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Re: please test this method of identifying document icons with hyperlinks

for

From: Jim Allan
Date: Oct 6, 2011 2:33PM

Here in Texas we are wrestling with the issue of accessible viewers.
In testing the Office document views from Microsoft are NOT accessible
to a screen reader (Jaws 12).
Additionally if you want user to view a .docx file they must also
download the MS Office Compatibility Pack. Then they must first
convert the file to .doc, then open in WordViewer. This is starting to
get very cumbersome for the end user.

From the viewer site: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=4
The Word Viewer, together with the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack
for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats, allows you open Word
documents saved in the following formats:

Word Document (.docx)
Word Macro-Enabled Document (.docm)
Rich Text Format (.rtf)
Text (.txt)
Web Page formats (.htm, .html, .mht, .mhtml)
WordPerfect 5.x (.wpd)
WordPerfect 6.x (.doc, .wpd)
Works 6.0 (.wps)
Works 7.0 (.wps)
XML (.xml)

Acrobat Reader is accessible.

We are considering linking to IBM Lotus Symphony , which will read
MSOffice office documents and is accessible (still doing a bit of
testing) BUT it is a 450+ mb download. There must be an easier less
convoluted solution.

Jim

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 1:40 PM, Angela French < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> So Rick, you think just making the link on the title (and not on the icon) would suffice for screen reader users?  It bugs me that a table is used for this (as a table-less kinda of designer). Also, it just takes up so much more room vertically on the page than a simple list.  However, in terms of going back in fixing all the pages that do this, it would be a heck of a lot easier to just switch the link from the icon to the title.  My intent was to provide a means for screen reader users to know what kind of doc (or to an external site) is being linked to.  What do others think?
>
> Just this week I created a Document Readers page which will be linked to from any page that has documents for download.  It will be added as I go through the site and edit these inaccessible doc download methods.
>
> http://sbctc.edu/readers.aspx
>
>>