(SPEECH) [MUSIC PLAYING] (DESCRIPTION) A logo of a blue circle with a silhouette of a person with one arm raised. (SPEECH) SPEAKER: OTAN-- Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. (DESCRIPTION) Text, Tech Talk. Creating Accessible Documents. Presenter, Penny Pearson, Distance Learning Coordinator, OTAN. OTAN Host, Marjorie Olavides, Project Specialist 1, OTAN. Visit OTAN dot u s for more information on OTAN offerings. 916-228-2580. August 13, 2021. (SPEECH) MARJORIE OLAVIDES: Hello, everyone. My name is Marjorie Olavides. I'm a Project Specialist for the Outreach and Technical Assistance Network, also known as OTAN. And I'd like to welcome you all to this month's OTAN Tech Talk. Our speaker today is Penny Pearson, a Distance Learning Coordinator for OTAN. Her topic today is creating accessible documents. Let's get started. Go ahead, Penny. PENNY PEARSON: Thank you, Marjorie. (DESCRIPTION) Text, Creating Accessible Documents, Considerations for adult education teachers. Presented by Penny Pearson, Coordinator, distance learning projects, p pearson at OTAN dot U S. h t t p s colon double slash bit dot ly slash OTAN Penny. (SPEECH) And welcome everyone. We're here today. As Marjorie said, I'm Penny Pearson, and I am a Coordinator with OTAN. And I have acquired a passion for accessibility over the past several years as working for OTAN. So we're going to go through this basically demonstration first. And I'll give you some information and resources along the way. And at the bottom of the slide here that's showing on the screen is my basically a website where I've got some accessibility resources. And I encourage you to go and check it out. There's other presentations there, but you can find the information on accessibility. So I want to give you a little rundown here of what we're going to do. (DESCRIPTION) Text, Topics of Today's Session. (SPEECH) And it's going to be basically, as Marjorie said, it's just a demonstration. And then after we're finished, we can provide some time after the recording to help you with some particular questions you may have. So we're going to talk a little bit about why it's important, how California stacks up in the disability department nationwide. And I want to teach you to fish. So we're going to kind of move forward under that premise. And then finally, I'm going to do a live demonstration on Microsoft Accessibility Checker. And then we'll have some time to practice. Now I just want you to understand that the Microsoft Accessibility Checker is specific to Microsoft products. I will not be doing anything with any other products, such as Google tools or any others. There have been some in the past, but pretty much Microsoft is here to stay. (DESCRIPTION) Slide showing colorful silhouettes of people. Some are walking, some hold canes, and some sit in electric or manual wheelchairs. (SPEECH) So the why? (DESCRIPTION) Next slide text, Types of Disabilities Comparing U.S. with California. Mobility, U S, 12.9%, California, 10.7%, Cognition, U S, 11.4%, California, 10.1%, Independent Living, U S, 7.0%, California, 5.5%, Hearing, U S, 5.0%, California, 4.5%, Vision, U S, 4.7%, California, 4.2%, Self-Care, U S, 3.8%, California, 3.3%. (SPEECH) According to the World Health Organization, over a billion people live with a disability. And this ranges from 360 million have some sort of hearing disability to 386 million people overall work with some kind of a disability. Now in the United States, that number is a little lower. 61 million adults in the United States live with some kind of disability. And that's basically one in four, OK? That's 64%, One in four-- or sorry, 26%. I've inverted my numbers there. And California follows very closely. And by follows very closely, I'm saying too that national average. The slide here is giving you the different categories of disability between mobility, cognition, independent living, hearing, vision, self care. And the OTAN colors are representing the types of disabilities within the United States as a whole. And the blue charts or bars there are giving you California's percentage of disabilities for each of those categories. So everybody is like, well, nobody has a disability in my classroom. And I would challenge that because we don't always know. (DESCRIPTION) Next slide text, Also, It's the law, and the right thing to do. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, (W C A G). (SPEECH) And something as simple as wearing glasses, such as what I'm doing right now, I need assistive technology, the glasses to help me see. So it is something that we all should be very aware of. And not only that, it's the law, OK? There have been several different types of lawsuits and efforts by the federal government, different types of applications within the states. But basically we're looking at Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Now that was done in 1973. But in 2017, there was a big revision. That by January of 2018, all federal contractors-- so keep that in mind. Most of you are in state districts, or school districts, or something like that. You're going to have a little different rules. But we as OTAN, we are contracted through the State of California with federal money. So this is kind of our frame that we have to provide compliance with something called WCAG, which is W-A-C, which is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines of 2.0 and AA. Now don't worry about knowing all that. Just know that this is a law that's been in effect. And we have to provide our content in a form that is accessible under those rules. Now there are other laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act. And then, of course, the WCAG that I just mentioned. The object of today is to give you the necessary tools using the Microsoft to meet these requirements as best as possible. This is not something that you should feel like you should have to go back and do everything over again. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying by this awareness, you can now move forward. And you can provide your teachers, your learners, your administrators, your staff with some guidelines and ideas of how they can ensure that documents are accessible, as well as any of your learners who may have a disability, they can be offered an equivalent experience to something that may or may not be accessible to them because of a disability that they may have. So I mentioned earlier that I really want to teach you to fish, OK? And that means that you get those tools, so you can fill your own tackle box with the tools that you need in the type of work that you do. (DESCRIPTION) Next slide, a photo of adults showing children how to fish in a lake. Text, What we'll do today. (SPEECH) I come from a teaching background. I was 12 years in the classroom. And I shudder to think how poorly my handouts were not accessible. Not only was I providing them in a printed form, but I provided them in a digital form and they were woefully unacceptable. So now I want you to have those different tools to ensure that whether you're providing a paper hand out to your learners, or you're posting documents on your website that you can provide that equivalent experience. Now, I don't know how many of you have a disability where you may or may not use assistive technology. But one of the things that seem to bring this issue to light for teachers is to understand how our learners who use assistive technology interact with our content. So I have a short video here that is only about two minutes long. (DESCRIPTION) Text, An example of screen readers. (SPEECH) And it's basically to kind of give you a simulation of how screen readers interact with documents. So let's just pause for a second here for 2 minutes. Marjorie let me know if we have any audio issues, please. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] (DESCRIPTION) Video titled "Screenreader Simulation" begins to play. The video shows a PDF titled A B C Interactive, Interacting with Kids. As the person talks, captions appear along the bottom of the video. (SPEECH) [MUSIC PLAYING] - People often ask what difference it makes if a document is accessible. Or they say they know that there is no one with a disability that will be receiving their content. There are no guarantees. Documents are often shared among others. You don't want an inaccessible document attributed to your name or your company. Additionally, many accessibility features actually benefit and improve the reading experience for everyone. Today we want to simulate what someone who uses a specific type of assistive technology, a screen reader, encounters when they access a poorly structured document. Then we'll show you what their experience is like once the document has been made accessible. Keep in mind that screen readers are just one type of assistive technology. There are many different types of disabilities, and subsequently, many varying technologies for people to use and experience content. In this video, Cammie, one of our Section 508 specialists is going to walk you through two scenarios to demonstrate the impact of creating accessible materials. - First, take a look at this PDF. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls down from large colored headings to three boxes with photos, text, and arrows, to a list titled, "Activities and Play," down to a link to send an email. (SPEECH) We have colored, large, text, graphics, a process flow, lists, and linked text. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls back up. Next, the video shows a black screen, still with the captions at the bottom. (SPEECH) What else do you see? Now we're going to simulate using a screen reader by covering up the document. This is how someone using a screen reader would experience it. - Interactive with kids. Kids can be of any age. Sing a song. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall-- have a treat. Select a graphic item. Bullet French graphic fries. Bullet ice graphic cream. Enjoy the graphic flavor. Travel to graphic McDonald's. Activities of play. Try some of these-- play a board game. Make a paper plate mask. Go to the park. Send us an email to get more great ideas. Graphic logo .jpg. - Was that what you expected to hear? Was all the content read? Clearly this page was not created in an accessible manner. Now, let's listen to how the screen reader interprets the content now that we've remediated the document. - Graphic ABC Interactive logo. (DESCRIPTION) The video shows the PDF again, still with captions at the bottom. (SPEECH) Heading level one-- Interactive with Kids. Kids can be of any age! Heading level two-- sing a song. Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall-- all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. (DESCRIPTION) It scrolls down to the process flow graphics. (SPEECH) Heading level two-- have a treat. Graphic-- Acquiring a Treat Process. See next page for full description. Heading level two-- activities and play. (DESCRIPTION) It scrolls down to the list of Activities and Play. (SPEECH) Try some of these-- list of three items. Star bullet-- play a ball game. Star bullet-- make a paper plate mask. Star bullet-- go to the park. List end. Send us a link email to get more great ideas! - You should have noticed that the screen readers said heading before the colored phrases. The graphic had a meaningful description and was read in the proper order at the top of the page. The column on the content was read in the proper order. There was a list that included the number of total items. A link was indicated so that we can activate it with the keyboard. And our process flow had a brief description, but indicated that there's a long description available. So that you can review one method of handling complex graphics, we're going to show you one example of how to handle the graphic in this document. - Heading level two-- Acquiring a Treat Process. List of three items. 1-- travel to McDonald's. 2-- select an item. (DESCRIPTION) Now the list is numbered 1 to 3, with item 2 having sub-items A and B. (SPEECH) List of items. Nesting level one-- A-- French fries. B-- ice cream. List end. Nesting level one. 3-- enjoy the flavor. - A numbered list structure was used to show order. And a sublist helps identify the hierarchy of the content. Hopefully, you can see how important it is to structure your content. This kind of structure can be applied to all office documents in PDF. (DESCRIPTION) The video ends and the slideshow is back. (SPEECH) [END PLAYBACK] PENNY PEARSON: OK, what do you think about that? Gave me some information in the chat. (DESCRIPTION) Text, Microsoft is your friend. An icon under Page Layout labeled Check Accessibility. (SPEECH) Because this is something that a lot of folks, they never hear what a screen reader sounds like or they haven't used one. And understanding this process of structure is really important. So we're going to do this through using the Microsoft tools. And I put on this slide literally, Microsoft is your friend. (DESCRIPTION) