Today, we're going to talk a little bit about Excel spreadsheets, tables and spreadsheets have a lot in common soap data be good to cover both of those. And then we are going to talk about PowerPoint an and So that is par for today. Maybe I will take something for my throat. Well, first we did give me one second. Okay I found a cough drop. I can start on that. What we did talk about before is universal design concepts and particularly using the software markup pictures which I take in itself to be a kind of universal design feature because it helps what you are doing... better with all kinds of (inaudible) so I want to talk about universal design partly talking partly about organization, partly about appearance., The weight that something at first when you give somebody a table actually when you give somebody anything that they know the context of it it helps it them understand it. Now one of my readers years ago sometimes would pick up a letter out of wife trained and the person who did the letter who is really interesting to me and the ticket was good to read the letter without telling me who it was from and see if I could guess. I always found that frustrating. It's a little bit for me like what I'm reading, meeting new people I don't know them very well and I don't know their voices very well yet if somebody comes up and says hi, guess who. Or even someone if I know them very well if it's in a totally unusual context it's harder for me to guess. Like if you see someone you know well but in a place you never expect to see them it takes you an extra split second or so to identify them. So the more that you know the context of whatever it is you are looking at the easier you understand. So if you are giving information to someone trust them to know the context for it and particularly the table which often times is an array of numbers or something like that, the more you let somebody know what it is the easier it is for them to understand it.
Now this is particularly true for a screen reader user. When you see your monitor filled with information, you see the whole thing, you get the gestalt in you move down to the individual parts and move down to the gestalt concepts. A screen reader sees information bit by bit by bit. And if you don't know the context it may take you quite a long time to wander around the little bits and try to piece together what it is and get the content. Probably the simplest example we all know from childhood is a simple story of the blind man and the elephant. One has the trunk and says this feels like a big rope and another grabs the leg and says it feels like the trunk of a tree and another would grab the elephants side and thinks it is like a wall. So if we look at something and pieces without the context it takes you more time to make sense out of it. So if you give me an object like a sculpture or something and I go to look at it, if you tell me what it is first then I can start to understand and see the whole thing. That's particularly chew up the table, so the screen reader lets me read Excel, cell by cell by cell. Get a spreadsheet. Look at it on your screen. And then cut a hole in a piece of paper about the size of one of the cells in the middle of the page, slip it on the screen and start moving around and see what sense he can make of it. We will go on to the next slide. So without your being aware of it if you look at a table, you know it's a table first glance. And immediately your eye if you look at a cell in the middle of the page or I quickly glances up and you start to make sense of it. You probably do this all quickly and so automatically that you are hardly even aware of your focus. It's almost instantaneous and then you'll get the feeling that you are seeing it all at once. So what's important for a person with a screen reader is to help them know what the overall table is about and help them to connect an individual cell with the column and row of headers. The question is how do we go about doing that in just a minute. Okay when I take a break we can come back and... I want to go to the next slide.
So what I want you to do is, I sent you a sample document this is a Word document and I want you to open a Word document and we are going to make a table. Some of your focus a little bit below the last line of text. And get ready to make the table because part of what we want to do now that I've talked about accessibility but be able to make a table. And it's important to be able to use the markup and using a table rather than trying to drive sort of so the next slide will give us directions on making a table. So in 2003 and 2007 it's a little bit different. Nokia which version do you have 2003 or 2007? Okay. So if you go over in 2003 and insert the table and select out what it's going to ask you to select is how many road and how many columns. So I suggest you make it to columns in four or five rows. Just a second. Click okay when you are finished. And you should see in your document a table. And I'm going to use a little bit of an example I will be showing he later you could do anything, but that's K-1, top left, put the word me, and the age for the second cell over put age.
