SV: Microsoft PowerPoint accessibility

Hi, Dominique!

No, the report is not public. Originally Microsoft (Norway) wanted this report. However because of much noice around ODF/OOXML and Norwegian standardization they decided not to make the report available. As far as I know this was not because MS did not like the result or something like that, but the debate was so hot in Norway that they did not publish the results. The report was however sent to the department working with file formats and standardization. I know the contents quite well because I contributed quite a lot in user testing and comparisons between the file formats (PDF, OOXML and ODF was included).

The main results can be summarized as (for screen reader users):

- Microsoft Office is more accessible than Open office in Windows
(Typical problems in Open Office included troubles with following focus etc.)
- Commersial screen readers are better than open source solutions for Windows
(This is probably still true even if NVDA is very usable)
- ODF/OO XML are quite similar when talking about file format accessibility features
(Originally ODF 1.0 was used in Norway. This file format do not have all accessibility features. However this was fixed in version 1.1 already)
- Open office worked quite OK in Linux with Orca
- Converting from ODF to OOXML (and vise versa) worked OK with some minor problems. Text (ODT) worked best. Spreadsheets and other formats was some more difficult (one reason is that Excel has more features, at least this is what I think. Open office do not have database as far as I know, at least this was not part of the work).
- PDF is as you know quite complicated. Can work OK, but is not decirable from an accessibility point of view (at least for large documents, even if the tag'ing is correctly done).

Best regards

Morten Tollefsen
www.medialt.no, +47 908 99 305
MSN: mortentollefsen@hotmail.com, Skype: morten.tollefsen
twitter.com/mortentollefsen


-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] På vegne av Dominique BURGER
Sendt: 13. august 2010 15:31
Til: Phil Spencer
Kopi: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Emne: Re: Microsoft PowerPoint accessibility

Hi,
We are facing a this type of question with a major ICT company asking for solutions, i.e. tools, and guidelines, making possible for their employees to generate "accessible presentations" with minimal knowledge about accessibility.
Has anybody experienced or evaluated the virtual508 tool produced by Illinois University ( http://www.virtual508.com/ ) ?

Talking about formats supporting PPTX and ODP, Morten, is the Norwegian study you mention in your email publicly available ?

Thanks,
Dominique Burger
Université Pierre et Marie Curie -
Président de l'association BrailleNet

Phil Spencer a écrit :
> Hi,
>
> I'm interested in the general accessibility of Microsoft PowerPoint 
> for the creation and editing of presentations. Thus far the 
> information I've found on the web has been inconclusive, and I think 
> the opinions of a wider group would be very useful.
>
> As part of a project I'm working on we're considering PowerPoint as 
> part of a solution for the creation and editing of presentations. The 
> rough idea is that there will be a web based library of pre-approved 
> PowerPoint slides that users can package together to make a custom 
> presentation, which they can further edit or customise offline using 
> PowerPoint. However, if despite our best efforts to ensure the web 
> based part of the solution is accessible it turns out that PowerPoint 
> itself is a problem for some users then perhaps it's better that we 
> consider some other options.
>
> Does anyone have any knowledge of how well PowerPoint works with 
> different assisitive technologies?
>
> How "accessible" is PowerPoint considered to be in practice as an 
> authoring tool?
>
> Or does anyone know of any resources discussing these issues?
>
> Any thoughts or suggestions would be very welcome.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Phil Spencer.


--
Dominique Burger
INSERM UMR_S968
Université Pierre et Marie Curie - UPMC B23 Président de l'association BrailleNet 9, quai Saint Bernard - 75005 - Paris tel : +33 1 44 27 34 35 / 25 32

BrailleNet :	www.braillenet.org
AccessiWeb : 	www.accessiweb.org

European eACcessibility Forum - Paris- 12 april 2010 eAccessibility in Public Services in Europe L'accessibilité numérique des services publics en Europe
http://inova.snv.jussieu.fr/evenements/colloques/colloques/index.php?c=62

Received on Friday, 13 August 2010 15:13:36 UTC