Creating Accessible Content in OpenOffice.org

Jonathan Whiting and Aaron Andersen

WebAIM: Web Accessibility in Mind

This presentation is available at webaim.org/presentations/2007/CSUN/ooo.htm
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Credits

WebAIM is a project of:

Questions

• OOo Users?
• Save to DOC? HTML? PDF?
• Writer? Impress? Other tools?

Outline

• Intro
• ODF
• Writer
  • Accessibility in Writer
  • Export to DOC, PDF, HTML
• Impress

OOo is...

• Open Source
• Free (download.openoffice.org)
• An Office Suite
• An MS Office Replacement?

OOo compared to MS Office

ODF

• Open Document Format
• XML-based
• (Relatively) simple format
• Basically a zipped file

Accessibility in Writer

• Use real headings
  • Ctrl + 1,2,3 or F11
• Use real lists
• Add alt text to Images
  • Double-click Image, Alternative Text box
• Add headings to tables
  • Automatically Create Headers
  • Select cells, change style from Table Content to Table Heading
  • May have to re-assign headings if exporting to HTML

Writer to Word

• You can save as a MS Word Doc
  • File > Save As > Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP
  • To save as .doc by default, Tools > Options > Load/Save > General > Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP
• The conversion is not always perfect

Writer to PDF

• Export to PDF is Excellent
  • Make sure you have selected Tagged PDF from the Options dialog box
  • You don't need Acrobat

Writer to HTML

• HTML could be better
  • You may need to clean up the HTML a bit
  • Export to XHTML is no better (and maybe worse) than HTML 4

Accessibility in Impress

• Use templates
• You CANNOT add alt text
• Describe tables and images in the body
• HTML and PDF output not impressive

Other resources

• WebAIM
  • webaim.org/techniques/ooo/
• NCDAE.org (a partner) fact sheets
  • ncdae.org/tools/factsheets/writer.cfm
  • ncdae.org/tools/factsheets/impress.cfm
• Illinois Center for Instructional Technology Accessibility
  • Open Document Format (ODF) Accessibility Evaluator
    odf.cita.uiuc.edu/