'Getting Word documents right the first time' - Details
[Why]
[How]
Before saving your Word document, you can improve its accessibility by optimising content elements such as headings, images, lists, tables and hyperlinks. Reviewing these content elements ensures that your Word document provides the greatest level of accessibility to all users.
Why?
Most users can visually scan a page to get an idea of the content and organisation. Users who are blind or have a visual impairment use screen readers that scan the page looking for section headings; this builds an outline of the page that can be displayed or read to the user.
A logical, uncluttered document will greatly benefit students with cognitive impairments, as they can apply a different style sheet to it (including for example, different text sizes and/or background colour) and it will work properly for them.
How?
Make a decision on the structure of your document; the main headings, the subheadings, etc. To do this:
Using Styles properly
- Highlight the text.
- Choose the style from the Style dropdown box (or Ctrl + Shift + S) (figure 1).
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If it is not there, add it by choosing Tools - Customise. In the Customise window select the Toolbars tab, select the box beside Formatting to select it, then Close.
Figure 1 Style dropdown box
Check your document's structure in Outline View
In Word, from the menu bar, select View then Outline. If your document is formatted correctly, the different levels of headings should show (figure 2).
Figure 2 The start of this document in Outline view
Insert screenshot of Outline View
Customising structural markup
If you wanted to create your personal heading level called Custom Heading 1, open the Styles Formatting selection under the Format menu in Word, and select the User-defined Style to walk through your options in creating your new heading.
You may create customs styles also. For example, do not use the Enter key to add space between paragraphs. Instead, select the "Spacing Before" and "Spacing After" paragraph properties to achieve this effect.
Customising structural markup
If you wanted to create your personal heading level called Custom Heading 1, open the Styles Formatting selection under the Format menu in Word, and select the User-defined Style to walk through your options in creating your new heading.
You may create customs styles also. For example, do not use the Enter key to add space between paragraphs. Instead, select the "Spacing Before" and "Spacing After" paragraph properties to achieve this effect.
Use list items properly
A bulleted or numbered list is another commonly used element within Word documents, also requiring certain oversight to ensure usability. The most important consideration is to make sure that you have appropriately used Word's bulleted list formatting. Do not manually enter an asterisk (*) or hyphen (-) to give the appearance of a list.
To turn on bullets and numbering:
- Select the text
- Select the appropriate button on the toolbar or choose Bullets or Numbering from the Format menu
- Select either a numbered list or a bulleted list (whatever suits your purposes).
Use Images properly
Add a caption to your image
- Select your image and choose Caption from the Insert menu to obtain the caption dialogue box. Type text to describe the image in the Caption edit box.
Add an alt tag to your image
When adding pictures to a document in either application, the alternate text must also be added in that program before it is saved and uploaded. Once the Word or PowerPoint file has been saved and uploaded, the alternate tags cannot be change or added.
Select your image and go to the Format menu.
Choose either Object or Picture (which one is available depends on the type of image you selected) .
Figure 3 : The tab of the Format Picture dialog box that appears
Once selected, you can add your text to the Alternative text box and choose OK .
It is not necessary to begin your alt text with Image of ... or Picture of ... because screen readers preface the alt text with Image: and browsers with images turned off display an image placeholder next to the text.
Use tables properly
Then select the tab for Column. If necessary, check the box for Preferred width . Use the Insert Table command under the Table menu or the Draw Table tool to create data tables, and try to a void tables with more than two levels of row and/or column headers.
Use proportional sizing (i.e. percentages) rather than absolute (i.e. fixed) sizing, when representing data in tables. The reason for this is that some users have older monitors with low resolutions and some users choose to set their resolutions lower so that output on the screen displays larger. Using relatively-sized tables ensures that the table appears the way you intended regardless of monitor size and resolution.
To format a table:
- Select the table
- Choose Table Properties on the Table menu
- Select Percent from the drop-down box for units.
- Choose OK .
This formats the table based on percentages rather than fixed numeric values, reducing the amount of scrolling a user must do to see the whole table.
The original column width should be maintained when you switch to percents. Sometimes, however, it resets all columns to equal widths so you may need to resize the columns for all tables in your document.
NOTE: Don't use tabs to simulate double-column text. Instead use the Columns command under the Format menu to create columns.
Use columns properly
- Select View , then Print Layout .
- Select the text you wish to format in columns.
- Then select Columns in the Standard toolbar.
- Select the number of columns desired.
start a new column by :
- Moving to the location within the document where you want to start the new column.
- Select Insert, then Break, then Column Break.
Use of text for links
Ensure the hyperlinked text is brief and meaningful, i.e., it should tell readers where the link will take them.
Don't: Click here to go to, e.g. EdNA's home page (some users don't even use a mouse, and so don't click at all to invoke a hyperlink)
Do: Go to EdNA's home page (http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/page1.html).
Make the hyperlinked text meaningful and including the URL in parentheses after it.
Don't: Visit http://www.tafe.tas.edu.au
Do: Visit TAFE Tasmania's website (http://www.tafe.tas.edu.au).
Saving your document
Now you have made all the preparations you can in Word. At this point, you have two options for saving and publishing the Word document.
- If you save the document to a . doc file and place it on the website, it is possible that some users may not be able to view the document because they do not have Word or a Word viewer program installed on their machine.
- If you choose the Save as Web Page option within Word to publish the document in HTML format, font will probably be fixed to Times New Roman which is designed for print, not for reading off computer monitors. Style sheets would also be embedded, thus fixing font sizes, so the Zoom function would be disabled.
The next sections will suggest some possible solutions, but before saving turn off Smart Quotes. When left on, they convert to a Unicode numeric character, unreadable for an older browser.
To turn off smart quotes:
- Select Autoformat on the Format menu
- Choose Options on the Table menu
- Deselect the option "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes"
Save a Rich Text Format version of your Word document - so that it can be viewed easily in older versions of Word, other applications, PDAs, etcetera
In Word, select File - Save as and in the Save as type choose Rich Text Format (*.rtf) at the bottom of the Save as box (figure 3)
insert new screen grab here...
Note:
Whilst providing a much smaller file size than Word document (thus decreasing download times), saving in RTF converts all images to bitmap. So if Word Art and images are present within the document, this may make the file size much larger.
However, it does additionally preserve structured layout and alt info for images. Therefore, RTF is recommended for documents where there are no images present.
Save As an accessible Web Page - using the conversion program called Office Accessibility Wizard
Don't Save as HTML (filtered) in Word - use the Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft ® Office.
- Download the free Office Accessibility Wizard available here (22.7mb)
- Open a Word document.
- Choose save as accessible web page from File menu.
- Select the Next and Back buttons to navigate:
- Enter your document title and author
- When selecting a background colour, make sure it contrasts with the text colour
- Enter alternative text and long descriptions when prompted
- Select Finish exit the Wizard.
Note: Due to TAFE's IS administrative policy you will need to log a job with the helpdesk to install the plug-in once you have downloaded it (as they may also need to install a .NET framework so you can run it off your PC).
References
Online Accessibility, Word Documents:
http://ltg-projects.ummu.umich.edu/~melledge/accessibilitysite/Word.htmlMonash University, Accessible Document Formats: http://www.monash.edu.au/staff/web/accessible-formats.html
WEBAIM'S TUTORIAL, Microsoft Accessibility Techniques : http://webaim.org/techniques/word/
MICROSOFT OFFICE ONLINE TRAINING, Create an Accessible Office Document : http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC063800961033