So once again we have a table with people's names in it and the age. And what you can do is above that perhaps in the text if you are sending it to someone, the table below gives them a list of people's names and ages. And that would help with what I'm going to see when we get there. Go over to the next slide and see what it sounds like when Jaws reads it. Before we do that I want to see if it's possible in Jaws or screen reader to tell the software you can't do it for me, but I have to do it as a user and it might be helpful if you knew about this so you can help a screen reader user find how to use it so if I go, if I know which row has the row headers, which column has the row headers and which row has the column headers and it I can go in to verbosity menu it is called and tell it which rows have the headers in it. And when I do that then when it reads me a cell is going to read the associated header. So instead of paying 33 for the age it will save John 33. So that helps me associate. Soak we will go to the next slide and as I recall I think it has some audio. No, the next one is a slide that's how to do a table. And one after that is how to do... so I'm assuming you've done that. And now we will go listen to Jaws.
Okay we are going to look at a sample table using Jaws screen reader. And show how, now that I've told Jaws which row has the column headers in it and which column has the row headers it can look at that and help me understand what I'm seeing. Rather than just giving me the information one cell at a time they will let me have the correct header information as we start it's going to tell me in a uniform table let me know where I am in the table.
Column 1 to 2, row 1 to 5.
So in the cell it says the name and then tarot down to the next row,... so the persons name is John Michael Talbot over to column 2 and it's going to tell me the header for column 2.
John's age 33 selected.
I will arrow down any age column so it doesn't have to tell me the header or the column, but it's going to give me the header name grow.
Mary, 23.
So Mary is 23. If I didn't have it set to do that it would read 23 and I would have to look for Mary. That would be easy here with two columns, but if we had 10 columns and I was in column 9 and had to arrow all the way over to column 1 to find that out they would not only be time-consuming but I would start to lose my place. We will do one more.
Bill, 48.
So you can see the tremendous benefit for screen reader who normally only sees one cell at a time, if you can have Jaws or the screen reader set up to review the appropriate column and row headers as that is necessary.
Okay so I've taken off the block to Mike and I'll see if you have any questions first about having to column, table and secondly if you are using someone with a screen reader and way can identify what's wrong which column has the headers and which column of the headers the user clicks on and identifies it. So earlier before they made the recording if I clicked on it telling it that row A was the column headers and column 1 was the row headers and so then it knew which header to read with which cell. Okay let's see if we have some questions....I think there was a previous question which I had missed. Do you want to put that up again now?
Okay, Norm, in Word if you use a style but then you use an empty paragraph marker to put a space between paragraphs is that a problem?
No that's not a problem. You can view no in fact as you're writing the document hit two or three returns to use them at will put in two or three blank pages, blank lines that is no problem.
While I think that is the only one, Norm.
Okay. I'm going to make a confession. At this point. I've been running in circles doing lots of things in preparing this presentation I pulled together a couple slides I've used somewhere else and when I look at the directions in terms of the Excel spreadsheet they are not as clear as I think they were and they haven't used it myself for a while so we will explain what we can at this point but I will send you e-mail and also put the link in the resources with the better written explanation on the thing with the spreadsheet. Because what we are going to see is that it's possible for the creator of the spreadsheet which you can do with a table, the creator can go in to the software and tell the software which Rove has column headers in it and which column has row headers in it. And they will save that and when I come in with a screen reader it will automatically do what we just saw that it did with the table in Word. I don't use it much but it's helpful for you to know about it. The screen reader user, if you haven't put in a markup header information can do the same thing as I explained we do in table in Word. So that the screen reader user can tell the screen reader which row and column have the headers and it and it will even save that and next time it comes back to the same spreadsheet they will remember it. So that's a long kind of apology. We will go through what we can with the spreadsheet and at least understand the concept and I will try to get you a clearer explanation in e-mail and also on the resources page. Let me lock the mic and we can go on to the next slide. Okay, so I've suggest you open the sample spreadsheet. Then see if we can maybe get through the few directions. So, when you open the spreadsheet we will assume that sell 18 is a key cell that we want. That will mean the little one will be the column line will be the row headers. And grow a will be the column headers. So it's possible for you to go and find that and I think it's actually easier in 2003 than in 2007. So we can go to the next slide and see some of the directions on how to do that. Do you want to read the directions that are in the image, my soul? Just a minute... okay
okay, Norm, 2003 well, first open the cell document, then you have to go to the insert menu or click on the word name, and then on the submenu you have to click on defined. In 2007 you have to go to formulas menu and on the defined name ribbon you have to click on defined name. That's all common on.
