INTRODUCTION



Accessibility Tips

Acrobat, Word, Powerpoint and Media

ODOT SPR ITEM NUMBER 2102

By

Rudy Brockelsby

Transportation Manager I

Oklahoma Department of Transportation

Engineering Services Branch

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

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November 2008

Table of Contents

Accessibility Tips i

INTRODUCTION 1

PDF ACCESSIBILITY CHECKPOINTS 3

Word Documents 8

Alternative Text and Captioning 8

Headings and Formatting 9

Hyperlinks – URL’s and E-mail 10

Tables 12

Powerpoint Presentations 13

A Word About Media… 13

In Closing 14

Appendix A 15

Tips From Other Various SourcesTips for Creating Accessible Word Documents 15

Tips for Creating Accessible Word Documents 16

Tips for Creating Accessible PowerPoint Documents 16

Accessible Word Processor Documents 18

Images 18

Microsoft Word 2003 18

Microsoft Word 2007 18

Styles and Headings 19

Tabled Information 19

General Presentational Issues 20

Accessible Spreadsheets and Presentational Documents 21

Spreadsheets 21

Presentational Documents 21

Charts and Graphs 22

Media Documents 24

Types of Media Documents 24

Making Media Accessible 24

Captioning 24

Creating Captioned Media 25

Captioning Services 26

Audio Description 26

Transcription 26

Portable Document Format (PDF) Files 27

Acrobat and Accessibility 27

How to Make Your PDF Accessible 27

Adobe Acrobat Professional 27

Adding Document Language to Entire Document 28

Adding Alternate Text 29

Other Methods 29

Images 30

ALT means ALTernative 30

For decorative images, leave it blank 30

If an image contains text, replicate the text in full 30

For charts and graphs, try to summarize the trend 30

For everything else, be imaginative! 30

Appendix B 31

Tips From Other Sources 31

And 31

Useful SitesSome websites for more information and links to useful sites: 31

Some websites for more information and links to useful sites: 32

List of Figures

Figure 1 Documents Page 1

Figure 2 Full Check for Accessibility 3

Figure 3 Document Properties - Tab 1 4

Figure 4 Document Properties - Tab 4 5

Figure 5 Document Properties - Tab 6 6

Figure 6 Tagging figures if they were not pre-tagged 7

Figure 7 Format Picture in Word Document 8

Figure 8 The Caption Box 8

Figure 9 Use of Headings 9

Figure 10 The Styles and Figures Tool 10

Figure 11 Editing the hyperlink 11

Figure 12 The Screen Tip box 11

Figure 13 How to Place a Caption and Alternate Text on a Table 12

INTRODUCTION

The Engineering Services Branch is in a continued effort to increase compliancy with State Statute O.S. 62 ( 41.5e and Section 508 of the Americans with disabilities act. As we increase our presence on the internet and supply more and more agencies with electronic documentation, it is of the utmost that we maintain, at the very least, no less than minimal requirements.

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Figure 1 Documents Page

Some of these requirements will include, but not limited to: captions, alternative text, bookmarks, use of headers by level, use of proportionate text (aerial, sans-serif, verdana, Helvetica, etc.), non use of colors like yellow or light pastels (if the color disappears on a black & white copier than the color-blind can not see it. Structure the document flows in a proper reading order (blind readers can not follow a print order set-up).

PDF ACCESSIBILITY CHECKPOINTS

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Figure 2 Full Check for Accessibility

Getting there…

From “Advanced” on the menu bar, “Accessibility” on the drop down menu, and selecting “Full Check” on the next menu.

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Figure 3 Document Properties - Tab 1

Getting there…

From “File” on the menu bar, select “Properties” on the drop down menu.

Fill in “Title” “Author”, “Subject” and “Keywords” (if any).

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Figure 4 Document Properties - Tab 4

The preferred is “Bookmarks Panel and Page” for the navigation. When a Word document is properly laid out, it will build these bookmarks for you, otherwise you will have to create them inside Acrobat.

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Figure 5 Document Properties - Tab 6

On this tab, make sure that the “Language” is set to English. When a PDF is created, this field is blank.

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Figure 6 Tagging figures if they were not pre-tagged

If you didn’t previously have alternative text on a figure, it can be fixed through the “TouchUp Reading Order” Properties from “Advanced” on the menu bar, “Accessibility” on the drop-down menu.

