RE: MS Office and accessibility

in fairness though to the big company they do at least provide free viewers
for download for all their formats.  In some ways this is like pdf s except
that at leat Microsoft stuff is generally Accessible.

Harry

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Charles McCathieNevile
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 6:16 PM
To: Scarlett Julian (ED)
Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: MS Office and accessibility


Well, it will cause a problem for me - I don't own the required software,
and
am not prepared to buy it for reasons of security and available machine
resources. There is still a substantial minority who do not use IE. Since
they have to install something else by hand, it is unlikely that they are
doing it by accident, or that they really meant to use IE.

For people who happen to be prepared to shell out the money (this software
is
NOT free, it costs a lot for people who pay for it) and are used to it I am
told that Word is in fact a fairly accessible package for people who are
blind, although I don't know if that is affected by it being opened inside
IE.

regards

Charles McCathieNevile

On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Scarlett Julian (ED) wrote:

  Hi all

  I have a site that uses IEs ability to open MS Office files ( mainly Excel
  and Word ) within the browser window and am having trouble persuading the
  owners of the information that this is bad practice and the info should be
  served up as html with proprietary file formats only available as
downloads.
  Could anyone on this list tell me whether opening up a xls file will cause
  problems for visually impaired users and/or those using non-GUI browsers?
I
  want to persuade them to abandon their way of doing it in favour of what I
  consider to be a better way and any arguments I can use would be greatly
  appreciated.

  tia
  Julian

  Julian Scarlett
  Web Design & Document Management System Officer
  PPU
  Education Directorate
  Sheffield City Council
  0114 2735721
  mob 07904914976
  julian.scarlett@sheffield.gov.uk

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--
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409
134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617
258 5999
Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia
(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,
France)

Received on Monday, 22 October 2001 06:21:28 UTC