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Re: Office 365 for authoring accessible documents

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From: John E Brandt
Date: Nov 5, 2015 3:16PM

My test - for what it's worth:

If you are in a hurry, jump to the Summary/Conclusions.

Method

Using Office 365, I have installed MS Office for Mac 2016 on a brand new MacBook Pro (running El Capitan) and MS Office 2016 on an older HP Pavilion running Windows 7. I created a simple document using the Mac that contained three levels of Headings, an image with Alt Description and a simple 3x3 cell table. I made sure the Table had an Alternative Description and checked off that the top row was a Header row.

I then opened the test file with the Windows version of MS Office 2016 and was able to check the document with the Accessibility Checker in MS Office for Windows - there is (still) no Accessibility Checker in MS Office for Mac. The only accessibility error noted was an indication that there was no Heading Row in the table. It is very possible that I did not create the table correctly - will test further.

I then created another document in MS Office for Mac with the same content and saved it using the "Save as" PDF. I then opened this second test document with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC for the Mac, and test the document using the accessibility checker. The new PDF completely failed and was shown as having NO TAGS at all.

I then took the original document created on the Mac, opened it on the PC and "Saved as" a PDF on the PC. I then tested using the Accessibility Checker in Adobe Acrobat Pro on the PC and the file passed completely as an "accessible" PDF.

Summary/Conclusions

You can make fairly accessible Word documents with MS Office 2016 for Mac or PC. The error discovered had to do with headings in Tables - but in all fairness, I may have done this incorrectly so I will have to test further.

Presumably accessible documents created in MS Office 2016 for the Mac could NOT be successfully converted (by MS Office for the Mac) into an accessible and tagged PDF.

A generally accessible document created with MS Office 2016 for the Mac, when opened in MS Office 2016 for Windows and converted to PDF - was found to be accessible and correctly tagged PDF.

I will test PowerPoint when I get a chance.

~j


John E. Brandt
jebswebs: accessible and universal web design,
development and consultation
<EMAIL REMOVED>
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA

@jebswebs
www.jebswebs.com