Word Documents

Alternative Text and Captioning

On images, you’ll need to right click and select “Format Picture” and select the “Web” tab.

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Figure 7 Format Picture in Word Document

Enter the alternative text for the picture. Should the picture, chart, graph, etc. need to have a caption, right click on the image and select caption…

Figure 8 The Caption Box

Complete the automatic caption information with the description of what is represented and try to avoid using text boxes.

Headings and Formatting

The use of Headings has more than one purpose. Not only does it make the document accessible for the keyboarder but it will also help you generate an automatic Table of Contents.

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Figure 9 Use of Headings

Figure 10 The Styles and Figures Tool

Use the styles and formatting tool for easy format of the text. This can also be used for footnotes, endnotes, references, etc.

In addition to generating an automatic Table of Contents, by properly tagging various elements, Word can also generate the List of Tables, Graphs and Index.

Hyperlinks – URL’s and E-mail

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These are both handled in the same way. After the link is typed, remove focus from the link by either a space, tab or enter. Right click on the link and select “EDIT HYPERLINK”.

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Figure 11 Editing the hyperlink

Then select the “ScreenTip” button…

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Figure 12 The Screen Tip box

The text that is entered here is displayed when the mouse hovers over the link and is read by readers.

Tables

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Figure 13 How to Place a Caption and Alternate Text on a Table

Placing captions and alternative text on a table is much the same as on a picture. The only exception is that you have to hover the mouse over the table until this image pops up in the upper left corner of the table. Right click on this [pic] and the pop-up menu choices appear. Start with caption and then the formatting.

Powerpoint Presentations

Images in Powerpoint are handled in the same was as in Word where you add alternative text on the “Web” tab after right clicking on the image and selecting “Format Picture.

Another additional feature might be to “Insert” from the menu and selecting “Comment”.

When possible, use a title for each slide. This will show up under the “Outline” tab in the left side-bar.

Last, but not least, is the use of the Click to add notes at the bottom of each slide. This is not only helpful to the presenter but can be read by the reader.

A Word About Media…

With media presentations there is a lot to be considered. The use of background narration, the narrator, closed captioning for each and the big one… Transcription. Although the media might be accessible, a plain text version of the streaming video has to be included (For Plain Text Readers).

In Closing

Use high contrasting colors when using backgrounds or background colors.

Try to refrain from using colors such as yellow or light pastels.

If the colors don’t show when printing or copying in black and white or if the grayscale contrast is such that the shades can not be disconcerted, try higher contrasting colors and/or patterns instead.

Use Headers and styles best suited for the type of font. Automatic table of contents, lists and the index can be generated from these styles.

Use captions, alternative text and comments.

Appendix A

Tips From Other Various Sources

Tips for Creating Accessible Word Documents

Ensure the content is NOT a scanned image of text. You should use OCR (optical character recognition) software to scan hard copies such that your scanned text is not an image but actually could be edited.

Structure the content with hierarchical headings (such as title, heading 1, heading 2, etc.) by applying Styles and Formatting in Word.

Tag all images (such as photos, clip art, diagrams, etc.) in the content with text equivalent information such as Alternative text or Caption*.

Avoid using Text Boxes for inserting text information.

Format the layout or spacing between paragraphs by customizing Style and Formatting in Word and not by pressing the Enter key in the keyboard.

Ensure the hyperlinked text, if any, include the description of the hyperlink’s destination and the web site address (URL).

Apply the Heading Rows Repeat function in the Table menu for table that carries over to another page.

Use high contrasting colors when using backgrounds or background colors.

Try to refrain from using colors such as yellow or light pastels. If the colors don’t show or if the grayscale contrast is such that the color separation can not be determined, when printing or copying in black and white, try other colors.

Tips for Creating Accessible PowerPoint Documents

Create each new slide by using the Insert New Slide function.

Make sure the Slide Layout in this new slide has the appropriate Text Placeholders -areas with dotted line that contain “Click to add text/title”.

Use Text Placeholders for inserting text in your slides and avoid using Text Boxes for inserting important information. Text inserted in Text Placeholders will be structured in terms of headings.

For a text-to-speech transcript, export the Outline View that contains all the text information to Word as Outline by selecting the Send to Word function in the File menu.

