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Re: PowerPoint accessibility-alt question

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From: Athol J Gow
Date: Apr 25, 2014 11:51AM

Dear list members,
On the subject of Mac OS conversion of Word/PowerPoint files to PDFs, we've noticed another problem that is related (I think) to the unicode font issue - i.e., the PDF rendering wants to use unicode font and if it can't find a font set that matches the one in the original document, it substitutes different symbol and letter combinations for some characters in the resultant PDF. This can make some words unintelligible if you're listening to the PDF with a screen reader.
In our experience, it seems to happen most frequently with PDFs that are created on a Mac. We would love to give instructors and faculty members some simple instructions on how to avoid this problem - does anyone has any guidance on which fonts to use and which to avoid when creating MS Office documents on a Mac?
Thanks,
Athol Gow


Athol J. Gow,
Manager, Library Accessibility Services,
University of Guelph Library,
50 Stone Rd.,
Guelph, Ontario
N1G 2W1
Canada
Phone: 519-824-4120 ext. 52312
Fax: 519-836-0435



----- Original Message -----

From: "Michelle Clark - NRCS, Washington, DC" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2014 11:36:22 AM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PowerPoint accessibility-alt question

Duff,

Thanks for your comments and I agree with them. This woman was resistant after she asked if the documents she sent in emails had to be accessible and was told "yes". That's usually where I get most of my problem documents. Indeed, some need to be stroked. into it but lack of training and constant upgrades add to the problem.

We are preparing to upgrade to Microsoft 2013. With what I expect to get along the lines of training, my stuff may look a little crazy for a while as well.

Michelle

Michelle