Sometimes an extra table row is used for this instead of the caption tool, but for accessibility purposes, a caption is best. To insert a table caption, choose Insert Caption on the References tab while the insertion point is in the table.
To caption a table, see “Creating a Table Caption,” p. 371.
Text Boxes and Frames
From an accessibility standpoint, you should completely avoid using text boxes to set off content in a document. Text boxes are inaccessible; they are objects that float over the document and are out of the “visual range” of adaptive technology. In some instances, the use of text boxes might be unavoidable, but you often can achieve the same effect by using paragraph borders. Paragraph frames present the same degree of inaccessibility. They are objects that adaptive technology does not recognize.
Text boxes and frames are discussed in more detail in Chapter 8, “Working with Templates and Nonstandard Layouts,” p. 289.