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Thread: PPT to clean HTML
Number of posts in this thread: 22 (In chronological order)
From: Glenda
Date: Tue, Dec 14 2004 3:56PM
Subject: PPT to clean HTML
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Anyone know of a quick way to convert powerpoint presentations into clean
HTML? I tried the simple 'save as html', but there is all the MS Office
styles I don't want. The code has to meet the Government of Canada CLF
Standards.
I've started copying and pasting from powerpoint to Dreamweaver, but that is
going to take more time than I can bill for and I'd rather not eat too many
hours here.
Also, while I'm here, I have an ALT that has English and French, ie a
Government of Canada department logo. How do I indicate the change in
LANG???
And, of course, any responses are needed urgently as I'm on a very tight
deadline.
Thanks kindly,
Glenda
Soaring Eagle Communications
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From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Tue, Dec 14 2004 4:40PM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, glenda wrote:
> Anyone know of a quick way to convert powerpoint presentations into clean
> HTML? I tried the simple 'save as html', but there is all the MS Office
> styles I don't want.
Using HTML Kit would probably help to get rid of it, though it's not
perfect.
But the real problem is: if you could automatically convert a PowerPoint
presentation into a good, Web-friendly HTML document, then it was a really
lousy presentation - like my presentations used to be! A PowerPoint
presentation should be very concise, showing mostly just the key words,
acting as an aid to understanding the spoken (and gestured) presentation.
It's not meant to be readable in isolation, as standalone material.
To convert it to a Web page, you would normally need to _minimally_
change most of the presentation's content into subheadings and add at
least a sentence or two below each of them. This is hard work.
> Also, while I'm here, I have an ALT that has English and French, ie a
> Government of Canada department logo. How do I indicate the change in
> LANG???
You don't. Language changes cannot be indicated inside attribute values,
since they are pure text. (Well, Unicode has "language tag characters",
but nobody wants to use them, and they surely would not improve
accessibility.)
On the other hand, why would you write a bilingual alt text? The page
where the logo appears is either in English or in French, so the alt text
should use that language, e.g. alt="Government of Canada, department of
silly walks.". Bilingual pages should be avoided, but admittedly some
pages more or less need to be bilingual, e.g. a page for selecting
language (in cases where automatic language negotiation has failed).
If you wish to follow the letter of WAI recommendations (much more than
WAI itself does), you could use a little trick: use the logo image,
say logo.gif, and a dummy image (transparent single-pixel gif), say
dummy.gif, and write
<img src="logo.gif" lang="en" alt"Government of Canada, department of silly walks - "><img
src="dummy.gif" lang="fr" alt"Gouvernement du Canada, département des promenades amusantes.">
I don't know whether any browser actually utitilizes the lang attribute
for an img element, but technically that attribute does specify, by
definition, the language of the attribute values. (There's a statement in
official Finnish rules for public sites that claims that alt attributes
are of no use unless their language is declared with lang attributes.
That's of course complete nonsense. Just a reminder: we should
_expect_ people who write accessibility policies to write them without
understanding how things work.)
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: Glenda
Date: Tue, Dec 14 2004 5:20PM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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Hi Jukka,
I know the content needs work, much of it doesn't make sense as a
standalone. BUT, at this point, that is not my job, other than for the odd
content change. Its frustrating from a communications perspective because
readers not familiar with the project won't have a clue what it means. But
that isn't my problem, yet.
Re: the ALT attribute - perhaps I was taking "equivalent alternative" too
far? I was thinking that, because a sighted person could see the logo was
bilingual, a blind person should also have the same information, even though
the site is only English.
Glenda
From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Tue, Dec 14 2004 5:34PM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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Glenda wrote:
> > Also, while I'm here, I have an ALT that has English and
> French, ie a
> > Government of Canada department logo. How do I indicate
> the change in
> > LANG???
Glenda,
The Government of Canada's Common Look and Feel Standards[1] addresses this
elsewhere. Essentially, even though the "image" has two languages it's not
really the issue. The question needed to be asked is "what is the language
of the actual document?"