Okay it does not as clear as it should have made it and I apologize again for recognizing this at the last minute. I know that somewhere on my hard drive I've got a better explanation. But it's too late and I will get something to you within two days. Any questions before we go on?
But, is this a typo?
Yes you need to tell if that is the title. I think in 2003 you have to go there twice and one he would say the row header and the other one column header. That doesn't sound quite right. But I think you do have to do it twice and you can do it for different cells. I'm so sorry. I'm embarrassed. I think it is the next slide, my soul. That you can listen to Jaws reading and spreadsheet that is defined.
Yes it is, Norm. I'm going to change the slide now.
We are looking at a spreadsheet now and in this case I'm going to have to redefine Jaws to tell which is the header and Rose, because it was put into the actual spreadsheet itself so that jobs is going to find that. So, we are going to start looking around to see one cell at a time trying to understand it. So I'm in the first top left-hand cell row one, column 8 and I'm going to tab over to the next column.
... Tab, e-mail
so that would be people's e-mail
tab, and three E1, tab and for F1, tab totaled
so we can assume this is the last column, which is totaled. So if I arrow down one, it should tell me the row header, which would be the person named and the total for the grid.
Adam Smith, 80,
Adam Smith, 80 and it is in cell G2. Next one.
Zero
what does that mean let's look back across and see what is there.
... Blank new tabs and for blank lesson three
so, he has not done anything but what they are owed down less than one seems from the next person... candy crane was back up and do that again.
Blake, C-4.
So she hasn't done anything either.
Edward, C6.
Lesson two
tablets and four 5006 tab totaled 60 G6.
Okay so you can see that having a spreadsheet in Jaws gives me the relevant header information whether it is row or column before it reads the cell, makes the cell have real meaning once we see it in its context.
Okay what I wanted to get across on tables and spreadsheets and basically the underlying concepts are pretty much the same. That one, if you know what you are going to read before you read it whether you are blind or not, especially if you're using a screen reader, before I know what I'm going to look at the easier it is when I look at it. So gives you some idea what we are going to get with the table, with headers and column 1 and which euro and so on and that the header is about such and such, that the table were spreadsheet is about such and such gives me a context and will help me a lot, help everybody a lot when we suddenly get hit with this table. Obviously when you put a table or spreadsheet up you know what it's about and we think it's obvious to everybody else. That may not be.
So that is the first thing. Especially for people with disabilities, maybe even especially with someone with a learning disability who may have trouble piecing things together to understand the context. So tell them what they are going to see before they see it. And for a screen reader user I think in particular we need to do something so that the screen reader software will Tommy the relevant row and column header related to a particular cell that I'm looking at. Otherwise the cell isolation is pretty meaningless. The tables, the user has to do that otherwise so if the user knows ahead of time where the headers are configure the software then go in to do that, just a matter of three or 4 seconds. And then it will be saved with his version of the document and when he sees it again it will be there for him. I think that's, and in a spreadsheet is possible for you to do that for someone. I think the average faculty member at isn't going to remember that or do it. So if you work in special services or similar organization it's good if you can train the screen reader user on how to configure the software to help you make sense out of a table or spreadsheet. We are going to shift and go on to start talking about PowerPoint. Before I do that give you another second if you have a comment or question.
