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The Calendar Activities.
The Calendar of Activities in the syllabus is created as a table for two reasons.
First, it organizes all the assigned work so students can see,
at a glance, everything they are responsible to complete.
And second, just as importantly, the table is built for ADA accessibility.
The table is built with split and merge cells, to provide good organization.
To increase the comprehension for screen readers,
it's important to maintain this split and merged cell structure.
Anatomy of a Table
A Word table has three parts.
The first is columns, which run lengthwise down the table.
The second are rows, which run across the table horizontally.
And the area intersected by columns and rows are called cells.
So here's how a screen reader works. When it encounters a table,
it reads each cell across a row until it comes to the end the column.
Then it drops down to the next row and again reads each cell across to the last column.
It reads each cell completely before moving on to the next cell to the right.
For example, in this table a sight impaired student might be confused
by having to remember separate due dates for each assignment
because the screen reader will read each cell completely
before moving to the next cell.
This layout works as a visual cue,
but the sight impaired person would have difficulty with it.
The screen reader will read the table module one;
introduction history; read chapters 1 and 2 in the textbook;
assignment 1, discussion 1, module 1 quiz; 50 points, 25 points, 100 points;
March 15th, April 1st, April 17th.
Notice there's no punctuation between the three assignments,
the points, and the due dates.
So luckily, by splitting cells, we can group items into logical
sequences for screen readers and make sense for both sighted and sight impaired students.
Compare this table to a table with split and merge cells that looks like this.
Now the screen reader will read across the module,
topic, and readings columns as usual.
It will then read straight across the first split row like this.
Assignment 1, 50 points, March 15th;
Discussion 1, 25 points, April 1st; Module 1 Quiz, 100 points, April 17th.
Now let's look at splitting cells.
The first thing we would do is selected the cell we would like to split.
Under table tools, layout tab, merge group, click split cells.
Enter the number of columns and rows you want to split the selected cells into.
Here, will go with 1 and 3 and then that splits the cell.
Now we just have to move the text into the appropriate cell and it's all set.
I won't make you watch me do all three of these cells in real time,
so I'll speed this up to finish.
Now, once we have everything set up, we know how to fix a table,
but how are we going to work with the table that is blank
or we just want to set the structure up before hand?
Here's how we can do that.
Let's go in and inserted row and they we'll use the same
split cell technique to split the three cells that we want to work with.
And again I won't make you watch the whole thing in real time;
we'll just speed right through it. Now, copy that row.
Once you copy that row, we'll go ahead and paste that row below
and then you'll be able to use as many of those as you need.
Just set them up and you can work in that.
So, that should do the trick and give you an accessible table
that works for both sighted and sight impaired students or people using a screen reader.
Thank you very much for watching.