In this hands-on course we will explore the accessibility features of Microsoft Office, including Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Every version of MS Office improves its level of accessibility over the previous. We tailor the training to the version of Office that your team is using.  A USB key with tools and techniques are provided.

General:

• WCAG, an overview of what is important to Office content providers
• Specifying document language, and sections of a second language in a document
• Using accessible templates
• Contrast ratios
• Making content easy to see and simplifying language
• Setting language
• How to avoid the accessibility “gotchas” that confuse a screen reader user
• Demonstration of barriers, and accessible documents with a screen reader user who is blind

Word:

• Creating base templates
• Creating Text Alternatives to images
  
• Heading use and hierarchy, defining and designing styles, understanding the difference between semantic headings and visual headings
• Leveraging existing document structure
• Accessible charts
  
• Using accessibility settings when importing exporting

Excel:

• Alternate text for images and graphics
  
• Formatting cells
• Understanding names, and defining names
• Providing structure for tables
• Improving layout
• Exporting properly to PDF

PowerPoint:

• Using Built in layout
• Logical tab order
  
• Adding slide notes
• Text alternatives
• Built-in structure
• Unique titles
• Accessible charts
• Making content easy to see
• Simple layout principles
• Saving/exporting to PDF

Note: This course demonstrates how to export to PDF from MS Office for maximum accessibility, but does not discuss additional measures in Acrobat to ensure that the exported PDFs conform to WCAG. That is covered in the course "Accessible PDFs".

Prerequisite:

Experience with MS Office applications.