atw: Re: MS Publisher

I mean accessibility in terms of ensuring that people with special needs can 
still easily access your information. If you have a very specific audience who 
are all using a particular tool and who don't have special needs, then you 
might not have to worry about it. 

I just assumed you were producing a web product. Does the executable open a 
self-contained program or does it use a web browser to display information? 
Do you know if your audience all going to be Vista users? Vista is supposed to 
include a zoom option (see 
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/windowsvista/).

There's a lot of information around on web accessibility, but not so much on 
accessibility of applications. Best bet would be to open the accessible in a 
number of operating systems and see how it looks.

The sort of things you need to look out for are providing alternatives to 
images and multimedia so that people who can't use those formats still get the 
intended information, and catering for different visual abilities by allowing 
users to change size of text, fonts and contrasts of backgrounds etc. You've 
probably already considered things like use of colour if any of your audience 
is colourblind or vision impaired. You also need to make sure that people can 
use devices other than a mouse to navigate around your product.

There's a good introduction to web accessibility at 
http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php, but it is specific to web. 

I'm not sure how you would determine what constitutes accessibility for a 
self-contained package. Groups like Vision Australia provide tools for web 
accessibility (http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/ais/toolbar/) so they might 
know how to go about assessing a product too. Can't hurt to ask. Microsoft 
provides a page for their products: 
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/default.aspx 

Are you using WebCompiler from Harmony.net 
(http://www.harmony.net/webcompiler)? If so, one concern I have is that their 
webpage only shows properly in Internet Explorer and not in other web browsers 
like Firefox. It might mean nothing at all, but it could also be an indication 
of how accessible their end product might be. Again, if your audience are all 
on Microsoft systems it probably isn't an issue.

Also can't hurt to ask the vendor what they provide for accessibility support.


-----Original Message-----
From:   austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Christine Kent
Sent:   Wed 21/01/2009 5:29 PM
To:     austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc:     
Subject:        atw: Re: MS Publisher

Ok, that's given me something to  look at.  I've just checked the executable
and nothing on the page is scalable, so someone with sight problems would
have to use the Windows Vista based accessibility features. That seems to be
a limitation of WebCompiler, not Publisher, but I will check with them to
confirm it is not a setting somewhere, or a limitation with how they
interpret Publisher.  

 

So:

.         Step 1 - write and format in Publisher using the Web Publication
option, with access to full 2007 formatting features, including themes and
styles.  This has a simple Design Checker that  picks some web coding
issues.

.         Step 2 - save as an HTML using the save as command, and do
absolutely nothing with this file.

.         (Step 3 - set parameters in WebCompiler once (I have never used
such a well designed product!).)

.         Step 4 - hit the Compile button in WebCompiler.  Wait.

.         Step 5 - hit the Run button in WebCompiler.

 

How much easier can it get?  

 

So far, the sole problem that has emerged is that my customers can't scale
the page.  This is definitely worth exploring as I do use a smallish font.
I will see if it is a Publisher or WebCompiler issue, and I will send a copy
of the executable to a very fernickety sight impaired editor to see if he
can use it.

 

What else? 

 

Christine

 



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