February 8, 2011
>> Hi this is Adina. Just testing to see if the microphone is working?
>> It's working here.
>> I can hear you fine here.
>> Thank you.
>> Hi, Marisol, I'm going to push my own slides but if you can snag any questions in the chat window, that would be great.
>> Okay, Karen, I will.
>> Hi may have to use a lock thing. Marisol, is my mike coming through now?
>> Yes, Robert. Excellent.
>> Seems like when I just hold down the control key it bleeps. I don't think you guys have been hearing me. But welcome everybody.
>> Would you mind saying something again so we can see if our sound is loud enough. Thanks.
>> Yes, this webinar is going to be ‑‑ I'm going to paste now the URL so you can find last weeks.
>> Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing Marisol did. The presentations are archived and the Marisol is going to put up the URL for that. We hope to have those up in a couple of days. Last week’s should already be up.
>> Okay, there's the URL and the archive where all the series is going to be. I'm just going to be updating the same file.
>> Okay. Marisol, anytime you're ready.
MARISOL MIRANDA: Okay. Hello, everyone. I'm Marisol Miranda from EASI. I want to welcome you all to this presentation on accessible and useable PDF documents. Our today's presenter is Karen McCall. Hi, Karen. And now I'm going to turn the mike over to Robert Beach. Hi Robert.
Robert. Did you hear the introduction?
ROBERT BEACH: Can you hear me now, Marisol?
MARISOL MIRANDA: Yes, Robert.
ROBERT BEACH: [Indiscernible] again, welcome to the presentation. I'm filling in for Norm. The webinars March 2nd, there will be a webinar on HTML. I'm sorry, I'm trying to read notes with one hand here, sorry. HTML. March there will be a webinar on easy to use free and open source [Indiscernible] higher ed. So that will be a good webinar as well. The date, I'm not positive on that one yet. But be watching for that one. That will be later in March. Then on March the 10th is a webinar, updates to [Indiscernible] so be sure and put ‑‑ then there's a fee based series coming up in March on assistive technology and learning disabilities higher ed. You'll want to tune into that one. Now without further adieu, I'm going to turn this mike over to Karen McCall to get this going and we're doing part two of our four part series. Karen, take it away.
KAREN McCALL: Thanks, Robert. Thanks Marisol. And welcome to week two of accessible and useable PDF documents. I did get the e‑mail just before I came into the webinar room. And I did see the question before the webinar started about which version of Acrobat or Photoshop or other tools you're using is going to be the best to use. And I think that at one point Vanessa said that she was confused. I am confused as well. It depends on what you're using in terms of Microsoft Office. I have Photoshop CS5 and I'm not sure if that's equal to Photoshop 8. And they have built in some tools or they've enhanced some things related to accessibility. Probably not in Photoshop but maybe in Acrobat nine. Having said that, for me, Acrobat 8 was the last sort of best Acrobat that was out there. However, it didn't work terribly well with office 2007 or 2010 because neither of those versions of office were around.
So whatever version of Acrobat you're using, if you're using it with one of the Microsoft Office suites, you're going to have to match the version of Acrobat with the version of office. If you want to use the integrated add in. If you are using Adobe products, Acrobat 8 still used the scanning tool, the old scanning, OCR engine. Acrobat 9 and X use the clear scan scanning engine. And I've found that the old engine worked a bit better. However in Acrobat X, they have refined their clear scan scanning engine a little bit. I haven't worked with that many scan documents with Acrobat X to notice a difference. I do know that in Acrobat 8, I could find suspect things that it had low confidence or it was questioning and would allow you to change. In all of the scanned documents I've worked with in Acrobat 9 and X, I don't have that ability.
Anytime I say find anything that you find suspect, it comes back and says nope, everything's fine. And then I can go and look at the text and it's, there are no spaces between words or I have ASCII text or something like that. My advice for you is that if you're using Acrobat 8 and Photoshop 8 and everything is working fine for you, you probably at this point don't want to jump into Acrobat X unless you have an automatic update cycle. Or unless you're using Microsoft Office 2010. And again, with office 2010, you want to make sure you have a 32‑bit install of office because there is no 64‑bit support in Acrobat X. So I know that probably leaves you just as confused as ever but it really does depend on the tools that you're using and primarily whether you're using office 2007 or 2010.