Okay I will lock the mic and we can move on to the first lied about PowerPoint. So we are suggesting again that we go back to the concept of universal design and I don't know if that is the best term for what I'm trying to say here or not. Essentially PowerPoint has a lot of pictures, features to help you modify and do all kinds of things with how it is displayed at present it. Animation, you could have transitions, you can have them so that the text can be one line at a time and so one line and talk about it, move the mouse or keyboard and the next slide, look them up, not moving to the next slide, but... or you can give it a set timing so that it will display a line every few seconds. You can have the lines coming from the top, the bottom, the left, the right. You can have them come in one letter at a time so it looks like you're watching somebody typed the information or keyboard it letter by letter. You can have all kinds of sound effects behind it and on and on and on. This is what I really refer to when we go beyond universal, making a better term for what I'm talking about to start off with a simple generic PowerPoint. I'm not telling you necessarily not to or never to use those other features, but depending on where you use your PowerPoint, who your audience is, what the topic is, different ones of these extra features may work well or they may not work well. I'm giving you advice that I often don't keep. Which is to make a simple generic PowerPoint. Save it as your basic basic generic version and then when you are going to deliver the PowerPoint somewhere off you can add some of the bells and whistles as appropriate. But the reason I suggest this is that you may want bells and whistles sometimes. You may not want them at other times. They are easier to add than they are to remove. So if we keep a basic generic version and then add to that for special cases, but keep your generic one clean you've got something to go back to. And I think it's fairly important if you are thinking about an audience of people with disabilities, but it's even more than that I know a lot of people have gotten tired of watching in a lecture fancy PowerPoint showing off with bells and whistles and I recall reading a memo sent out by some top general in the Pentagon to his people in the field and he ordered them in future PowerPoint do not have any bombs exploding or take come rumbling across the ground or all kinds of things. He says they just want the content. I don't want all that other crap.
And it may be fun and exciting first time, or if you have your PowerPoint you have a table or some exhibit some place that you have a PowerPoint running over and over and over all these extra little sound and so on may get people walking by to stop and look at it. But if you are concerned about conveying information sometimes all that other stuff can get in the way. So I strongly recommend you start off with a simple basic PowerPoint. Move through it, get your information in it. I'm assuming you know that one of the features is sort. I use that a lot because when I make a PowerPoint I think I want to discuss items A., B., C., D. in order that they may discover later that one should be before the other. So sorting should usually move your slides around. So make yourself a good basic simple clean PowerPoint and have that as a starting point. The next slide... so there are different kinds of layouts that you can use in PowerPoint. And the simplest one is to start off with, is for the first slide to be title and subtitle. The next screen is a screenshot of this simple, basic type title fight. You have probably see that. Next, I will refer to it as title and text. Don't always know what you see on your computer, my computer sometimes says title and object. Sometimes it says title and body. But it is basically the kind of layout that you are looking at and that is that too, for method I think I've mentioned by making a simple presentation. So, go to the next one and I will try something to avoid. Particularly for accessibility you may (inaudible) will tell you when to avoid them.
Next slide from outline I find often times again use them maybe I don't know how to use it right. It doesn't usually work for me. Diagrams are again a picture. You can use them, you can use pictures. I don't think I have this here, but you can use pictures and PowerPoint and he can put in all text cabinet. One or two weeks ago we talked about how to add I guess it was last week, how to add all text to an image and word. It's the same and PowerPoint. Once you put the image in there, you go up to the image and in 2003, 2007 it is a little bit different but you will find the text field where you can put in me all text tag. The diagram usually is more complicated. Then what the hell text tag is going to describe. So, a few what we have in the background can easily be explained other ways it's fine. If it is the diagram again of an electronic circuit you do have a problem grade and as I said in word, something that complex he may end up having to get someone to make a hard copy tactile braille version and send it to the person. But just remember a diagram is a picture identifying and you have to find some way to meet that meaningful. Let's see if I can get back. Here we go. Other things you should avoid our transitions. I talked about the problems with transitions, first thing is if you are thinking of transitions to webpages you are transitions have gone bye-bye anyhow. The same way with animation. If you are going to go to webpages. Transitions and animations work for people with some disabilities. There's a possibility they may crash the screen reader. They certainly will work. Will not work so that the couple things to avoid. I want to talk a little bit about the general layout of the next screen. Let's call it the look and feel rather than, so first thing you need good foreground background contrast. And different people with different disabilities have different needs so it is hard to come up with a hard and fast rule about it. So I will just tell you to keep that in mind. Font, type, again the plane sans serif font for most people is easier to read. Size, and that varies a lot if someone really has a problem with the font of the computer, they are probably using screen enlargement software so you don't need to think about making your font super super super big. For that kind of person. It will alienate everybody else and I think you have a right to expect somebody has a visual problem is not going to have the adaptive software. Normally I find my PowerPoint is putting by titles at 44 and a body of about 32. I find 40 as the title and 28 as the body is no problem. Maybe go a little smaller than not, but if you are crowding so much in there that PowerPoint is making it smaller and smaller and smaller think seriously about splitting it into two sides.
