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Thread: Word viewer
Number of posts in this thread: 6 (In chronological order)
From: Cheryl Amato
Date: Wed, Nov 15 2006 4:30PM
Subject: Word viewer
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I am currently evaluating a website for accessibility and am wondering exactly how to handle Word documents. If a web page is linked to a Word document I realize you must notify the user but should you also provide a link to the Word Viewer for those who don't have the software? Would this also be true for Powerpoint and Excel files (both have viewers available)? I am under the impression that the viewers are not necessarily accessible themselves.
I am interested in how others are handling this as I'm sure it happens often.
Cheryl Amato
Trusted Technologies
From: Peter Krantz
Date: Thu, Nov 16 2006 12:30AM
Subject: Re: Word viewer
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On 11/16/06, Cheryl Amato < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I am currently evaluating a website for accessibility and am wondering exactly how to handle Word documents. If a web page is linked to a Word document I realize you must notify the user but should you also provide a link to the Word Viewer for those who don't have the software? Would this also be true for Powerpoint and Excel files (both have viewers available)? I am under the impression that the viewers are not necessarily accessible themselves.
>
> I am interested in how others are handling this as I'm sure it happens often.
>
In the latest version of the guidelines for Swedish government web
sites (see [1] for a rough english translation of chapter titles) the
recommendation is to try to publish documents in HTML format first. If
that isn't possible, accessible PDF documents are next in line. The
guidelines discourage the use of proprietary formats such as Word,
Powerpoint and Excel.
But if it isn't an option to publish in HTML or PDF my recommendation
would be to include a link to the relevant viewer nearby where the
documents are listed and include the document type in the link text
for single documents. E.g.: "Financial result (Excel document)".
The worst option, of course, is to not publish the information at all.
Regards,
Peter Krantz
[1] http://www.standards-schmandards.com/2006/swe-guidelines/
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Nov 16 2006 1:40AM
Subject: Re: Word viewer
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On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Cheryl Amato wrote:
> I am currently evaluating a website for accessibility and am wondering
> exactly how to handle Word documents.
They should be converted into accessible HTML format. Perhaps this is not
(economically) _feasible_, but it shouldn't be called _impossible_. It is
a policy decision, and the most important accessibility policy decision
with respect to such documents. All the rest is really peanuts.
> If a web page is linked to a Word
> document I realize you must notify the user
Indeed, and in an explicit way, e.g. "(MS Word document)" after the link.
Using an icon, naturally with e.g. alt="(MS Word document)" is possible,
too, though the common icons for Word documents are not really universally
understood. Using type="application/msword" in HTML markup would be a
nice, structured way to express the information, but no browser support to
it is required and practically no support actually exists.
> but should you also provide a
> link to the Word Viewer for those who don't have the software?
That's what many accessibility recommendations say, but that's really just
a way to silence one's conscience. It looks like you're doing _something_
to improve accessibility, but it really doesn't help much. A user who
is _allowed_ and _able_ and _willing_ install software on a computer will
find a viewer without your help - perhaps a better viewer than you would
offer. And _which_ viewer would you link to? Well, of course all the world
uses Microsoft
From: Phil Teare
Date: Thu, Nov 16 2006 3:20AM
Subject: Re: Word viewer
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Helpful hack making word docs accessible:
1) save your word doc as HTML (Word will do this, so will OO)
2) Serve the document created with either .doc headers or html headers
depending on how the users whants to view them.
MS Word will open thisIsAnHTMLVersionOfADocFile.html as a document, if you
simply change its name to thisIsAnHTMLVersionOfADocFile.doc The innards of
the file will be HTML but the name (which could be set manually or by your
server on serveing it) ends in .doc making ms word treat it like it's a
document.
Hope this helps.
Phil
On 16/11/06, Jukka K. Korpela < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Cheryl Amato wrote:
>
> > I am currently evaluating a website for accessibility and am wondering
> > exactly how to handle Word documents.
>
> They should be converted into accessible HTML format. Perhaps this is not
> (economically) _feasible_, but it shouldn't be called _impossible_. It is
> a policy decision, and the most important accessibility policy decision
> with respect to such documents. All the rest is really peanuts.
>
> > If a web page is linked to a Word
> > document I realize you must notify the user
>
> Indeed, and in an explicit way, e.g. "(MS Word document)" after the link.
> Using an icon, naturally with e.g. alt="(MS Word document)" is possible,
> too, though the common icons for Word documents are not really universally
> understood. Using type="application/msword" in HTML markup would be a
> nice, structured way to express the information, but no browser support to
> it is required and practically no support actually exists.
>
> > but should you also provide a
> > link to the Word Viewer for those who don't have the software?
>
> That's what many accessibility recommendations say, but that's really just
> a way to silence one's conscience. It looks like you're doing _something_
> to improve accessibility, but it really doesn't help much. A user who
> is _allowed_ and _able_ and _willing_ install software on a computer will
> find a viewer without your help - perhaps a better viewer than you would
> offer. And _which_ viewer would you link to? Well, of course all the world
> uses Microsoft(r) operating systems...
>
> The only good reason to provide a link would be the fact that most people
> who need a viewer would want to use the Microsoft Word viewer and they
> have difficulties in finding it on the Microsoft site, since it has been
> "renewed" so often. But for that reason, your link would quite probably
> become a dead link rather soon, and a dead link is often worse than no
> link.
>
> Alternatively, if you know a document that _describes_ Word viewers, their
> installation and use, in a language understood by your visitors, then
> _that_ might be a good page to link to. But could you rely on the page
> remaining on the www and remaining as useful?
>
> > Would this also be true for Powerpoint and Excel files (both have
> > viewers available)?
>
> The same principles apply. Actually, even stronger, since a typical user
> often knows how to use a Word viewer, which is effectively a read-only
> word processor, hence of a well-known type of program, but fewer people
> are familiar with spreadsheet software. Using a viewer is _much_ more than
> just knowing a download address!
>
> > I am under the impression that the viewers are not
> > necessarily accessible themselves.
>
> They surely have their share of accessibility problems.
>
> --
> Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
Phil Teare,
Lead Developer,
www.talklets.com
From: Moore, Michael
Date: Thu, Nov 16 2006 8:00AM
Subject: Re: Word viewer
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Cheryl,
Word is natively accessible to screen reader users who have MS Office
installed on their systems but there are some limitations of the
program. Word ART is not accessible, alt text is only available if you
use word to convert the document to html, then of course there are all
of the semantic and structural problems of word html to deal with.
Tables are linearized when read, but some advanced users may be able to
designate a row as the heading row and a column as a heading column with
JAWS. Heading and list structure are not visible to screen readers,
although the character used a bullet will usually be read.
In an ideal world the documents should be converted to html. The
University of Illinois has a pretty good tool for converting ms office
documents (much better than what is built into office).
http://www.accessiblewizards.uiuc.edu/ It is reasonably priced too.
Here at DARS ([Texas] Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative
Services) we regularly use ms office formats for internal
communications. We have several hundred staff members who use assistive
technology to access these documents. Simpler documents work best (text
only word documents, excel spreadsheets with single layers of row and
column headings, and PowerPoint presentations that are designed using
the guidelines laid out by Freedom Scientific.
One important factor to remember is that the documents must be opened in
the stand alone application after being downloaded from the web. IE
will open these documents inside of the browser with the default
settings. JAWS and other screen readers use application based
configuration settings to determine how to read a document and thus are
basically in the wrong mode to read word, excel and PDF documents when
opened within the browser. This can be remedied through user education
or manipulation of user configuration settings on the desktop.
Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Cheryl Amato
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 5:25 PM
To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Subject: [WebAIM] Word viewer
I am currently evaluating a website for accessibility and am wondering
exactly how to handle Word documents. If a web page is linked to a Word
document I realize you must notify the user but should you also provide
a link to the Word Viewer for those who don't have the software? Would
this also be true for Powerpoint and Excel files (both have viewers
available)? I am under the impression that the viewers are not
necessarily accessible themselves.
I am interested in how others are handling this as I'm sure it happens
often.
Cheryl Amato
Trusted Technologies
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messages to = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
From: Cheryl Amato
Date: Thu, Nov 16 2006 1:50PM
Subject: Word viewer
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Thanks to everyone for their responses to my question about Word viewers. I agree