If you're thinking of moving from Acrobat 8. If you're using Acrobat 9, then it will work well or should work well, I think, with office 2007 but not with 2010. So again, it depends very much on the tools that you're using. So what are we going to do this week now that I've thoroughly confused you and your heads are spinning. This week we're going to look at creating PDF documents for Microsoft Word. The majority of this week we're going to spend in Microsoft Word and showing you what tools you have available to you and Word 2007 and 2010. Although I did forget the accessibility checker in office 2010 but I can add that in next week. The first thing that I'm going to show you though is some of the conversion settings for the Adobe PDF documents. And there are now, the fact that there are now two ways that you can create PDF from Microsoft Word, actually from Microsoft Office. The first one if you have access to the Acrobat add in is to use the Acrobat make accessible add in. You'll know if you have that because in the ribbons of office 2007 and 2010, you will see an Acrobat ribbon.
Again in Office 2010, you will need Acrobat X. But if you have Acrobat X, it will work in either 2007 or 2010. Microsoft also, with office 2007, created it's own save as PDF or PDF add in. XPS, it's the format they're using for digital newspapers and things like that is a completely inaccessible format at this time. Apparently within the XPS exporting process they have built in the accessibility but there is no accessibility in the viewers. So whether you're viewing an X P S format in your browser or in the XPS viewer, it's not accessible. So I often refer to this as the save as [Indiscernible] however the PDF part of it does work well if you're in office 2007 or Office 2010. And you can create a tag PDF from Word, PowerPoint, Excel and in Office 2010, you can also create a tagged PDF from Publisher, which is a new feature. You can't create a tagged PDF from Outlook. In Office 2007, you have to download and install the save as PDF or XPS add in, but in Office 2010, it's included. There are places you can find it in the menu. I've given you the link here to go and download it if you're using Office 2007. Again, if you're using Office 2010, it's included.
There is a check box in the options to write bookmarks from your headings. So here is the process. Oh yes, the one thing you should know is that you access ‑‑ if all you're using is the save as PDF add in, you can't see the tags. You'll need Acrobat professional to do that. And the other thing is that you will not be able to apply security to your documents. Whereas with the Adobe add in or the Acrobat add in, you are able to then in your conversion settings, apply security for every document that you create. So let's take a look at where you're going to find this. In Word 2007, it is under the file and save as different formats. So the keyboard command for that is ALT F, F and A for Adobe PDF. If you are working with Word 2010, it is under ‑‑ let me see, did I include that here? If you're working with Word 2010, it is under the file back stage area. So ALT F. And then D for save and send. I forget what the keyboard command is but it's for other formats. And then you choose PDF.
So it's a little bit more complicated. In both cases, if you press F12 to open the save as dialog, you can go to files as type and choose PDF and it does exactly the same thing. That's what I use most of the time because it's faster. Once you've chosen to save as a PDF document when you go through the back stage button or using F12, you have an options button. And when you activate that, one ‑‑ you're going to create a tagged PDF by default but one of the other options you have is to create bookmarks using headings. There's a check mark so it says create bookmarks from headings or from styles. I don't recommend creating bookmarks from styles. I don't even recommend that if you are using the bookmarks tab in the Acrobat add in. Because what that will do is for every style in your document including paragraphs, you're going to create a bookmark. And then the document, it's counterproductive in terms of navigating. You only want to create navigation structures using headings. You don't want to include the entire document. Otherwise you'll never find anything.
So Acrobat X add in, as I said, will not install in a 64‑bit install of office. And you do still need to do someone to do the quality assurance or QA on your PDF documents if you use the save as PDF add in for Microsoft or the add in from Adobe. So it's not a substitute for someone actually opening up the tags tree or taking a look at the document and saying yes, everything that you intended to be captured and tagged is captured and tagged. So what we're going to do now is just take a review of some of the conversion settings in case you're a little bit confused about them. So on the ribbon, this is the ribbon from Word 2007. You'll notice it has an office button instead of a file button in the left. It does have an Acrobat ribbon and that's the one that's in focus. Not every tool in the Acrobat ribbon will create a tagged PDF.
