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Re: MS Word accessibility supported for images?

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From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Aug 20, 2009 8:30AM

Good points, Mike. I'm glad to hear that at least some alt text is read in Word 2007.

I have one minor but important correction: In Word, those troublesome "text areas" are actually called "text boxes." (I just want to be sure everyone knows exactly what you mean.)

In my experience, they have been used to try to fix bad writing. It doesn't work. For that reason, I am tickled to find that AT does not play well with them. With that fact at my side, I have a much stronger argument for fixing the document for everyone.

Cliff

Cliff Tyllick
Web development coordinator
Agency Communications Division
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
512-239-4516
<EMAIL REMOVED>

>>> "Moore,Michael" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > 8/20/2009 8:03 AM >>>
Well, yes and no. We have found with JAWS 9 and 10 and Office 2007 that the alternative text will be announced by the screen reader, just not consistently. We have not been able to determine what causes the variable behavior. There are also other methods that screen reader users can use while in Word to access the alternative text in the images, but in practice I have not observed many people doing this.

If the document is converted to PDF or HTML the alternative text will definitely be present for the user. This saves a step when working from Word.

More important in Word documents, is the use of styles to mark up headings. These are made available to the JAWS screen reader users and greatly improve navigation through the document. I am not sure about other ATs. These will also convert to headings in HTML and PDF.

One thing to definitely avoid within Word documents are "text areas." These little gems that are frequently used for callouts, and misused for many other purposes, are generally missed by screen reader users. They do not appear within the normal document flow and thus are difficult to find. I have seen several hacks to get around the issue, but in practice I have not seen them work well in any version of JAWS that we have tested.

Mike Moore