RE: MS Office and Accessibility

Thanks David

Yes I tested both Word files saved as html via Office 97 and as web pages from
Office 2000, and also a simple spreadsheet saved as a web page from Excel 2000
using Lynx with Windows Eyes and all of these files were fine both viewed on
screen and with spoken output.

However they were not overly sophisticated files so would need to test for
robustness using a wider range of Office formatting options and functionality.
Also, I neglected to ask Julian in my email if he is embedding the files as
application specific resources because he wants the interactivity. If that is
the case then no, you can't (well in my experience any way) achieve that in a
non-browser specific way. Embedded interactivity requires IE 4 or higher.

Denise

Dr Denise L Wood
Lecturer: Professional Development (online teaching and learning)
University of South Australia
CE Campus, North Terrace, Adelaide SA 5000
Ph:    (61 8) 8302 2172 / (61 8) 8302 4472 (Tuesdays & Thursdays)
Fax:  (61 8) 8302 2363 / (61 8) 8302 4390
Mob: (0413 648 260)

Email:	Denise.Wood@unisa.edu.au
WWW:	http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/staff/homepage.asp?Name=Denise.Wood



-----Original Message-----
From: David Poehlman [mailto:poehlman1@home.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 23 October 2001 2:08 AM
To: Denise Wood; 'Scarlett Julian (ED)'; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: MS Office and Accessibility


have you tried them out with screen readers?  I often find that there
are no alt tags and that many of the links are marked up poorly.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Denise Wood" <Denise.Wood@unisa.edu.au>
To: "'Scarlett Julian (ED)'" <Julian.Scarlett@sheffield.gov.uk>;
<w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 12:33 PM
Subject: RE: MS Office and Accessibility


Julian

Can't you save the documents as html documents (if office 97) or web
pages (if
office 2000). I have views a few different files saved via Word and
Excel in IE
5, NS 4 and Lynx and they all open OK.

Denise

Dr Denise L Wood
Lecturer: Professional Development (online teaching and learning)
University of South Australia
CE Campus, North Terrace, Adelaide SA 5000
Ph:    (61 8) 8302 2172 / (61 8) 8302 4472 (Tuesdays & Thursdays)
Fax:  (61 8) 8302 2363 / (61 8) 8302 4390
Mob: (0413 648 260)

Email: Denise.Wood@unisa.edu.au
WWW:
http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/staff/homepage.asp?Name=Denise.Wood



-----Original Message-----
From: Scarlett Julian (ED) [mailto:Julian.Scarlett@sheffield.gov.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, 23 October 2001 1:02 AM
To: 'w3c-wai-ig@w3.org'
Subject: re: MS Office and Accessibility


Firstly, apologies for the "Hi all" greeting and the corporate
disclaimer
that my employer tags onto the end of all my emails for me. I have no
choice
but to post to public lists from work so you'll have to just pretend you
didn't see it ;-)

Secondly, my badly phrased original post has thrown up some interesting
answers. I accept the points about access of proprietary file formats
causing problems but what I was really after was whether or not the
presence
of a .doc or .xls or .ppt file opening within a browser ( I chose IE
because
I don't think NS automatically tries to open them) would cause problems
for
screen readers. Sorry, I should have been more specific in my original
query.

The users for this portion of the site are schools that all have a
common
desktop installation (MS Office 97, NT4, IE5+) and hence the specificity
of
my question. Ideally I would get all infomation presented in html but to
do
this I have to get the info owners in our organisation to agree. They
are
under the illusion that because their client group all have Office that
it
is ok to serve up Office files rather than html pages. I need a solid
argument why they can't do this .


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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