You should avoid hyperlinks. I think I forgot to tell you that. You can put a link into a slide and it will take you someplace. If you know that you don't have anyone using a screen reader I suppose you can do it. But screen readers at this point don't recognize a hipper link on the page. I know that 10 years ago my screen reader recognized a hyperlink but they haven't for years and I guess Microsoft must have changed the code someplace and the screen readers for some reason haven't adapted to it. Bells and whistles and another slide, it's sort of a continuation of what I've been talking about. In some situations they will work fine. With some audiences they work fine again you will use most of them when you change into a web presentation anyway how. I hear from more and more lecture attendees that they've gotten sick of all the show off, so if you're really presenting content may be focusing on Matt is useful. Sam's obviously are meaningless to hearing impaired person. If they are cute but irrelevant I guess you don't need to worry about the hearing person not getting it. Images need alternate text but if the image is purely decorative as we said in word you can put in a blank space and that simplifies it.
So the next slide modifying your generic presentations, sort of what I said at the beginning. If you have a generic one you can add bells and whistles, save it with a new name and not get rid of your simple, pure copy and use it where you want. But it is easier to add these things than it is to remove them. Nobody... what if you are doing a lecture and a hall. Next slide. What kind of things do you need to think about? Well, consider it the room characteristics where you are going to give the lecture. How big is it? How is the lighting? Depending on the lighting and the projectors, is there too much lighting or a weak projector people may not see what's up on the screen. So those kinds of things you need to know something about more and more modern projectors seem to made up for those kinds of things. I do recall years ago actually I was using an overhead projector and you know those photos of overhead slide things you put on it was a nice color thing but it got so washed out by the projector that nobody could read it. So I had to dump it and give my presentation without it. So you need to be aware of those kinds of things. Acoustics. People in the back have to hear you. Does the PA system make sure it's working well enough for it to my final suggestion as I always prepare for a snafu. What do you do if something doesn't work. I still remember one presentation years ago we went into the room really early and it was a big room, nice stage at the front, nothing on the stage except for the live microphone lying on the floor. I could pick it up and talking to it. That worked fine. One of my buddies went and got me a table foot at the mic on the table and I could put my computer on the table. There was no screen. There was no projector. And they were trying to find the person who was supposed to have had all that in place and we were running around trying to find it. And it was past time for the presentation to start and I didn't know when things are going to be in place. What do you do? You stand up there and be foolish and tell everybody you are sorry it's not your fault. What I did, I said well you're going to pretend all of you are blind. And you can't see the nice screen with all the beautiful slides I have appeared at the front. So I'm going to tell you about them.
So I said here on slide one we have such and such and then I talked to change the slides on my computer and tell them what they would be looking at. So after a while somebody came in with a projector and they set it up and plug it into my computer and got the AC cord from the projector it wasn't long enough to reach the wall A/C so they had to go running out looking for an extension cord and in the meantime I kept going on pretending with my presentation and family about half an hour later they got everything up and working and they went on working like I had to but over years and years I have found that if something can go wrong 50% of the time it will. So it's good if you could have a backup. If I go somewhere and want to do a presentation connecting to the Internet are usually tried to find a non-Internet version of the presentation and have it on my hard drive. Surf the Internet doesn't work I'm not dead. Again, this has got nothing really to do with disabilities but a little advice on the lectures. You have to think through all the things ahead of time.
Next slide. So what do you do if you have somebody in the room who is deaf? Really the only thing you can do is to have a salmon which interpreter in the room with you it's possible to have a remote part that would have someone at a remote distance having the sound sent to them they could then put the screen, screen up front, but it is good if you worry about whether somebody who is deaf will be there if you put an announcement ahead of time that if anybody is going to need an interpreter they will either know. So what do we do? What do we do for somebody who is blind or has got very poor vision? There's no screen reader, there's no screen magnification. It is essentially the presenter who has to be the assistive technology. I don't recommend which I've seen some people do and I don't like is to turn around and start reading what's up on the wall. It's redundant for most of the people in the audience and it's kind of insulting to everyone else. But I do recommend that you be sure that in your presentation you talk about everything that is displayed on the slide. So you don't say now, as you see from the screen I'm from an interesting organization that is here to help you. You say hey I'm from EASI equal access to software and information so you can find ways to parallel what is on the screen without reading it and don't just point at something on the screen. Don't think the person could have helped because it was super complicated but he had a complex bargraph up on the screen and I don't understand bargraph much anyhow but he says you see all the numbers and green are such and such and all the numbers in red are such and such and I got nothing out of his presentation.
