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Re: Office 365 for authoring accessible documents

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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Nov 4, 2015 3:27AM

I just installed both Office 2016 for the Mac and Office 2016 for Windows on my Mac and Windows 10 computers respectively. The desktop applications are more robust in features than the web apps or tablet versions.

I know that Microsoft is moving toward a uniform interface between their Windows and Mac versions of Office so 2016 for Mac has more features to make documents accessible and I'll be trying those out over the next few months to see what the improvements are Office 2016 for Mac now has Ribbons..

Here are some of the resources for using Office 2016 for Mac in terms of general accessibility:

Accessibility in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac: https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/Accessibility-in-PowerPoint-2016-for-Mac-fdff2074-bbd9-4c7a-8f55-d2885d58c0da?ui=en-US&rs=en-CA&adÊ&fromAR=1
Accessibility in Excel 2016 for Mac: https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/Accessibility-in-Excel-2016-for-Mac-1d014a46-3416-413d-909d-51c817e83580
Accessibility in Word 2016 for Mac: https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/Accessibility-in-Word-2016-for-Mac-f8d605c2-24e9-44b7-9cf6-4b226e6172d0

Access World - a First look at Office 2016 accessibility: http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw160902

So far in editing and writing documents using JAWS 16 and 17 on my Win 10 desktop I don't notice much difference. There are the usual JAWS bugs/features but aside from that, there is no difference between Office 2013 or 2016. I suspect that the biggest difference I'll see is in being able to add more accessibility in the Mac versions although I Haven't delved into those desktop applications yet.

In purchasing Office 365 you also have access to the "advanced editing tools" on an iOS device which should give you some tools related to accessible document editing. Not sure about things like adding Alt text but this is something else to add to my list of "things to do." LOL

Cheers, Karen
Microsoft MVP for Word
Microsoft Accessibility MVP