For example, if you attach the document as a PDF'd e‑mail, it's not going to be tagged. Also when you're working in Microsoft Word, there are some of the mail merge methods of created a PDF document that are not going to create tag PDF. We saw last week that there are some areas of creating PDF that just don't create tagged PDF and so the tags have to be added in Acrobat if you want them tagged. So bookmarks and headings. This is the bookmarks tab. And one of the things that I've found in Acrobat 9 and X is that even though I say create headings from the book ‑‑ yeah, create bookmarks from the headings in Word, it doesn't always capture all of them. If I create custom styles such as column one based on heading one, column two based on heading two, and I say based on this dialog, make bookmarks based on those headings, it doesn't always do that either.
I have found that there's a bug in Office ‑‑ I'm not sure if it's on the Microsoft side or the Adobe side of it but there's a bug that makes this dialog sort of ineffective. I just leave it now and add the bookmarks in Adobe Acrobat. I just don't take the time. In the general settings for the conversion tools which is where you land when you first open the conversion tools, it's going to create tagged PDF by default. So you actually have to choose to uncheck that. It's also going to make your links accessible and transfer your links. So almost everything that you need to do with the document is going to be done with the document right without you having to change anything from the general settings. I'm just showing you this so that you know what it looks like and you can see that everything is tagged as it should be. Then there are word settings. There's a check box for advanced tagging. And I just recently found out exactly. Two years I've been trying to find out what advanced tagging is and why it's not done automatically. It's a check box that you have to check. I do have the explanation I got it last month and now I forget it.
So I'm going to have to include that next week for you. But there is an explanation as to what advanced tagging does. Then we have the security settings. And last week a talked a bit about security settings. You can set these through the Adobe add in in Word. And the one thing you can do low resolution printing or no resolution printing. But you must leave that check box that says allow access for the adaptive technology. You must leave that checked in order for adaptive technology screen readers, text to speech, to access the document. One of the new tools that you have in Word 2007 and Word 2010 are building blocks. And they're found under the insert menu. Sorry. I said building. I just automatically thought of building blocks. Building blocks are found under the insert menu. The keyboard command is ALT plus N and the letter Q. Any document text you can create your own library of.
My explanation of why text boxes are inaccessible, I use document to document. Instead of finding the document, I first put that in and copying and pasting. I just create the whole thing as a building block. Anytime I want to use it, I go to my building blocks, I say pick the text box description and it plunks it right into my document and matches the formatting of the document that I'm putting it in. So I make use of the building blocks. If you're moving from Word 2003 to 207 or 2010, the building blocks replace the old, oh what was it called, auto text, I think. I think it was called auto text. It was under the insert menu. It was the sincerely yours, your name, all those things. Build blocks allow you to do so much more. So this slide is actually called building better documents. And one of the things I suggest you start with is using templates.
For those of you who have not used a template before, they are very easy to use. The advantage to using a template is that you can have a different look and feel for all of your documents. You can also have different layouts for your documents but keep the look and feel. So for example, if I'm doing a news letter, I may want to create a template that has columned text. I can use the heading styles and some of the other things from my basic document template, maybe my report template, and I can use them in my newsletter template. But the newsletter template is going to have a different look, a different layout. The other advantage to using a template is that you can then change heading one, heading two, and heading three and how it looks and still use the keyboard commands of control plus ALT plus one for a heading level one. Control plus ALT plus two for heading level two. It's easy to create table of contents because I can put some text ‑‑ place holder text in there. And get my table of contents done so that someone who is coming back and using that template just needs to replace some of the text with their own text and they've already got the table of contents done, I've got everything marked and it's just easier to convert things to Braille or DAISY if you're working from a well structured document and a well structured template. You can also, if you have images, you can add that ALT text in the template and someone doesn't have to add it themselves. You can add the captions for things that are static. You can add contextual links and footnotes or end notes and I'll explain that later. If you have tables, or you know that there's going to be a table in a report template, for example, you can set that table up to be accessible so that the person who is putting in the data for the report, the content for the report, just needs to fill in the information.