Ensure each slide should at least have a title.

Tag all the images (such as photos, clip art, diagrams, etc.) in the slides with text equivalent information such as alternative text.

Ensure the hyperlinked text, if any, should include the description of the hyperlink’s destination and the web site address (URL).

Create a table within PowerPoint by selecting the Table function the Insert menu because and a text-to-speech (or screen reader) software can recognize text in this table.

Create a chart within PowerPoint by selecting the Chart function in the Insert menu. Include the description of the trends in the chart as alternative text.

Use high contrasting colors when using backgrounds or background colors.

Try to refrain from using colors such as yellow or light pastels. If the colors don’t show or if the grayscale contrast is such that the color separation can not be determined, when printing or copying in black and white, try other colors.

Accessible Word Processor Documents

For most word processed documents, the accessibility guidelines are rather simple and easy to accomplish. There are four principal areas of concern: images, styles and headings, tabled information and general presentational issues.

Images

Images present the most difficulty to persons using screen reader technology. These devices convert the written text into spoken text so that persons who have vision limitations can “read” the document presented on their computer screen. The same rules apply to making documents accessible to another class of Assistive Technology, Braille readers, which similarly convert text into Braille for people who read Braille.

When a document contains an image that is vital to the understanding of the document, the screen reader generally will alert the reader that there is an image but cannot communicate anything else unless the image has been assigned an “alternative description.” All of the major word processors have the capacity to add this alternative description to an image.

Microsoft Word 2003

The step by step directions for Microsoft Word 2003 are:

1. Insert image or clip art using the standard Insert dropdown menu

2. Right click on image (or highlight the image and chose Format from the menu bar)

3. Choose Format Picture

4. Choose Web “tab”

5. Insert descriptive text

6. Click OK

Microsoft Word 2007

The step-by-step directions for Microsoft Word 2007 are a bit different:

1. Insert image or clip art using the Insert tab on the Ribbon

2. Click on the image and it will create a new tab on the Ribbon called Picture Tools Format

3. Click on Picture Tools Format and choose the Size box on the Ribbon (this should be the box furthest to the right).

4. In the lower right corner, there is an icon that will open a new dialog box, click on this to get to the Size dialog box.

5. Choose the ALT tab at the top of the dialog box

6. Insert descriptive text

7. Click Close

Note: The procedure for MS Office is much more complex and though there are keystroke alternatives to all of these steps, they are rather complex. Please contact the writer for assistance with this feature.

It should be noted that when a word processed document is converted into another format such as a PDF file or HTML document, the alternate description will often be converted along with the image. However, this is not always the case – this will be discussed in other articles in this series.

For our purposes here, the “alternate description” should be kept as simple as possible; the exception is when the image is a chart or graph. In this case, it makes sense to generally provide the description of the chart/graph in the body of the document and then refer to the chart/graph as a “figure” (i.e., Figure 1, Figure A, etc.). Since charts and graphs are by their nature visual amenities, they rarely have use for many users with complete blindness. For users with visual impairment, it makes sense to provide the chart/graph is a size that can be readily viewed perhaps providing this on its own page or as a separate attachment.

Styles and Headings

Styles and Headings are one of the most overlooked tools that have been included in the modern word processor. All word processor applications contain this tool but few people get into the habit of using them.

Using styles and headings can make your documents easier to navigate by persons using a screen reader. The reason is that certain screen reading technologies (not all) allow the user to navigate or “scan” through the document by jumping or skipping from heading to heading. In much the same way a person without visual impairments may quickly scan down the length of a document to determine its content and intent, the screen reader user, by skipping from heading to heading can accomplish the same.

Tabled Information

The use of tables in documents is a common practice and for the display of data and certain information, tables are a vital component. The chief concern about tabled information is order in which the content will be read by the screen reader. Care must be taken to ensure that when the content is read by a screen reader, it is communicated in a way that makes sense.

Screen readers read the information on the screen in the standard left-to-right and top-to-bottom fashion and thus will read the content cell by cell until it reaches the end of the table. The default setting for most tables is that the top row of information provides a descriptive “heading” for the information contained in the column below. Care must therefore also be taken that the information is lined up in the correct column.

