Making Web Pages Accessible to All Students, including Students
with Disabilities, from Microsoft Office Documents (And Making Good
Web Pages to Boot)
Jon Gunderson (Project Director, Disability Resources and Educational
Services; Coordinator, Assistive Communication & Information
Technology)
As Project Director with the Division of Disability Resources
and Educational Services, Jon Gunderson has spent a number of years
working to improve the accessibility of online educational materials
and documents for all campus students. An important tool that can
assist in this work is the Illinois
Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office. The Wizard
was developed in conjunction with the National Institute on Disability
and Rehabilitation Research, Illinois Board of Higher Education,
University of Illinois College of Applied Life Studies, and Disability
Resources and Education Services. The Illinois Accessible Web Publishing
Wizard allows authors to create and save web versions of familiar
Microsoft Office documents in formats more readily accessible to
web browsers, providing greater compatibility with a variety of
web browsers like Internet Explorer, Opera,
Firefox,
and Mozilla. Since many campus faculty use Office software and then
try to share these files with their students, teachers that use
the Wizard can insure that all their students will have access to
their course materials. "You can write something once and use
it with a wide variety of technology," Gunderson explained.
"It provides better accessibility to everyone, including those
with disabilities."
The design of the Wizard is not only convenient for students and
those with disabilities, but instructors as well. "If the tool
doesn't work for instructors, I think it has failed," said
Gunderson regarding the Wizard's ease of use and accessibility.
He also noted that many instructors are not web developers, and
therefore know little about how to make information more readily
available via different browsers. Therefore, the Wizard has a default
markup that uses universal design techniques. No knowledge of accessibility
or HTML format is necessary on the user's behalf, as the program
automates the creation of text equivalents based on a series of
questions that prompt users for information that they wish to make
accessible on the web.
Most instructors who use Microsoft PowerPoint for instructional
material only know how to publish their slide information as a large
file on the Internet, explained Gunderson. However, this method
has restricted features, with a default VML format and a limited
ability to create text equivalents. With the Wizard, instructors
save time because they are able to insert information and follow
a simple step-by-step prompt that automatically generates a web
version of the material that pops up in their normal browser. Students
have the option of then accessing the material on the web, while
also being able to print the normal slides with graphics, print
the slides as text-only, print handouts, or print outline versions.
Those without high-speed Internet can easily access the information
through text-only material, which rids the slides of graphics. "So
it's giving all users more options." If graphics are an important
feature of the file, instructors can still provide graph and data
chart summaries in a text version. For blind and vision-impaired
students, the text-only version created by the Wizard is designed
to work with standard computer screen readers that enable students
to listen to the content of lectures. Additionally, the simple text-only
version serves as a useful format for any student, providing a simple,
customizable view of the content that exists in a very small file
size for downloading.
The creators of the Wizard hope to make the program more compatible
with improved support, styling, and output options for Excel and
other Office programs in the future. Currently they are working
with federal agencies such as the Census Bureau and Department of
Transportation to "commercialize the technology." Version
2.1 is now available online, and new features are underway for Version
2.2, whose expected release is scheduled for early January 2006.
U of I is working together with Harper College, University of Illinois
at Chicago, Southern Illinois University, and Northern Illinois
University to develop regional workshops to talk about the Wizard
and other information technology accessibility problems in the coming
months.
All Illinois faculty, instructors, staff, and students may obtain
a copy of the Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard available
for free from the CITES Software
WebStore. Also, downloadable demos and examples of HTML conversions
are available on the Illinois
Accessible Web Publishing Wizard web site.
About Jon Gunderson
Dr. Gunderson shares a joint appointment with both CITES and Disability
Service (DRES) and is responsible for improving the accessibility
of campus IT services to students, faculty and staff with disabilities.
Dr. Gunderson has taught numerous courses and workshops on designing
universally accessible web resources and has guided the development
of several tools similar to the Wizard that help authors create
universally accessible web resources.
To learn more about the Illinois Web Publishing Wizard, check out
our feature article, "Illinois
Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office".
- By Lauren Eichmann
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