So and you don't want to use text boxes or paragraph frames because those are inaccessible elements. So you can create a template for each different document that you're going to produce and make it as accessible as possible. You would also then need to make sure that the person who is adding the content or revising the content to these documents is trained so that they don't decide to be creative on their own and break the accessibility in the document. So creating an accessible template is only one part of the equation. Training the staff on how to use the template so that they don't break the accessibility is the second part. Once people get used to working with templates and know what they can and can't do with them, and I say can't do because as I've said, there are some people who will look at something and instead of applying a style, will try to mimic the style with formatting flung at it or who may say well I don't really like that table so they'll take that table out and put in an inaccessible one, just because they can. So those are the things you need to be aware of when you're working with templates.
There are also, one of the really nice things in Word 2007 and it's carried through in Word 2010 is that in the advanced settings under copy and paste, there are some options so that if you're bringing information from a different document that has different formatting, you can match the destination formatting. One of the things that I do as soon as I install Word is go in here and match the destination formatting so that I don't have to worry about it. There are some documents that are, and they're not mine, horrendously formatted though that I will actually remove the formatting in the source document before I even attempt to bring it over into the document that I'm working with. And again, if it's text that you're going to be using repeatedly, the building blocks is a really good place to start with that. And here is the same set of options in Word 2010. And it's in exactly the same place under advanced ‑‑ the advanced category in the Word options.
Getting to the Word options is a little different in Word 2007 it is ALT plus F and then the letter I for word options. In Word 2010, it's ALT plus F and then the letter T. Those keyboard demands are consistent in all of the applications in Office 2007 and Office 2010. In order to clear the formatting, I select text and press H for the home ribbon and E for erase. There's a little eraser for those who are most dependent in either the font or the paragraph group. It depends on whether you're using Word 2007 or 2010, I think. But I typically will erase formatting before I move something from one document to another or if I'm working in a document and I've found that I've made a mistake in formatting before I format over top of it, erase the formatting. That way there's no carry over when the document is converted to Braille, DAISY or PDF.
The reason I select the text first is then I know what I'm affecting. I have a friend and she argues that she likes to turn the formatting on, type her text, and then turn the formatting off. And sometimes she forgets to turn the formatting off. Which is why I select things before I apply or clear formatting. I really want to know exactly what it is I'm doing. So try to do this before. Try to erase the formatting before you copy. And sometimes there are some documents that are so horrible that you do have to take them in the note pad or at least sections of the text. So just know that there are times when you have to do that. But having those matched destination formatting options in the word options is a real help for those of us who are repurposing content from one document to another.
Your templates contain all of the information you need for your document and it can include any redundant information. You can also then modify the inherent heading tiles styles so that think look the way you want them to look. I don't recommend modifying the normal template because there's no reset. What you would have to do is go into your templates folder on your hard drive, delete the normal template, well close word, delete the normal template then launch Word again. Then you would also lose some of the building blocks and other things that you may have set. So I always use a different template for different documents.
The keyboard command for template is ALT plus F, F, T in Word 2007. So you're going through the office button, save as different format, and then T for template. In Word 2010, you're going to press ALT plus F, D, C and then T for the file back stage area, save and send, change file type, I think it is, and then T for template. As I mentioned you can also just press F 12, go to file as type and choose Word template. It will do exactly the same thing. The one thing you need to be careful of in Word 2007 and 2010 is that you put your template in your templates folder. And with Word 2007, it was the first time that you could actually save your template anywhere.
So the last folder you were working in would be the place that you would save your template. I want all of my templates available to me when I choose file new. So I want to make sure that all of my templates are saved in my templates folder in my hard drive. And there is a way to do that as you choose the file type of template, you'll notice that in the navigation pane in the save as dialog, that you either have a choice for Microsoft Office Word, I think in 207. And Microsoft Word in 2010. And when you click on that link or activate that link using the keyboard, then you will have access to your templates folder in the list of files and folders. This is the Word 2010 save as templates. You can see it's even visually it's a little bit longer process. But this is what it would look like as you move through the file back stage area. To use your template, you don't want to then open it.
So if I have saved an annual report, I then don't want to go to my recent documents and open my report dot [Indiscernible] I want to go to file, new, choose my templates and then choose annual report. And that will open a copy of my template and I can make any changes that I want and I can rename it. So the keyboard commands would be ALT plus F and then N for new. Choose my templates. And again, don't open the template that you were working on or when you add the content, you're adding the content to the template itself. You can put templates on the network. So once you create it, it can be deployed across your organization. The key to making your document accessible or one of the keys is to use headings and to use headings properly. I'm working on a document where headings have been used for caption text and for side bar text and things like that. Headings are navigational points in your document. They help you move from pieces of content in a hierarchical order.
So you move from a heading one to a heading two, to a heading three. You don't move from a heading one to a heading three. I as a person who uses JAWS can get a list of headings in my document. For those of you who aren't using adaptive technology in Word 2007, you can also get a list of documents. And you can do this in 2010. I don't think I included a picture of that. But let me see. Maybe not. My screen is taking a bit longer to ‑‑ no, I didn't. So in Word 2007, if you go under view and choose document map, you'll have a list of headings down the ‑‑ it will open the document map pane on the left hand side of your document, and you will be able to go through your document heading by heading in the same way that I do.
If you're using Word 2010, they've changed it to navigation pane. And the keyboard command is ALT plus W, K for navigation pane. Not sure why except the other characters were probably taken. And that is a toggle. So that if I press ALT plus W, K, again, it's going to close that navigation pane. That gives you a list of your headings and they are indented so you'll be able to see which is a heading one, which is a heading two, which is a heading three. As you click on or press enter on the various headings, you'll move to that point in your document. So you can see without going to the table of contents, you can navigate your document. And that's what the headings do for those of us who use adaptive technology.
We have an easy way of getting a list of the contents in the document. And if everything is a heading level six because someone liked the way the heading level six looked, we have no idea what is a chapter title, what is a sub title, what is a secondary level sub title, everything is the same to us. We can navigate from content to content but we have no idea what the hierarchy of the document is, of that content is. Sometimes people like to just fling formatting at headings and other pieces of content. And that ends up in a real dog's [Indiscernible] in the styles pane. And this was an example that I actually created because I had deleted my really awful example by mistake.
So often what happens is someone will create a heading, will use heading level one. But then for some reason they want heading level one centered, so they will simply center it. Then they'll want it right aligned. So they'll simply right align. Every time you do that, you actually create a one off of your style. And your styles pane ends up looking quite nasty. A better way to do that is to just decide on what your heading one is going to look like. And again, use your template. And modify that heading level one. If you do need a different look for heading level one, call it heading one A and base it on the existing heading structure. All of your styles are in the styles pane alphabetically.
The keyboard command for viewing your styles pane is ALT plus H, F, Y. If you are most dependent, there is a little tiny icon that you can click in the quick styles gallery, I think it is, that will open the styles pane. But it's just so much faster and you don't have to squint and try to find it visually with the mouse. ALT plus H, F, Y, will open the styles pane and ALT plus H, F, Y, will close the styles pane. Again, you're creating a hierarchy in the document. And it does have structure that when it's converted to Braille, DAISY or PDF, you don't have to repair that. The H1 structure is there, the code is there, it's a repair that you don't have to make. And here's where I have the keyboard commands for you. So select the text that you want to be a heading level one and press control plus ALT and the number one. Press control plus ALT plus two for a heading level two. And control plus ALT plus three for a heading level three.
There are 11 heading levels in Microsoft Word. I have only ever practically use three of them. I did use a heading level four once, but when I revised the document, I kind of said what the heck did I do that for and made it a heading level three because in the micro of the content, it made more sense as a heading level three. And again, here's the styles pane when you have a heading selected in the document or your cursor is within a heading, then in the styles pane, that's what's going to be visible. Also notice at the bottom of the styles pane, there are three buttons. The one on the far left is for new style. The one in the middle is for style inspector. And the one on the right is for managed styles. And those have some really important tools and some nifty tools for you to use. And I'll get to those in a minute.