While tabled information will always present challenges to persons using screen readers, they can be particularly problematic if the data within in presented in an order that is illogical or confusing. Once again, care must be taken to review the tabled data to determine it makes sense to a person using a screen reader.

Tables in word processor documents should only be used to present data and not used for layout purposes. If your document requires special layout (e.g., information with sidebars and text boxes) you should use a different application (i.e., desktop publishing software like Adobe InDesign or MS Publisher) to prepare these documents. We will discuss these applications in a separate article.

General Presentational Issues

Last but not least, the preparation of word processed documents should take into consideration the needs of people who have vision problems. First, font size and style should be taken into consideration. Generally speaking, font sizes below a 12 are more difficult to read; thus, smaller font size should be avoided.

The use of background images in either electronic or print documents should always be avoided. Equally you should take care to ensure that your documents provide sufficient contrast between the text and the background. The use of color text can often be problematic for persons with color blindness and should be avoided. These colorful features have become somewhat popular in some e-mail applications (often referred to as “stationary”). It’s generally a good idea to refrain from using these features altogether.

Accessible Spreadsheets and Presentational Documents

Spreadsheets

When spreadsheets are to be used to create documents in a final form for public use, it is most often converted into another format (e.g., placed as a table in a word processor document, or converted to Adobe Acrobat PDF or HTML form). In these cases, care must be taken to ensure that the columns and rows are labeled clearly and understandably and “tagged” appropriately (we’ll discuss tagging for PDF and HTML documents in a later article). It should be noted that converting spreadsheet data into alternate forms usually requires an extensive amount of time and testing. Occasionally, tabled information can be very complex and despite the required tagging, may still prove to be very confusing to all users but particularly for people using screen readers and other assistive technology. It should be remembered that tables are intended to support what is written in the document and should not be presented separately from the main document. That said, authors of documents containing large data sets should take care to ensure their descriptive text is understandable to the largest possible audience.

Presentational Documents

Presentational documents have become very popular in training programs as a colorful means of supporting the speakers’ comments and providing a graphical backdrop to live presentations. The most popular application in this class of office applications, Microsoft PowerPoint has become perhaps the most widely used and its name as invaded the lexicon to become the generic term for presentational documents.

In its intended format – a learning experience where the PowerPoint “slides” are projected onto a large screen or monitor - the content would obviously be inaccessible to persons with limited vision or blindness. In many of these learning situations, the presenter provides the learners with a paper copy of the “slides” as a handout. But again, in this modality, the information presented will be by and large inaccessible to persons with visual impairments and blindness. However, presentational documents are increasingly being provided to the learners in a digital format that they can view on their own computers either in real time or available for download after the live presentation. It is in this digital format that we will discuss accessibility issues.

For the purposes of accessibility, the digital version of a PowerPoint presentation should meet all of the same guidelines as a word processed documents as discussed in the previous article. Since images often make up a large part of most presentations, care must be taken to ensure that adequate alternative descriptions are used for all graphics in the presentation. In most cases these images are what I like to call “pretty pictures,” simple images that decorate or “dress up” a presentation. All of these images need to be given the alternate (ALT) description.

The steps for adding ALT text to an image in MS PowerPoint 2007 are as follows:

1. Insert image or clip art using the standard Insert method.

2. Highlight the image by double clicking on it

3. Choose the Picture Tools - Format tab from the Ribbon

4. From the Size and Properties tab on the Ribbon (furthest to the right), choose the drop down to open the Size and Properties dialog box

5. Choose the Alt Text tab (furthest to the right) from the top of this dialog box.

6. Add a description of the chart/graph in the space provided.

7. Close the box and Save the document.

Those familiar with HTML code know about the Alternate attribute in the image tag, the so called ALT Attribute, and the use of the “null” or “empty” ALT attribute when dealing with non-essential images (this will be discussed in more detail in a later article). It should be noted that unlike coding HTML, there is no “null” version in these applications. Therefore care must be taken to provide a brief and succinct description.

The use of presentational documents independent of a presentation can often be confusing. The MS PowerPoint application allows for the addition of “speaker notes” in text form or recorded as an aural Narration to the document. While this latter method may seem to be the most natural and easy to accomplish, it presents an accessibility challenge to users with hearing disabilities. Thus the “speaker notes” in text form is the most accessible way to provide this feature.

