Enabling Staff to Produce Accessible Content

Excellence through Accessibility Workshop

27th February 2007

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XML Workshop Ltd.

• Technical Director: Eoin Campbell

• We provide the NDA with Word to accessible HTML conversion service

• Also offer accessibility auditing services

• And YAWC Word to HTML subscription service

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Outline

• Alternative title of talk:

– How to upskill your colleagues to provide you with quality content for electronic publication

– (through the medium of Microsoft Word)

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Rationale

• Most written content starts life inside a wordprocessing document…

– Press Releases, Annual Reports, FoI Manuals, Customer Service Action Plans, etc.

• …so improving the quality of the (upstream) authoring process should hopefully simplify its' (downstream) publication in various formats

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What is Quality...

• In relation to narrative text content?

• A number of facets:

– Is it written well?

– Is it presented well?

– Is it structured well?

• For electronic publications, structure is important

– This is a new and non-intuitive concept!

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What is Structured Information?

• Press Release: title, body text

• Annual Report: frontmatter, chapters (with sections), appendices

• FoI Manual: functions, records, publications, procedures

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Web Page Visual Structure

• Top navigation and branding/logo

• Side navigation

• Main page content

• Footer links

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Web Page Content Structure

• H1 – main page title

– H2 – section heading 1• H3 - subsection heading 1

– H2 – section heading 2• H3 - subsection heading 1• H3 - subsection heading 2

• HTML has a generic structure, it doesn't know (or care) what a Press Release is

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Word Document Structure

• Title style – Document title

• Heading 1 style - section heading 1

– Heading 2 style – sub-section heading 1

• Heading 1 style - section heading 2

– Heading 2 style – sub-section heading 1

– Heading 2 style – sub-section heading 2

• Plus list and table structures

– List Bullet, List Bullet 2…,

– Table heading rows, table cells

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Word Document Structure is Generic

• Word doesn’t know what a Press Release, a Chapter, or a Report is

– (HTML doesn’t know either)

• So the same Title style should be used for the main title of any document

– Press Release, Report, or Chapter

• It's easy to map built-in Word styles to corresponding HTML elements

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Word Style to HTML Element Map

Title h1

Heading 1 h2

Heading 2 h3

List Bullet ul/li

List Number ol/li

Normal p

Hyperlink a

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How to get Structured Content From Authors

• Show authors how they benefit from structure

– Because they don't care about anyone else

• Teach how to create structure

– With class-room and Just-in-time learning

• Make it easy to apply structure

– It is surprisingly difficult to do so in the default Word environment

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Benefits of Word Structure for Authors

• (or, What's In It For Me?)

• Easy to create and update a Table of Contents

• Easy to modify appearance (e.g. change font family for Heading style)

• Easy to move sections around (using View > Outline)

• Easy to navigate long documents (using View > Document Map)

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Teaching Authors about Structure

• Typical application training courses teach people about features

– Teaching people about structure is in the "Advanced" Word course

– So some customised training is needed

• Staff roles change, so new people always arriving

– Need to plan for this with lots of resources

• Reinforce message using allies in the organisation

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Learning Resources for Authors

• A short, hands-on, class-room introduction

– Scheduled every 3-6 months for new staff

– Because staff roles change quite frequently

• A printed and online guide to formatting

• Online demonstrations using 'screencasts‘

• Formal publishing procedures operating manual

• Ongoing feedback (constructive) on delivered content

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Screencasts for Training

• Create interactive 'How-To' demos

– e.g. How to insert a hyperlink

– Always available for reference (e.g. on an intranet)

• Lots of good, cheap recording/annotation tools available

– Macromedia Captivate, Camtasia, Wink (free)

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Publishing Procedures Manual

• Important tool to capture essential knowledge/know-how

• E.g. “How to publish a Press Release”

– File name convention • YYYYMMDD.htm - Date format that sorts well

– Folder location (/press/2007/)

– Title Case Format Convention (CamelCase)• Or use sentence case – BUT BE CONSISTENT!

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Help from Allies

• Other parts of the organisation can help achieve common goals

– Training Unit

– Disability Services

– IT Support

– Records Management/Archive Unit

– Freedom of Information Officer

– PRO/ Communications

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Default Word Editing Environment

• By default, Word does not support creating structured documents

– The formatting toolbar is presentation, not structure, oriented

– No menu for applying styles

– No keyboard shortcuts for structure styles

• So authors need a Word template that assists them

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Word Structure Styles Template

• Should provide multiple ways to apply structure

– To suit different authoring styles

• A menu for choosing structure styles

• A toolbar for selecting common styles

• Keyboard shortcuts for common styles

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Word Styles Menu

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Word Style Keyboard Shortcuts

Word Style Shortcut Key

Title <Ctrl>+T

Heading 1 <Ctrl>+1

Heading 2 <Ctrl>+2

Heading 3 <Ctrl>+3

List Bullet <Ctrl>+*

Normal <Ctrl>+<Shift>+N

Hyperlink <Ctrl>+K

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Publishing Word

• Structured Word documents are quite accessible in their own right, but

– Not device/platform-independent• Not even Word version independent!

– Slow to download (with embedded images)

– Insecure (may spread viruses)

– Not suitable for search engine indexing

• So should not be published online

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Converting Word

• Word can be converted to accessible PDF, if

– Adobe Acrobat Word plug-in is used

– Acrobat configuration enables accessibility settings

• 3rd-party PDF converters do not support accessibility

• Acrobat does not convert PostScript files into accessible PDF

• Some PDF resources available online

– cf. www.xmlw.ie/aboutaccessibility/resources.htm

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Digression: DTP Packages

• Many publications are typeset using specialised applications, such as QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher

• PDFs from these packages are often published online

– But they are not accessible

– i.e. not navigable, don't resize, and text flow is incorrect

• Best approach is to save as RTF, and re-format in Word

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Publishing Word Online

• Relatively easy to convert structured Word into HTML

• Copy and paste Word into DreamWeaver or good web-based editing interface

– e.g. eWebEditPro, XStandard

– These automatically strip out excess formatting

• Use "Save as Web page" command in Word

– With Microsoft add-on to strip excess formatting

• But manual clean-up usually necessary to ensure accessibility

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Converting Word to Accessible HTML

• Specialist 3rd-party Word to XML/HTML converters

– Far superior quality to copy and paste approach

– Avoid manual clean-up entirely

– Logictran and UpCast are best commercial applications

– Quite cheap, but do require customisation

– Cf. http://www.xmlw.ie/aboutxml/word2xml.htm• List of converters we have tried

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YAWC Online Service

• Hosted conversion service

– Based on Logictran conversion engine

– Customised to generate fully accessible HTML

– Automatically includes design template to create ready-to-publish HTML

• Used by us to provide NDA and others with a document conversion service (~ €5 per A4 page)

• Used by Dept. Enterprise staff to maintain website directly

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Summary

• Structured information is accessible information

• Structured information costs less:

– to manage, maintain, publish and find

• With a little help, everyone can create structured information using Word

– Its much cheaper to create structured information at the start, than add structure at the end

• Structured information in Word converts into accessible HTML

Questions and Answers

Enabling Staff to Produce Accessible Content

Eoin Campbell, XML Workshop Ltd.

www.xmlw.ie