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RE: Microsoft Word question

for

From: Glenda
Date: Apr 20, 2005 1:02PM


Would this technique depend upon the version of Word being used?


Glenda Watson Hyatt, Principal
Soaring Eagle Communications
Accessible websites. Accessible content. Accessible solutions.
www.eaglecom.bc.ca

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]On Behalf Of Strange, Lainie
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 11:41 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: RE: [WebAIM] Microsoft Word question


Dan -

Actually, I just attended a local accessibility conference this week and a
session I attended touched on the accessibility of Word tables. In a
nutshell, they aren't ADA accessible. But a gentleman from Washington
University: http://www.washington.edu/accessit/index.php
showed us this technique:

He said that in Word, if you set bookmarks where the Column Headings are
(and name the bookmarks just like the Heading text) that at least the more
recent versions of Jaws did a fairly good job at reading the heading text
with the corresponding data within that column. He said this method didn't
work well with complex nested tables however. Hope that makes sense.



From: Dan Miller [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 10:06 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] Microsoft Word question


Hello
I am wondering about accessiblity issues regarding posting a document as an
attachment in Microsoft Word format. I realize that for PDF attachments and
the like, a link had to be provided in order to be able to download the free
reader. How does one bypass this with Word docs? Is it 508 compliant just to
post a Word doc as an attachment? Should one include also a plain text
version of the document?

Also, are tables created in Word 508 compliant?

Many thanks
Dan