Charts and Graphs

Charts and graphs present a unique challenge to those creating accessible documents of any type. As these features are generally considered to be “visual aids” they may represent problems for users with visual disabilities who rely on screen readers and other assistive technology.

As a general rule, information shared in chart or graph form should always be done to supplement and support the content provided in written form. In other words, charts and graphs should not be provided independently of the written report or document and care needs to be taken to explain fully, in written form, that information which is contained in the graphic.

If a chart or graph is used in a working spreadsheet document made with Microsoft Excel 2007 you may still create ALT text for the chart using the following steps:

1. Highlight the chart by double clicking on it

2. Choose the Chart Tools tab from the Ribbon

3. Choose the Format tab on the Chart Tools Ribbon

4. From the Size and Properties tab on the Ribbon (furthest to the right), choose the drop down to open the Size and Properties dialog box

5. Choose the Alt Text tab (furthest to the right) from the top of this dialog box.

6. Add a description of the chart/graph in the space provided.

7. Close the box and Save the document.

Media Documents

By and large, documents made with video and audio content are not a problem except when the content becomes inaccessible to all users. The accessibility problem occurs most commonly when the document presents content using the spoken word thus making it inaccessible to users with deafness and hearing impairments. It may also be inaccessible to users with blindness if the content is present visually in a way the user cannot access or use the information.

Types of Media Documents

For this discussion, we are referring primarily to web video and audio files such as QuickTime Movies, Windows Media Player files and the like. This list would also include video files created with Adobe/Macromedia Flash commonly called Flash Video. It is noted that Flash can also be used to create “rich media” documents which are essentially animations. These types of animations are also sometimes used for navigation which presents an even greater accessibility challenge.

Making Media Accessible

Accessibility guidelines in the United States require that when video content is presented on the WWW, it needs to have the audio content provided in an equivalent caption which is synchronized with the presentation. Audio-only documents may be captioned or transcribed and a copy of the transcript provided. Without a doubt, creating accessible video documents is much more complicated and will likely require the services of professionals skilled in this type of production.

Captioning

Converting video documents into an accessible format is typically accomplished using captioning that is synchronized with the video so that the words are displayed at the same time they are spoken. Captions come in a number of different formats and are created in several different ways depending on the type of technology in use. Techniques include closed captioning and open captioning.

Most people are familiar with the closed captions used on broadcast television. The technology to deliver this service, developed in the 1970s to help provide services to the deaf and hard of hearing communities, has been required on all televisions sold in the United States for decades. Compared to web-based systems of captioning, the close captioned system on television is very limited and can only be controlled by the “decoder” built into the television set.

While closed captioning is text that is transmitted at the same time, but separately from the content, the open captioning technique uses text that permanently embedded in the content. This type of captioning, which is similar to the “subtitles” seen in foreign language films, can be controlled by the author/designer in terms of style and location, but not by the user except in cases when the content is offered in two formats (captioned and not captioned).

Authors using the web to share video or audio content with the public can use either closed or open captioning techniques. Most of the media players (e.g., Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player, RealPlayer, etc.) currently used in the personal computer industry are capable of displaying closed captioned text in the player. These features generally may be turned off and on by the user.

The text could also be open captioned and embedded in the video. In this technique, the user will not be able to turn the captioning off. It is also noted that most open captioned media, when played in a small media player, is nearly impossible to read. As such, this is not the preferred method.

In live (or real time) closed captioning situations, the services of a trained captioner or captionist are typically required. These individuals possess stenographer skills and utilize specialized equipment to capture up to 250 words per minute with 98% accuracy. More information about captioning services is provided below.

There are also some new innovative techniques that can be used to close caption live content. CaptionMic is a system that produces captions with the help of speech recognition technology. With this technology, a trained “voice captioner” repeats or echoes what is spoken into a microphone attached to a computer which runs the application. The application converts the voice captioner’s words into text and inputs them into the captioning software. (See ). It is noted that speech-to-text technology has still not advanced to the point that the systems can translate the words of more than one speaker at a time. Accuracy of speech-to-text systems, though improving, still is less than 100%.

Creating Captioned Media

Once the spoken words are captured, the process of creating an actual captioned product depends on the type of media application and player being considered. Regretfully, there are no universal standards at this time and the software and methods used to create captioned media vary based upon the media application. The two most commonly used standards are Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) and Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange (SAMI). SMIL is used in QuickTime and RealPlayer; SAMI is used with Windows Media Player. In both standards, the text used for the caption is saved with synchronizing information (time stamps) identifying when the text should appear.

