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Number of posts in this thread: 8 (In chronological order)

From: John E Brandt
Date: Wed, May 15 2013 2:19PM
Subject: MS Office 2013 - Accessibility changes
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I took the plunge and downloaded and installed MS Office 2013 last week.
They have a subscription basis for payment now; $99.99 per year and it can
be installed on up to five computers including Macs. Downside, it needs
Windows 7 or newer. Good news, free one month trial!

Of note, there are some changes in the way the accessibility functions work.
Most notably is the way to add Alternative Descriptions to images. The good
news here is Microsoft has prepared a nice help page with pictures and
descriptions. I don't see keyboard alternatives to the steps mentioned on
the help page, but I will keep looking.

You may find the help page about adding alternative descriptions at this
URL:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/add-alternative-text-to-a-picture-sh
ape-chart-table-or-smartart-graphic-HA103220865.aspx

Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/a9pv8eu

I'll start working to update my Accessible Documents materials
http://mainecite.org/awd/accdocs.html to include the directions for MS
Office 2013.


~j

John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Wed, May 15 2013 2:52PM
Subject: Re: MS Office 2013 - Accessibility changes
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Other significant changes are:

Ctrl + letter O opens the File/Backstage area where you can choose your file
location. There is no way to get the old Open dialog/window back. I now use
the list of recent documents with some pinned and some not or I locate the
file in File Explorer and press Enter to open it....this saves me time.

Alt + F, A opens the File/Backstage area where you can choose the location
for your file. If you want the old dialog/window, press F12.

You can save a document as a tagged PDF by pressing F12 and choosing PDF
from Files of Type. Again, this saves time. Remember to activate the Options
button once you choose PDF to identify headings as Bookmarks.

Alt + F, N opens the "Start Screen" where you can choose from a template.
Ctrl + N still gives you a new document. Alt + F, N will not give you the
old New dialog/window. That is no longer available. To access any personal
templates you have to choose Personal from the types of templates and the
view of the templates changes from the default ones, to the ones you've
identified as personal or created yourself.

You can change the "fishbowl" from the white where you can't see the
document/page outline to a light grey or darker grey by going to the
File/Backstage area and your account information.

You can turn off the Start Screen in the application options. Each
application launches with the Start Screen instead of a blank document. The
check box to turn this off is in the first category of options.

The old spell check dialog is gone. Spell check is done through a pane that
does have keyboard commands but you can't access the word in context.
Pressing F7 will open the Spell Check Pane. I now use Alt + F7 to do a spell
check which will move you to the next spelling mistake and open a context
menu...a keyboard command that has always been there.

I did a session on this at Accessing Higher Ground last November and
recently did a webinar for EASI on the changes in Office and accessibility
changes. I will be doing a conference session on this at the University of
Guelph later this month.
http://www.accessconf.open.uoguelph.ca/

You can now open PDF documents in Word and read them although there is no
structure to the document and saving the document back as a tagged PDF gives
you horrid Tags.

There is a Resume Reading tool that lets you get back to the place you were
editing if you create the document using the Word 2013 DOCX format. This is
really handy.

Reading Layout is still inaccessible but has been reworked for tablet
viewing for those who don't need TTS or screen reading.

In PowerPoint, the slides are wider to accommodate the wider monitors and
the presenter tools have been reworked for tablet use.

Just a few of the changes.

Cheers, Karen
Microsoft MVP for Word

From: Bronwyn Lapham
Date: Thu, May 16 2013 4:43PM
Subject: Re: MS Office 2013 - Accessibility changes ["John E Brandt"}
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Thanks for sharing this, John. Do you happen to know how to add a null ALT
attribute to an image please?

From: "John E Brandt" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: "'WebAIM Discussion List'" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Cc:
Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 16:19:40 -0400
Subject: [WebAIM] MS Office 2013 - Accessibility changes
I took the plunge and downloaded and installed MS Office 2013 last week.
They have a subscription basis for payment now; $99.99 per year and it can
be installed on up to five computers including Macs. Downside, it needs
Windows 7 or newer. Good news, free one month trial!

Of note, there are some changes in the way the accessibility functions work.
Most notably is the way to add Alternative Descriptions to images. The good
news here is Microsoft has prepared a nice help page with pictures and
descriptions. I don't see keyboard alternatives to the steps mentioned on
the help page, but I will keep looking.

