- From: Craig Hadley <craig@4thandgoal.com>
- Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:32:12 -0500
- To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Hello, From Charles McCathieNevile [The W3C slidemaker is open source, and lets you include pretty much anything you can include in an HTML page. You can find basic instructions...] This solution might work in Grahm's case but it is certainly not feasible as a "replacement" for Microsoft's PowerPoint. And I would hesitate to use it personally since one must "click" the mouse while over a small graphic in order to advance the slide. This might work if you are near the laptop while giving the presentation, but not if using a cordless mouse and moving about the room. Does anyone have more information on addressing the growing demand of placing PowerPoint presentations on the web in an accessible and 508 compliant manner? Some of the information I have gathered on a PowerPoint newsgroup around this issue follows. To summarize that information: 1) Use PowerPoint Export "Send to Microsoft Word" and go on your own from there; or 2) Use the commercial product PPT2HTML (http://www.rdpslides.com/ppt2html/) to create HTML from PowerPoint. Regards, Craig Hadley Madison, WI Question Asked on the Newsgroup: We have a client concerned about accessibility issues. He sent us the question below: "Do you know if you can add alt tags to images in PowerPoint 97/2000 presentations. I know you can add alt tags to presentations that are published as web pages, but what about slide shows. Also, will a screen readers be able to read the slide show or is there a built in reader in PowerPoint." Response 1: I don't know that adding alt tags to PowerPoint presentations would do much good in terms of text-to-speech within PowerPoint. The way to handle this is to open a presentation in PowerPoint. Then, from PowerPoint's file menu choose SEND TO MICROSOFT WORD. Once the presentation is in Word you can use WordSpeak to perform text-to-speech, customize voices, etc. The process can be automated by Macros. Both PowerPoint and Word support VBA so you could have a presentation play in PowerPoint and speak the text from Word. -Jim Gordon MVP Response 2: [I don't know that adding alt tags to PowerPoint presentations would do much good in terms of text-to-speech within PowerPoint.] Actually, quite a bit. Screen readers can/will read the alt tags for images and possibly other items they encounter. Much of what's in a PPT to HTML conversion is often a static image of the slide, so to a screen reader user, nothing is there. Nada. With alt tags, you can at least give them a clue, and there's an as yet ill supported HTML tag called LONGDESC that lets you provide a more extended description of the content. > The way to handle this is to open a presentation in PowerPoint. Then, from > PowerPoint's file menu choose SEND TO MICROSOFT WORD. > > Once the presentation is in Word you can use WordSpeak to perform > text-to-speech, customize voices, etc. Neat trick! Most screen reader users would probably prefer to use their own reader, I'd expect. Programs like these things have LOTS of features you'd never guess at until you've watched them in use, stuff that a normal speech program might not have. If the client has the PC version of PowerPoint, suggest that they review http://www.rdpslides.com/ppt2html/ One of PPT2HTML's design goals was to help make PowerPoint presentations accessible to people who use screen readers. It doesn't do everything I have in mind for it yet, but I run the results through Bobby (an accessibility verification tool) periodically and it does pretty well. -- Steve Rindsberg, PowerPoint MVP Got a PowerPoint wish/suggestion/beef? Email mswish@microsoft.com with PowerPoint in the subject line Get the PPT FAQs at http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/ RnR PPTools - http://www.rdpslides.com/pptools/
Received on Tuesday, 17 July 2001 10:27:27 UTC