From an accessibility standpoint, this actually makes sense. People with
cognitive disabilities coupled with visual disabilities *might* become
confused with the language shift; Francophones who do not read or speak
English have no need for the English text, etc. etc.
For what it's worth, Common Look and Feel states: "Standard 7.7 - All text
equivalents must be given in the language of the Web page in which they are
embedded."[2] Thus, your FIP should have English alt text in the English
document, and French alt text in the French document. I can state that this
is the "official line" as far as CLF is concerned:
7.7 - This principle is consistent with that set out under
Standard 7.6.
7.6 - The principle set out under 7.6 is intended to ensure that,
once a user has selected the official language for content, messages are
generated in the official language of the Web page.[3]
Finally, if, for whatever reason, the person who signs off does not believe
that these points equal uni-lingual alt text, remember that bilingual
"messages" must be in the order of the originating document; i.e. French
language documents must read French/English, whereas English language
documents must read English/French [4]
[1] http://www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/clf-nsi/
[2] http://www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/clf-nsi/inter/inter-07-07_e.asp
[3] http://www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/clf-nsi/inter/inter-07-06_e.asp
[4] Checkpoint 7.6 also states "...bilingual messages must be generated for
both English Web pages and French Web pages. In bilingual messages, the
order of the two official languages has to give priority to the language of
the Web page."
>
> > Also, while I'm here, I have an ALT that has English and
> French, ie a
> > Government of Canada department logo. How do I indicate
> the change in
> > LANG???
Hope this helps.
JF
--
John Foliot = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca 1.866.932.4878 (North America)
From: Glenda
Date: Tue, Dec 14 2004 5:43PM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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Thanks John,
That answers my one dilemma. Guess I was taking "equivalent alternative"
too far. I probably should read through the ENTIRE CLF again, eh.
Cheers,
Glenda
From: Andrew Arch
Date: Wed, Dec 15 2004 3:50AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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Hi Glenda,
You may want to have a look at Opera Show
(http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/operashow/) and/or S5
(http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/) for future slide shows - best of
both worlds.
Andrew
_________________________________
Dr Andrew Arch
Manager Online Accessibility Consulting
Accessible Information Solutions, NILS
Ph 613 9864 9222; Fax 613 9864 9210; Mobile 0438 755 565
http://www.nils.org.au/ais/ | http://www.ozewai.org/2004/
Member, Education & Outreach Working Group,
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/
National Information & Library Service, Australia
A subsidiary of RBS.RVIB.VAF Ltd.
From: julian.rickards
Date: Wed, Dec 15 2004 6:49AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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Glenda wrote:
"Anyone know of a quick way to convert powerpoint presentations into clean
HTML? I tried the simple 'save as html', but there is all the MS Office
styles I don't want. The code has to meet the Government of Canada CLF
Standards."
If you have DW MX or MX 2004, take the HTML from the PPT and run it through
the "Clean Up HTML" command.
Jules
From: chris hardy
Date: Wed, Dec 15 2004 8:48PM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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I recently used Open Office to post ppt presentations to a conference
website as they were presented. It turns each ppt slide into a jpg with a
text equivalent. And it's automated (which = significant time savings). Just
open the ppt file from within Impress, then file -> export and follow the
wizard.
http://www.openoffice.org/
hth
-chris
http://www.semioticpixels.com
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Wed, Dec 15 2004 11:22PM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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On Wed, 15 Dec 2004, lists18 wrote:
> I recently used Open Office to post ppt presentations to a conference
> website as they were presented. It turns each ppt slide into a jpg with a
> text equivalent. And it's automated (which = significant time savings).
How would that _improve_ accessibility? Saving the content as plain text
would produce better results at least as regards to people using speech or
text-only browsers. People using graphic browsers will find the PowerPoint
version probably more accessible, at least after someone helps them
to download and install PowerPoint Viewer if needed.
Besides, I just tested it on OpenOffice. It turns each slide into an image
(jpg or gif - this is selectable) _without_ any alt text.