There are a number of software applications, including some free and open source versions, available to help author/designers add captions to video/audio media.

Captioning Services

Finding a trained captionist or captioner may be the largest and most expensive challenge to organizations producing live video/audio content for the web. There are a number of professionals around the United State who can provide this service. Given some new technologies, the captioner no longer needs to be in the same room with the speakers to be able to capture the spoken work. In the so called “remote captioning” method, the captioner can be located anywhere as long as they have direct telephone access to the speakers. One particular technique called Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is sponsored by the National Court Reporters Foundation and supported by the National Court Reporters Association's CART Task Force. The National Court Reporters Association has established training and certification standards.

Audio Description

Audio description is a technique used to help users “visualize” what is appearing on the screen. The technique involves having an “announcer” describe the visual content in as much detail as possible. The audio description is an enhancement of the caption, not a replacement. Though technically not required by accessibility standards, the technique is growing in popularity. See examples at

Transcription

As noted earlier, audio-only documents may be captioned or transcribed and a copy of the transcript provided. Transcripts do not necessarily contain a verbatim record of the spoken word as they can also contain additional information which helps the reader understand the content (see also audio descriptions). Transcripts can also be created without the use of a trained captioner or captionist making them less expensive to produce.

As noted on the WebAIM website, transcripts are often preferred by screen reader users. “Most proficient screen reader users set their assistive technology to read at a rate much faster than most humans speak. This allows the screen reader user to access the transcript of the video and get the same content in less time than listening to the actual audio content.” (See )

Portable Document Format (PDF) Files

Acrobat and Accessibility

First, the PDF document must created from a document containing actual content. This means that the PDF cannot be made from a scanned image. Second, one must be use Adobe Acrobat Professional (version 8 or 9) to scan and “test” the document for accessibility. Third, the person reading the PDF document should be using the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader (at least version 7). And last, the user should have installed on their computer a fairly current version of their screen reading software.

How to Make Your PDF Accessible

Adobe Acrobat Professional

The easiest way to create an accessible PDF file is to use Adobe Acrobat Professional 8 and make sure you test the document with the Accessibility Checker that is built into the application. This wizard will scan the PDF file and identify any accessibility issues in the document. It will also provide a detailed report on what the issues are and specific directions for fixing the issues. In most cases Acrobat Professional also contains the tools needed to “fix” accessibility issues and modify the PDF document without needing access to the original document from which the PDF was made.

Although you can create new documents with Acrobat Professional (the editor is very limited and buggy), documents should still be written and designed in other applications and either “imported” (File > Create PDF > From File>) or saved in PDF from the other application and then tested with Accessibility Checker.

In testing a multitude of “imported” word processed documents, three common errors emerged. They were: 1) the absence of the document language, 2) the absence of appropriate alternative text descriptions for images, and 3) numerous situations where the reading order of content was judged to be out of sequence. While all three of these issues can be fixed with Acrobat Professional, some may be avoided if the original document is designed correctly. General office documents of all types should be constructed using the accessibility modifications we have detailed in the previous articles in this series. While doing so will often result in converted files being fully accessible PDF files, in our testing, accessibility errors were still found more often than not.

Fixing PDFs with Acrobat Professional can range from the very simple to fairly complex. In some cases, the converted file could not be “fixed” by Acrobat Professional and we were told by the Accessibility Checker to return to the original document and make modifications there.

Adding document language information and alternative text for images can be accomplished quickly by following a few simple steps (see below). However, fixing a PDF where the content is not in the correct sequence can be fairly time consuming. The process, called “tagging the document,” involves identifying sections of the text, including heading, footnotes, images and other features and tagging them with the appropriate content code. While Acrobat Professional will do a pretty good job in identifying these sections automatically, occasional one tagged section will be in the wrong sequential order. If the PDF were shared with a person using a screen reader, the user would likely hear the content in the wrong order and easily become confused.

