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Re: Something About Formatting Word Docs Feels Wrong For Whatever Reason

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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Apr 24, 2019 5:51AM

So what we are trying to balance is good document design versus how the design of a document is accessed/used to provide the visual representation of the content.

I know people who use adaptive technology who will not "accept" documents with tables as they don't like them. I also know people who use adaptive technology who don't want headings, just text with asterisks next to them to indicate a heading/topic change.

We also have to balance accessible document design with falling into the trap of creating differently accessible content based on preference as opposed to accessibility.

With headings, it is the relationship between the various topics that outline the structure of the content/document. I still maintain that the title of a document by its nature has a different look and feel than headings in the document. I agree that in the PDF standards we need a <Title> Tag...but, we are having enough problems keeping some of the existing Tags with the next release of PDF/UA so our voices will go unnoticed and unheard. I also want a <Subtitle> Tag, I want <Index> Tags with Index Item Tags...but we won't get any of those.

As document authors and document remediators, we have to keep focused on good document design which as it turns out, is accessible document design. As someone who uses a screen reader, I have yet to come across problems in accessing and finding content when a document is created to be accessible. Wait, I stand corrected! Since 2003 I've been asking the developers of the JAWS screen reader to support headings created based on existing headings. JAWS does recognize them when you are navigating through the document (sometimes) but not necessarily when you get a list of headings in a Word document. Does this mean that as a document author I don't use this tool to create more accessible documents? No. I can't create documents based on the shortcomings and unresponsiveness of an adaptive technology developer to support something that should just be supported OR adhere to a standard with equal shortcomings. We also have the instances where one version of a screen reader will read Alt text for images while another version of the same screen reader won't. Our focus is on good document design.

We really need to get a group together to move our accessible document design best practices for at least word processed and presentation documents into a standard that can be followed and adopted as part of legislation and treaty.

Cheers, Karen