You may find the help page about adding alternative descriptions at this
URL:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/add-alternative-text-to-a-picture-sh
ape-chart-table-or-smartart-graphic-HA103220865.aspx<http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/add-alternative-text-to-a-picture-shape-chart-table-or-smartart-graphic-HA103220865.aspx>;

Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/a9pv8eu

I'll start working to update my Accessible Documents materials
http://mainecite.org/awd/accdocs.html to include the directions for MS
Office 2013.


~j

John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Thu, May 16 2013 5:31PM
Subject: Re: MS Office 2013 - Accessibility changes ["John E Brandt"}
← Previous message | Next message →

Select the image.
Press the AppKey or right mouse button.
Choose Format Picture.
Instead of opening the traditional dialog, the Format Object Pane opens to
the right of the document and your focus should be in it.
Press Shift + Tab or click on the icon just above where your focus is/the
Effects tab.
Press the right arrow once to land on the Layout tab.
The tools under the Layout icon are Text box and Alt Text.
Use the Down arrow to land on Alt Text and then press the Spacebar or if you
are using the mouse, click on alt Text.
The Title and Description edit areas are now visible and you can Tab to them
and add either.
When you are finished, press Shift + F6 to move back to the document.
The Format Object Pane will remain open until you close it. As you click on
or put focus on other images, the Alt Text areas will be blank. Press F6 to
move back into the pane and add the Alt Text.

You can close the pane by pressing Ctrl + Spacebar then C for close. Of
course if you are mouse dependent, you can do all of this by clicking.

Cheers, Karen

From: John E Brandt
Date: Fri, May 17 2013 1:13PM
Subject: Re: MS Office 2013 - Accessibility changes ["John EBrandt"}
← Previous message | Next message →

Thank you, Karen for all of the keyboard command info....saved me a lot of
work trying to figure this out!

~j

John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA

From: John E Brandt
Date: Fri, May 17 2013 1:21PM
Subject: Re: MS Office 2013 - Accessibility changes ["John E Brandt"}
← Previous message | Next message →

Bronwyn,

I think the official answer goes something like this: "Unfortunately,
Microsoft Office offers no means of indicating that an image should be
ignored, so it is best to simply leave decorative images alone. All other
images should be described with alt text." I grabbed this quote from
Colorado State U's Access site. I am not sure what happens if you simply
leave the description blank. JAWS users want to chime in here and tell us?

I thought I had read somewhere that there WAS a technique for creating the
Null ALT in Office. Can't put my finger on it...Anyone else know of a
method?

~j

John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA

From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Fri, May 17 2013 8:12PM
Subject: Re: MS Office 2013 - Accessibility changes ["John E Brandt"}
← Previous message | Next message →

I heard it was not possible in Office, and followed the same idea you got
from CSU. Then since a good chunk of documents are converted into PDFs, I
remember to set them to an artifact in Acrobat.

--
Ryan E. Benson


On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 3:21 PM, John E Brandt < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Bronwyn,
>
> I think the official answer goes something like this: "Unfortunately,
> Microsoft Office offers no means of indicating that an image should be
> ignored, so it is best to simply leave decorative images alone. All other
> images should be described with alt text." I grabbed this quote from
> Colorado State U's Access site. I am not sure what happens if you simply
> leave the description blank. JAWS users want to chime in here and tell us?
>
> I thought I had read somewhere that there WAS a technique for creating the
> Null ALT in Office. Can't put my finger on it...Anyone else know of a
> method?
>
> ~j
>
> John E. Brandt
> www.jebswebs.com
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> 207-622-7937
> Augusta, Maine, USA
>
>

From: Bronwyn Lapham
Date: Sun, May 26 2013 6:01PM
Subject: Re: MS Office 2013 - Accessibility changes ["John E Brandt"}
← Previous message | No next message

Thanks for that, John. Please excuse me for not acknowledging your response
- for some reason gmail has stopped putting unread mail in my inbox and I
just found it. I'd not been able to find anything that addresses this.



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "John E Brandt" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: "'WebAIM Discussion List'" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Cc:
Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 15:21:53 -0400
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] MS Office 2013 - Accessibility changes ["John E
Brandt"}
Bronwyn,

I think the official answer goes something like this: "Unfortunately,
Microsoft Office offers no means of indicating that an image should be
ignored, so it is best to simply leave decorative images alone. All other
images should be described with alt text." I grabbed this quote from
Colorado State U's Access site. I am not sure what happens if you simply
leave the description blank. JAWS users want to chime in here and tell us?

I thought I had read somewhere that there WAS a technique for creating the
Null ALT in Office. Can't put my finger on it...Anyone else know of a
method?

~j

John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA