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I'd like to show you how to make a Microsoft Word document accessible.
First thing we're going to do is go to File and you notice Info is highlighted already. What we wanna do is
We want to go to Check for Issues - right here. Click on that.
And then we want to Check Accessibility
And you can see here on the right that it's giving us some errors. As soon I click, it says "Missing Alternate Text" Click for Picture 1 and you can see
right here that it's highlighted that. Now the neat thing is that down
on the bottom here It says why do you have to fix it and then it says how to fix it which I think is great 'cause you never
have to remember how to do this. So, I'm going to right click on the object
Go down to Format Picture
and then here where it says Alternate Text, I'm going to get rid of this, ok?
If you don't get rid of that what's going to happen is the screen reader is going to start reading this "h-t-t-p-colon"
That kind of thing. So we don't want that. So this is a Microsoft Word Logo.
OK? So that's all we need. There's no other description for that. I'm going to click on Close.
Now you notice that the error went away. For the table same thing. Now when you're working with a table, what you wanna do is you want to describe
what you want someone to see out of this table. So you're not just saying "The first column is criteria. The second column..." What you want to
see - I want to give a summary of the table. So in this table were looking at certain features and
Remarks and Explanations. So again down here it reminds you how to do it. Right click on the table
Go down to table properties
and you're going to go to your Alternate Text. So is a criteria table
and the description you will put here so This table demonstrates
features in Microsoft
Word.
Now of course if you're the creator of the document it's much easier because you know what the table is for. So trying to do this for
someone else's document is a little difficult. Now you notice here as well there's no Table Row
specified for this table. So I click on it. And the reason we have to do that
is because the screen reader, again, allows a student who's visually impaired, for example,
to jump to a table easily if there is a header row. So what I've done is as soon as I click on the table you notice these 2 things. I go to Layout
and here - Repeat Header Row. Now if this extended over to the next page, it would also carry that title as well. So I would go through
and then I would do the same thing here - Repeat header row. Another one Repeat Header Row. Then I have a merged cell. Now here
you notice even know it's a Repeat Header Row, the merging causes some difficulty again
with the screen reader. So down at the bottom, it says what I'm going to have to do is split it.
Now, if you notice up here - again the table tools - I can Split the Cells.
I need 2 columns - 1 row. And then I could maybe move part of this text over here.
instead. Again, if you're the table creator, you will know how to do that.
Now for the hyperlink text, if I click here, again I don't want the computer to say "h-t-t-p..." ok?
What I want it to do instead is I want it to say what the web site is. So I'm going to select the link like it says to do here.
And I can go down here I and Edit Hyperlink and what I want to display up here is Microsoft
Word Enable information for Accessibility 'cause that's what it is.
Again if you're the one who's created the document, it's much easier to do this. You see now how that displays. That's what the screen
reader's going to read. And of course, if you Control-Click, it will actually bring you to that website. So of all these things
here, as soon as you click on it, it will tell you how to fix it in the bottom. So that's really important
Here it says the title is too long. You know, again, you may want to press Enter and make it into 2 titles. That kind of thing.
You know change it. It tells you what the errors (are), and it also tells you why you need to fix it.
So hopefully this helps.
Have a great day.