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Re: Office 365 Accessibility Announcement from Microsoft

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From: Duff Johnson
Date: Sep 9, 2016 7:41AM

Hi Whitney,

> Unfortunately the "export to PDF" is a welcome step, but not nearly there.
> Here are the limitations that Microsoft has confirmed.
>
> 1. You can ONLY do this by using a cloud service, with no terms shared, so
> no idea what might happen to your file. Beware anyone in sensitive work.

Interestingly, on MacOS, at this time, Adobe's the same way - to make a tagged PDF you have to upload the Word file to Adobe's servers. As of right now, neither company seems willing / capable of putting the relevant code on the machine itself, for some reason.

> 2. Only Microsoft fonts. Their conversion of some that I've tried were
> really dreadful. A san serif font similar to Arial turned into Georgia and
> destroyed pagination.
>
> 3. No Asian languages. Not No Asian Languages In Your Document but they
> must be removed from your system settings. Not your word preferences. Your
> Mac system preferences. To send a file to the cloud.

Thanks for pointing that out! VERY weird!

> 4. No options. Just send it and get back what you get.
>
> 5. Beware of themes. If you convert a file with a theme, you get something
> that looks like it might work. It has tags and other signs of accessibility
> but if you look at the reading order for a page it's one big element. No
> idea what that means.
>
> Worst of all. Not one bit of this is documented anywhere.
>
> The only hope about it being a cloud service is that it might be updated
> faster with some pressure to get a service that meets the needs of a
> modern, global world.

…a slightly more optimistic perspective might hold that it's early days for the rollout of this technology, and so it's not all as buttoned-up as will be necessary in the big picture.

It's clear they in general, they want to respond to what the users are asking for. The more encouragement Microsoft (and Adobe) hear about getting it right - and not just as a service - the better!

Duff.