To test this experience in preparation for this article, we used the Read Out Loud feature of the Adobe Acrobat Reader to mimic what a person using a screen reader might hear. We tested a PDF document that had been identified by the Accessibility Checker as one which might have some sequencing problems. In this particular document, a legal brief, the author had made rather extensive use of footnotes. When the Read Out Loud application began to “read” the document it read the footnote markers as numbers (which contextually made no sense) and when it got to the bottom of the page, the application read the footnoted content as thought it was part of the main content of the document. In this example, it is fairly clear that simply converting a document of this type into PDF without the significant modifications and re-tagging, rendered the final PDF as significantly inaccessible to persons using screen readers.

The issue of content being out of sequence is particularly a problem with documents created with desktop publishing applications such as MS Publisher. As these applications allow designers to place the content in any location on the page, their conversion to PDFs should be avoided. It should however be noted that the desktop publishing application Adobe InDesign (and formerly PageMaker) does contain an export feature that will generally convert the document into an accessible, correctly tagged PDF file. However, as in all cases with PDF, the document should always be tested for accessibility before being distributed.

The step-by-step directions and detailed video tutorials for using the Accessibility Checker and all of the accessibility features of Acrobat Professional are available on the Adobe Acrobat Accessibility training resources website

Here are directions for remediating the two most common problems:

Adding Document Language to Entire Document

Choose File> Properties> Advanced tab and click on the Language field (the last dropdown input box at the bottom of the screen) and choose the language for the document from the choices available. Typically we will choose “English US.” Note: sections of the document that are in a different language can also be identified by choosing the section from within the Tag tree and then following the directions above.

Adding Alternate Text

To add alternate text to an image,

1. Choose Tools> Advanced Editing> TouchUp Object Tool.

2. Click on the image.

3. Right click and choose Properties…from the context menu.

4. Click in the Tag Tab and fill in the alternate text field.

To add alternate text to tags in the tags panel, select the tag, choose Options> Properties, click on the Tag tab, and fill in the alternate text field.

Other Methods

As noted, there are a number of free and low cost applications that will convert word processor (and other format) files into PDF including a free plug-in for MS Office 2007 (see )

To ensure that your final PDF is accessible, the original document needs to incorporate all of the accessibility modifications which we have detailed in previous articles in this series. For example, all images inserted into the original document must have alternative text descriptions added. The document language is generally set in the default settings of the office application and need only be changed when a section of the document has a language change. In our testing, we discovered that less than half of the MS-Word documents that were saved or imported into PDF format had retained the document language information.

Word processor documents that have used the correct forms of headings will generally convert correctly. Most – but NOT all - files converted into accessible PDFs even when they were correctly designed in the original application. Therefore it is essential to check your PDF documents with the Accessibility Checker in Acrobat Professional especially if you intend to post your PDFs on a website or make them available to the general public.

Images

ALT means ALTernative

The alt attribute is meant as an alternative to the image. When writing alt text, it is important to ask yourself what information the image is conveying.

For decorative images, leave it blank

Most sites contain a large number of images which are there for purely decorative purposes: things like spacer gifs, images forming the corner of a pretty drop shadow effect, floral patterns attached to item headers. All of these should have their alt attributes left empty. They add no extra information to the content, so as far as a screen reader or text browser is concerned they do not exist.

If an image contains text, replicate the text in full

Images containing text are frequently used when a non-standard typeface is required by a site design. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this technique from an accessibility point of view, provided the alt text exactly replicates the text on the image. There are no exceptions to this rule: if an image contains text, the alt text must be the same. This is particularly important when images are used for navigation elements that also act as links.

For charts and graphs, try to summarize the trend

Charts and graphs are one of the harder image types to make accessible. The phrase "a picture speaks a thousand words" definitely applies here. Often though, a chart will be being used to highlight a specific trend. The alt text can therefore be used to summarize that trend, for example "unemployment rates rose from 5% in January to 7% in March". The longdesc attribute may become useful here (more on that below).

For everything else, be imaginative!

The above advice covers the most common easy cases; for images that are there for a purpose and are not covered above you really need to use your imagination. What information is the image conveying? For example, a photograph of your Uncle may be served by "My Uncle, standing in our living room, holding our black and white cat". Writing suitable alt attributes for photographs is particularly difficult. There are no hard and fast guidelines, so it is up to you to make the best of a tricky situation.

Appendix B

Tips From Other Sources

And

Useful Sites

Some websites for more information and links to useful sites:

















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