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Re: Spam?: Word Accessibility with JAWS

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From: Moore, Michael
Date: Sep 17, 2008 11:10AM

Jason wrote:



Does anyone have advice on the use of Text Boxes in Word XP or 2007 with
the most recent version of JAWS. In the past I have found that JAWS did
not read any text boxes and I am trying to find out if this is still the
case.



Mike:



JAWS 6+ will read the information contained within text boxes in Word.
(2003+). Office 2007 requires JAWS 9. However, the issue is not getting
JAWS to read the content of the box but locating the box which must be
done though the JAWS cursor and using the arrow keys to hunt around the
document to find the text box. So they are still something that should
be avoided.



Jason:


What I am trying to do is find out if it would be beneficial to a
student using JAWS if we had a faculty member send a PowerPoint to Word
with notes below the slides. My understanding is that this would not
work and that JAWS would not recognize the text in the slides, only the
note text.



Mike:



JAWS will read any text that is present in the outline view. Thus using
real text, not word art, and default layouts will usually result in
slides that can be read using JAWS. Getting to the notes requires
navigation among the "frames" in PowerPoint F6. The notes areas are one
area that can be used to convey information that is presented through
images within the slide, although the JAWS user may not be aware that
there is anything in the notes section. An alternative to providing the
information presented by images is to use text in the slide, through a
default layout, then cover that area visually with the image object. As
long as the text shows up in the outline you should be able to get to it
with JAWS. In general PowerPoint is difficult for most JAWS users that I
have encountered to use effectively. Consider MS Word or HTML as
alternatives. Eric Meyer's S5 slide show is a great way of creating
accessible slide shows in html. http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/



Mike