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Re: accessible word-wrap in word?

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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Sep 20, 2016 6:25AM


You select the content you want to be in columns and when you go to the Page Layout Ribbon and choose your columns, Word puts a section break before and after the columns so you can have "single column" before and after the columns.

I wrote a tutorial on the use of tables and columns that you can find on the Karlen Communications website. It also deals with using Column Breaks. There are sample files for you to take a look at attached to the accessible PDF document.
http://karlencommunications.com/handouts.html

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Karen Sorensen
Sent: September 19, 2016 9:51 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] accessible word-wrap in word?

Hi Vanessa,
Great question! Here's what I'd say to my faculty:
Floating images and text are not screen reader accessible because they aren't in the standard flow of the document. The floating image and text boxes float above the document's flow, and they aren't seen by a screen reader. The images have to be inline in order to be in the flow of the content. The columns idea seems like a good approach if that works for the layout of the rest of the document. Does the whole page have to be in columns then? (I don't know of a way to make short columns in MS Word within just part of the page.) A simpler way to go could be to make two copies of the document. One that has the images inline and one that's got text wrap around the images. If you have a student using assistive technologies provide them with the copy with the images inline.
A better way to go though would be to use HTML and CSS where you can style the page layout as you wish and keep the image and text inline with the document flow.
Hope that helps.
Karen
Karen M. Sorensen
Accessibility Advocate for Online Courses www.pcc.edu/access Portland Community College
971-722-4720
Twitter: @ksorensun