Even if some newer version generates alt texts, they are
unavoidably awkward, since typically a slide contains a list, and it will
be turned into a long string of text, instead of a construct marked up as
a list.
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: michael.brockington
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 3:00AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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>
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 3:44AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, michael.brockington wrote:
> > How would that _improve_ accessibility?
> I think that this is one of those cases where the developer has to be
> practical - 100% accessibility (if there were any such thing) is probably not
> achievable, so a conversion to HTML would be a massive improvement.
I asked "how". HTML can be much less accessible than other formats, and in
this case, the _real_ format would be an image format, not HTML - HTML
would be just "glue" that connects the images.
> NB: WCAG 11.1 Use W3C technologies when they are available and appropriate
> for a task
That's one of the most foolish clauses in WCAG. For accessibility, you
should simply use the technology that promotes it best. If it happens to
be defined by W3C, so be it.
> In this case I feel that the possibility of diagrams etc makes conversion to
> JPEG + Text the most appropriate technology.
JPEG isn't a W3C technology. Neither is GIF. (Why would you use JPEG for
representing text and diagrams??)
If the presentation contains diagrams, the appropriate method is to
present them as GIF images (perhaps with SVG versions presented as
alternatives) embedded into HTML documents and with textual presentations
of their essential content in a suitable way - which would often mean
that a separate presentation needs to be written by someone.
But it would be absurd to present _all_ the content, even the texts, as
images, and call this a massive improvement in accessibility.
> I can't believe you said this - how is a proprietary technology that needs a
> deliberate (ie non-automatic) install better than HTML?
By giving access to text as text, for one thing. It's _much_ better when
"HTML" actually means a set of images linked together via HTML.
Real HTML - using images only for content that is inherently visual -
would be a real improvement, but as I wrote in my first comment, it's
hard work.
> > Besides, I just tested it on OpenOffice. It turns each slide
> > into an image (jpg or gif - this is selectable) _without_ any
> > alt text.
> This is the only valid point.
No it isn't, but it alone makes the approach all wrong.
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: michael.brockington
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 6:06AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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>
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 8:36AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, michael.brockington wrote:
> > JPEG isn't a W3C technology. Neither is GIF.
> They are both De-Facto standards.
Sure. And so is PowerPoint in its own area. You cannot object to
PowerPoint on the grounds that it is not a W3C technology
and not apply the same objection to other non-W3C technologies.
> > If the presentation contains diagrams, the appropriate method
> > is to present them as GIF images (perhaps with SVG versions
> > presented as
> > alternatives) embedded into HTML documents and with textual
> > presentations of their essential content in a suitable way -
> > which would often mean that a separate presentation needs to
> > be written by someone.
>
> So you've changed your mind then? How does the above paragraph differ from
> what was proposed (apart from the trivial change from JPEG to GIF)?
The proposed method converted each slide into an image. _All_ the content
is in images (maybe with alt attributes, but I haven't seen them).
What I propose is a normal HTML document where you use normal markup
(headers, lists, tables, etc.), using images just for things that _need_
to be presented as images.
> > But it would be absurd to present _all_ the content, even the
> > texts, as images, and call this a massive improvement in
> > accessibility.
>
> Any improvement on something that is completely inaccessible to many has to
> be classed as a significant improvement.
Significant? In what sense?
If there is a highly inaccessible format and we create another highly, but
differently, inaccessible format, then it's of course an improvement in
some sense, if there is even a single person who can access the latter but
not the former. But it's rather ridiculous as compared with making the
document accessible to almost all by presenting it as a simple HTML
document.
> In every environment I have ever worked in, it has been easier to seperatly
> get the resources for two upgrades than for a single double-size upgrade.
I don't think doing things stepwise is a good idea for converting a PPT
presentation into an accessible format. Each step adds rather little. The
total cost is considerable, since two steps wouldn't really suffice.
There's also the hidden cost caused by errors and fixing them. Each
conversion has a risk of inadvertantly losing some of the content or even
distorting it. And image format isn't really a good starting point for any
future conversions. You don't want to convert data from text to image,
then try to convert it back to text. In effect you would start from the
original again.
