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RE: Web accessibility & MS Word

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From: Paul Bohman
Date: Oct 1, 2002 4:33PM

Moana Jarvis wrote:
>Since lots of HTML code is added when you save a Microsoft Word
document as a Web page, do screen readers have difficulties reading a
Web page created by MS Word?

My response:

Although it's true that MS Word creates a lot of extra XML-style markup
when you save Word documents as Web pages, most of this markup does not
interfere with accessibility. If you create a simple text-only Word
document, chances are very good that it will be accessible when saved as
HTML. The fancier you get, the more careful you have to be.

* When inserting images into your Word documents, make sure that you
provide alt text. To do this, those who use a mouse can right click on
the image, go to "image properties", then the "Web" tab, then add alt
text. Those who use the keyboard can go to "format", "image", "Web",
then add alt text.
* Make sure that you use real formatting (e.g. for headings, it is not
sufficient to make the text large and bold--you must use the Word
heading styles, which are in the menu system next to the font selector
in the default configuration of Word XP)
* If you insert Excel spreadsheets, charts, graphs, or anything like
that, you will need to add your own alt text, table headings, or
whatever is required for the particular object that you insert. You will
need to go into the HTML and do this after saving the document as HTML.
* You must edit all data tables in the HTML so that there are true table
headers with data cells appropriately associated with them.
* If you use the drawing tools, none of the drawings will be accessible,
because they use a proprietary format that screen readers don't support.

Paul Bohm