So I don't know how you do with something like that but for the most part if you talk intelligently about your content and try not to point too much you I find that when I go to presentation and I'm, the presenter is a good presenter I will pick up 97-98% of the content and I can pretty much fill in the rest. So think about the context, the environment, all of those things. What do you do if something goes wrong. And then not only for the person who is blind or got low vision, but someone who is sitting in the back, behind some big guys who is 6 foot five with a big fat head wearing a hat and you can see the screen because he's in the way. So you need to cover what is on the slides early and intelligently for everybody.
Okay. We will move on to the next slide. If you are sharing your PPT presentation that PowerPoint itself, handing it to someone on a USB drive, attaching it to an e-mail message that you downloaded from someplace, but they are going to use the PPT or PPT X. document using their own PowerPoint on their own computer what do you need to do? If it is a fairly generic file that is talked about ahead of time it should interact quite well most of the time with screen readers or screen magnification software. So you shouldn't have to worry too much about that kind of thing. As long as you've got all text for images and those kinds of things I've touched on earlier. If you are slide has a clean layout, good contrast, if the material isn't too densely packed it should work for learning disabled or cognitive disabilities.
Next slide. So what if instead of... exporting some other way if you export to PowerPoint to the web and it doesn't work very well with screen reading or screen magnification. If the user is an expert of the software using... it doesn't work too well and next week on Wednesday rather than to state and going to talk about my favorite wizard putting accessible webpages actually it's what we used to put up a webpage... So you can also save as PDF and in my experience a fairly basic PowerPoint if you use the same as PDF usually comes out fairly readable and usually includes the images and they can save the all text... what would you share the PDF I'm not sure, but if somebody doesn't have access to PowerPoint or if they want to have a presentation... it sort of works. You can also save it as an RTF. Usually the choices if you do that you've lost your... you can take the basic text content out of the spreadsheet. If you are giving the slides to someone who is blind and they don't have PowerPoint date could get most of the basic concepts... compiled a concepts in an RTF context. You also can save the PowerPoint as word. And 2003 is a little different. You do not do save as, you use the pulldown menu, I think in 2003 is maybe... 2007 it's under publish and you can either way... publish a Word document and then it gives you several choices of different Word documents. Many of them only have the picture and a blank space. What is very useful maybe to someone who is deaf if you want to give them a version that may include why you have talked about Ventura talking points in the notes of the slide.
One of the choices if you want to save it in Word is to put the notes under the slide or under the picture of the slide so the deaf person would see the picture of the slide and a picture of the notes before you talk about the slide. So that may be useful in some situations. For the most part he probably... so the next slide is to summarize what we are talking about in PowerPoint, make a simple basic version and keep it something you can build and change from. So the added features that you want that you think will work for the audience in the context where it's being delivered. What we are going to look at next week is again it will be on Wednesday at two o'clock... but it is a wizard and they will let you pull your presentation and your software, walk you through the things that will make it accessible. If there was a missing image it will let you fix that and do all kinds of things... print out a series of webpages. The other one a lot of people have talked about is called virtual final.com... use to be known as the Illinois accessible Wizard. It has changed... I guess we have a couple minutes left of people have comments or questions, I guess we ran overtime. Thanks for hanging in there. I don't think many screen readers are using Excel files very much. But if you are in a college and you've got a student the teacher may use them for something or other. So it is important to note how an Excel file and tables can be used by someone with accessibility. So I will get a written description and you may want to keep it and if you don't work in the DSS office you might want to hand it to someone they are, they might find it useful. I hope so.... See you next week.
Thanks Norm, thanks everyone for being here and we're looking forward to seeing you on our next webinar. Bye-bye
Thanks, Marisol