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: Jon Gunderson
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 9:42AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
← Previous message | Next message →
The Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office
gives you get both Graphic and Text versions of the slides.
The views are crossed linked with each other so users can
easily choose what is the best form of the slide for them.
Example of AWPW output for Powerpoint:
http://cita.disability.uiuc.edu/software/office/demo/index_files/index.html
More information at:
http://cita.disability.uiuc.edu/software/office
Jon
---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:37:59 +0200 (EET)
>From: "jkorpela"
>Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PPT to clean HTML
>To: "WebAIM Discussion List"
>
>
>On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, michael.brockington wrote:
>
>> > JPEG isn't a W3C technology. Neither is GIF.
>> They are both De-Facto standards.
>
>Sure. And so is PowerPoint in its own area. You cannot object to
>PowerPoint on the grounds that it is not a W3C technology
>and not apply the same objection to other non-W3C technologies.
>
>> > If the presentation contains diagrams, the appropriate method
>> > is to present them as GIF images (perhaps with SVG versions
>> > presented as
>> > alternatives) embedded into HTML documents and with textual
>> > presentations of their essential content in a suitable way -
>> > which would often mean that a separate presentation needs to
>> > be written by someone.
>>
>> So you've changed your mind then? How does the above
paragraph differ from
>> what was proposed (apart from the trivial change from JPEG
to GIF)?
>
>The proposed method converted each slide into an image. _All_
the content
>is in images (maybe with alt attributes, but I haven't seen
them).
>What I propose is a normal HTML document where you use normal
markup
>(headers, lists, tables, etc.), using images just for things
that _need_
>to be presented as images.
>
>> > But it would be absurd to present _all_ the content, even the
>> > texts, as images, and call this a massive improvement in
>> > accessibility.
>>
>> Any improvement on something that is completely
inaccessible to many has to
>> be classed as a significant improvement.
>
>Significant? In what sense?
>
>If there is a highly inaccessible format and we create
another highly, but
>differently, inaccessible format, then it's of course an
improvement in
>some sense, if there is even a single person who can access
the latter but
>not the former. But it's rather ridiculous as compared with
making the
>document accessible to almost all by presenting it as a
simple HTML
>document.
>
>> In every environment I have ever worked in, it has been
easier to seperatly
>> get the resources for two upgrades than for a single
double-size upgrade.
>
>I don't think doing things stepwise is a good idea for
converting a PPT
>presentation into an accessible format. Each step adds rather
little. The
>total cost is considerable, since two steps wouldn't really
suffice.
>There's also the hidden cost caused by errors and fixing
them. Each
>conversion has a risk of inadvertantly losing some of the
content or even
>distorting it. And image format isn't really a good starting
point for any
>future conversions. You don't want to convert data from text
to image,
>then try to convert it back to text. In effect you would
start from the
>original again.
>
>--
>Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
>
>----
>To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit
http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>
Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Director of IT Accessibility Services
Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES)
and
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
Voice: (217) 244-5870
Fax: (217) 333-0248
E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
WWW: http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/
WWW: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jongund/www/
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 10:03AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
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On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, jongund wrote:
> The Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office
> gives you get both Graphic and Text versions of the slides.
Looks very promising. The "Text Mostly Version" is largely what I have
been suggesting, though an automated process naturally cannot handle the
issue of adding textual explanations. (The name is odd, though.)
The reason why the converted result is good is partly the fact the
original is not a good PPT presentation - it has too much text, as if it
had actually been written in order to be converted. ;-)
I found a piece of wrong information in the content, though:
"Images that don't convey important information or are used for layout are
decorative and don't require alt text."
http://cita.disability.uiuc.edu/software/office/demo/index_files/textmostly/slide15.html
Of course they require alt text, specifically an empty one (alt=""), which
is quite different from the lack of an alt attribute.
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: Jon Gunderson
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 10:23AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
← Previous message | Next message →
Jukka,
The wizard automatically creates text equivalents for charts
authored in Excel and Powerpoint. It created accessible
tables of the information. The automatic conversion of the
chart is what you see on Slide 6.
http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/software/office/demo/index_files/textonly/slide6.html
When the user inserts a image of a chart, the wizard provides
them with an option to enter the data for the chart so it can
generate the data table of the information in the chart.