We'll actually go through some of those tools and I'll tell you why they're important for you. If you are going to create a custom style, for example, if you do need a heading 1A, make sure that you base it on heading one. If you just base it on the normal paragraph text, it doesn't matter what you call it, it's going to be seen as a normal paragraph. It's only going to be identified as a heading if you base it on an existing heading. And a lot of people don't realize that so when they create a new heading style, they simply select some text or they go and they create a new style based on the normal paragraph style, call it a heading, and it does not have that underlying heading structure that Word recognizes as a heading. That the conversion tools for DAISY, Braille and PDF recognize as a heading. So make sure that you do that.
Now here's a list of headings as I see them in a document and this is from the JAWS screen reader with a document that I was working on in Word 2010. So the same as you can use the document map or the navigation pane, I can move through, and I can use first character navigation here. So if I know that there's a heading that starts with I for introduction or implementation, I can press the letter I and quickly move to those pieces of content. So once I'm familiar with a document, I can move around a document quite quickly. You don't have the ability to use first character navigation in the document map or navigation pane. If you use heading styles, you can also then automatically generate a table of contents.
So by applying one accessibility feature, that being headings, you have actually created two navigational structures. You request create a linked table of contents which would be a linked table of contents when you convert a document to tagged PDF and you've created headings which can be navigated independently as well. When the document is converted to tagged PDF, you can also create bookmarks. And this slide shows you what bookmarks in the PDF document look like. For those of you who have worked with bookmarks, you may notice that I have some bookmarks that are blue. In my books, all of my chapter bookmarks are blue so that someone with a learning visual or cognitive disability looking at the bookmarks will be able to easily identify the first level bookmarks or topic changes.
They'll be able to identify the individual chapter titles. And I looked at all of the different colors in the color palette and this bright blue seemed to be the most legible and the easiest to identify. Which is why I use it. I tried the navy blue but that was too close to the black. The yellows and the red, they were pale and then there are people with red, green color blindness. So the blue just seemed to be a natural way to distinguish the chapter titles from the rest of the books. Marks. In [Indiscernible] here's where we get into some of those nifty tools that are available to you. Reveal formatting is a command not on the ribbon. So you will not find it on any of the ribbons. You can as this slide indicates, put it on your quick access tool bar. So if you go to customize your quick access tool bar, go to the commands not on the ribbon and choose reveal formatting, you'll be able to add it.
The keyboard command and the way that I knew about it for the longest time was shift F1. And that will open the reveal formatting pane to the right of your document. Screen readers will read all of the information in there. However, you cannot go through it in a granular manner. So I listen to [Indiscernible] as you move through your document with the cursor or click on paragraphs and pieces of text, the information in the reveal formatting pane will change. So you'll be able to see the changes in formatting and what formatting has been applied to specific text. So again, shift plus F1 will open the reveal formatting pane. To close it, I think you can press shift F1 again. Or with focus in the reveal formatting pane, you can press ALT space bar and then C for close, or is it control space bar and then C for close? One or the other. And that would be the equivalent of the word perfect reveal codes that we all love from Word perfect but haven't really found a way to see.
The other tool and it's a similar tool but it doesn't give you as much information. It gives you the ability to reset some of your formatting is the style inspector. And I talked briefly about those three put tons in the styles pane. And the styles inspector is the middle button. So when I activate the styles inspector, I have a floating palette over my document which can get annoying, so I suggest putting it off to one side if you're going to use it. But again, as I move through the text, I'm able to see what the formatting looks like. I don't find the style inspector all that helpful unless I want to reset my formatting and I can do it here. Although I'm so used to doing things from the styles pane that I tend to do it there and I apologize for the phone. I tried to bury it. But apparently didn't bury it enough.
We have the styles inspector and another tool that we have is the managed styles dialog. The managed styles which is the third button, has two really important tools. I I can delete styles into here. I can come into managed styles, I can modify or I can delete that style. I can also, if you'll notice in the lower left of this dialog, there is an import/export styles button. And for those of you who are working with legacy documents, this is a gem. I can take a template or any document where I have all of the accessibility features and the look and feel that I want for my headings and other text, and I can export the styles from one document to another. So if I have a legacy document where no one has used styles, all I have to do is go through that legacy document and apply the heading one style. Doesn't matter what it looks like. I'm just going to go through and I'm going to add my styles. I then come to the import/export dialog. And on the left hand side is where I'm going to take my styles from.