For example the chart in slide 7:
http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/software/office/demo/index_files/textonly/slide7.html
As the tool development continous we plan on supporting more
types of images and objects that are used in Powerpoint like
multimedia files and organizational charts. These should be
available in our next release sometime this spring.
Any comments or ideas on the wizard are always welcome.
Jon
---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 19:06:47 +0200 (EET)
>From: "jkorpela"
>Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PPT to clean HTML
>To: "WebAIM Discussion List"
>
>
>On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, jongund wrote:
>
>> The Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office
>> gives you get both Graphic and Text versions of the slides.
>
>Looks very promising. The "Text Mostly Version" is largely
what I have
>been suggesting, though an automated process naturally cannot
handle the
>issue of adding textual explanations. (The name is odd, though.)
>The reason why the converted result is good is partly the
fact the
>original is not a good PPT presentation - it has too much
text, as if it
>had actually been written in order to be converted. ;-)
>
>I found a piece of wrong information in the content, though:
>"Images that don't convey important information or are used
for layout are
>decorative and don't require alt text."
>http://cita.disability.uiuc.edu/software/office/demo/index_files/textmostly/slide15.html
>Of course they require alt text, specifically an empty one
(alt=""), which
>is quite different from the lack of an alt attribute.
>
>--
>Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
>
>----
>To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit
http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>
Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Director of IT Accessibility Services
Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES)
and
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
Voice: (217) 244-5870
Fax: (217) 333-0248
E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
WWW: http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/
WWW: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jongund/www/
From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 10:29AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
← Previous message | Next message →
> I found a piece of wrong information in the content, though:
> "Images that don't convey important information or are used for
> layout are decorative and don't require alt text."
>
http://cita.disability.uiuc.edu/software/office/demo/index_files/textmostly/
slide15.html
> Of course they require alt text, specifically an empty one (alt=""),
> which is quite different from the lack of an alt attribute.
Right. Just to clarify that, they should have the alt attribute...just
without any alt text.
I am jumping in a tad late on this one, but isn't there a bit of irony in
using PPT to give an accessibility presenation? ;o)
-Darrel
From: michael.brockington
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 10:29AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
← Previous message | Next message →
>
From: chris hardy
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 3:29PM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
← Previous message | Next message →
> Besides, I just tested it on OpenOffice. It turns each slide
> into an image (jpg or gif - this is selectable) _without_ any
> alt text.
Which is why the text version is quite helpful
-chris
From: chris hardy
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 3:43PM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
← Previous message | Next message →
The ppt accessibility demo looks promising - How are you parsing the ppt?
The real issue I've hit up against with making ppt work on websites, is that
powerpoint has minimal XML capability - They added xml to the rest of the
Office suite, but ran into deadline when it came to upgrading PowerPoint.
When it does get more XML capability, it will most likely be msXML (like the
rest of the Office suite), not the standard. So that makes writing a parser
more difficult in any languages other than .NET.
Any tips are certainly welcome (At least once or twice a year, I find myself
wrestling with having to put a number of ppts up on a website, all asap of
course.)
-chris
From: Jon Gunderson
Date: Thu, Dec 16 2004 7:27PM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
← Previous message | Next message →
>The ppt accessibility demo looks promising - How are you
parsing the ppt?
Using the Powerpoint Object module available in .NET.
Jon
Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Director of IT Accessibility Services
Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES)
and
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
Voice: (217) 244-5870
Fax: (217) 333-0248
E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
WWW: http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/
WWW: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jongund/www/
From: Jon Gunderson
Date: Fri, Dec 17 2004 7:15AM
Subject: Re: PPT to clean HTML
← Previous message | No next message
Mike,
We are in the process of repairing that slide. It will be
fixed soon.
Jon
---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:30:38 -0000
>From: "michael.brockington"
>Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PPT to clean HTML
>To: "WebAIM Discussion List"
>
>
>>