So I might open my annual report template. And I generally will move, for legacy documents, I will move styles from a template that I've created because I know that everything is going to be right there and I know where my template is. So on the left hand side of this dialog, I open up my template. Annual report, for example. And then on the right hand side of the document, I'll have my legacy document. And I'll have it open. And there are buttons. Right now there's a ‑‑ the buttons will say I think it's close file. When I choose not to use that file, the button changes to close file. And it's accessible for screen reader. I select heading one in annual report and I export it over to my legacy document.
So immediately, anything that's formatted as a heading level one in that legacy document is going to have the look and feel of a heading level one from my template because I've overridden that style in the legacy document. So the ability to import and export styles is a really quick way to make sure that if you have legacy documents or documents coming from other departments, that they have a common look and feel. And if you're using Word 2007 or 2010, I highly recommend just doing some testing and some work with the ability to import and export styles. And you can move them from document to document. I tend to move them from the left document to the right. But you can move them from the right document to the left. And it's just a very easy way to make sure that your documents all use the same structure and elements. The other thing that I would recommend to you is that once you do create your template, you don't need to create new styles.
For example, the templates, the normal template in Word 2007 and 2010, they they have an intense quote. Instead of reinventing the wheel, modify the quote and get it to look like what you want. Don't clutter up your styles pane with newly named styles. If you don't like the way that the existing style looks. I mean, I gave headings as an example. But I go in and I will change the way the quote looks and put a border around it and left right indent it. Put some padding between the text and the border and create an accessible side bar or an accessible call out. And I've used the style that's there when someone else is looking at the document, they can easily see that it's a quote and they don't have to guess at what I might have called it. I use the styles that are there in my template and I modify any of them to get the look and feel that I want. Moving to ALT text on images, in Word 2007 you found it in the size and position dialog and it was called the ALT text tab.
I successfully advocated for the change from web to ALT text. So that's my little feather in my hat. I was a beta tester on Office 2007. And Word 2010, we've moved, it got moved back to the format picture or format object dialog. So for those of you again, who are coming from Word 2003, the web used to be in the format picture. In Word 2007, they separated size and position from format picture. And it was in the size and position. In Word 2010, it's back to format picture. One of the other changes in, it is still called ALT text, Word 2010, is that I can now put a title as well as a description. So if you have a complex image then you can add a brief title. So for example, if I were putting, for some reason, a photo of my cats in a document, I would use the title to say photo of Barnaby and Olivia and then use a description to give a little more detail. Like the two of them are sitting in their Alan and Denny chairs looking out of the deck. For those of you who watch Boston Legal.
On the left of the slide is the ALT dialog in Word 2007. And on the right hand side of the slide is the format picture with the ALT text category chosen. And you can see that there is room for a title and a description. One caveat to adding text to images is not to put an [Indiscernible] if it needs anything more than two sentences, then you need to either provide a separate document or make sure that it is supported in the surrounding text. I have had PDF documents especially where there has been so much information in the ALT text that I could not open the document with my screen reader running which meant that I cannot read that document because I have to open the PDF document with my adaptive technology running in order to get the best results, in terms of reading it.
So make sure that your ALT text is brief and concise and not an is essay. I do have techniques for document authors. I do have some techniques for more complex charts and diagrams. Visio diagrams, things like that. Where you can provide information for someone who can't see those types of diagrams. I also use captions. I've been using captions now for four or 5 years on my images. I knew about captions. I for some reason forgot about using them. Acrobat nine and Acrobat X have a bug coming from word, as does the save as PDF add in. Both of those tools are based on the PDF specifications. The bug is that if you have images in your Word document, they get thrown to the top of the tags tree, not in the logical order they appear in the document. And in addition, when you look in the order tab, they're always at the bottom of the page in the page order, again, no matter where they appear.
The fact that I add captions to my images means that I can go through my document and very quickly make all of those images artifacts so the screen readers don't see them because the screen readers have access to the caption text. And I use the same text for the ALT text as I do for the captions. In a document with 565 pages, which is the size of my PDF book, I do not have time to drag every figure tag from the top of the tags tree to its rightful place in the document. It is much faster for me to go into the order panel, make all of those images artifacts and then the screen readers have access to the caption text. And I can do that in about an hour and a half rather than a day and a half. Adobe does know about this bug. They did know about it in Acrobat 9. So I assume that they are still working on it.
So one of the advantages of using captions is that if you're working with larger documents that you are writing, it's going to allow you to put those images in the background so that you save time in repairing your PDF document. You also want to put a caption at the beginning of a table so that someone with a learning cognitive or visual disability knows what to expect as they go through that table. Also for equations. Because equations can't be accessible. People need to know that the equation is coming up and what the equation should be. Again, there are special techniques for complex equations and ALT text may not be the most appropriate. This is an overview and unless you have a specific question related to equations, that's all I'm going to say on the topic.
One of the other reasons I use captions is that if the document is printed, I don't know of any paper where I can put my finger over a picture and have the ALT text pop up. Again, if my toner or printer is running low, if it's a complex image and someone can't distinguish what it's supposed to be, they have the caption available to them and can decode what that image is and how it relates to the text of the document. So captions are important. And here is the caption dialog. You can see that it will automatic put figure one. ALT I can turn that off. Generally I put captions below images. Some people may prefer to put it above. It doesn't matter. I only put them below the images because that's sort of the norm that I've seen in most books. But there's no sort of hard and fast rule.
The next thing to look at are links. And this is a list of inaccessible links. So if your document has a whole bunch of links that I'll just say HTTP://www... I'm not really listening anymore, odds are at the end of this it's going to be called file one dot HTML. The other thing is I have to listen to all of it before I can determine whether there is an actual file name at the end of it. If I listen to that HTTP blah blah blah, only to find out that it's something [Indiscernible] dot HTML, then I still have no clue to where I'm going or why I should go there. One of the other things in terms of Word documents is that with the longer web addresses, it breaks up the comprehension.
So for example, contact Carlin communications, download to save as PDF add in. There's a new mathematics ribbon for Word 2010. So download the mathematics ribbon. So using text like that or even mathematics ribbon. If I start things with download, I can press D to get to them. If I start with mathematics, can I press M to get to it. Making sure I do have contextual links for content. It also means that there is less jumping over content because people will tend to read the URL as a natural part of the paragraph. And this is how you create a link, you select the text, press control plus K. And the ALT text is already there. Because you selected the text. And then you can either copy and paste or type in the URL and press enter or tab two and activate the okay button. This next slide shows you what the links, create links dialog looks like. So it's quite easy and simple to do.
Some people think that it's going to change the way that they write. And it's like voice recognition. You think that you're going to have to dramatically alter the way that you speak, but with creating contextual links, it's the same thing, you just slightly modify something. As you're selecting text, you just have to look at it and say that's too much. How can I reword this so I can make this more manageable and meaningful for somebody who is trying to read this. The way that I make these links more accessible is either use foot notes or end notes.
For example, here is a footnote. Again, I don't know of any paper where as I'm taking this away in print, I can click on or tap that URL and have it pop up in my browser so I can see it. So having the long web address gives me access to the link in both ways. I have the contextual link in digital copy, I have the long URL if I'm printing the document and taking it away to a study group or something else. And I think we are just about finished. This one was a little bit long. Yes, next week. This was a little bit long but I wanted to bring you those new tools in Office 2007 and 2010, because they're really going to help you with accessible document design.
So next week we're going to take a look at tables and then we're going to move right into Adobe Acrobat and look into the RCR tool. How to add tags in Adobe and what you need to do with the tags, the order and the content panels. So all of that is next week. There was quite a lot to get through this week. And if you do have any questions, please e‑mail me. And I'll answer them for you. Here's some contact information including my e‑mail address. And some references for Adobe. I will tell you that a couple weeks ago, I did a workshop on accessible office documents and accessible PDF for Athabasca University. And apparently I just heard from the organizer today, they're still talking about the work shop and how helpful it was and really appreciated the fact that I went there and gave them some hands on experience working with their documents and with accessible document design.
So that is one of the things that I do. I do training as well as write the books and do these webinars. So if you have any questions that were in the chat or that you want to ask now, please do.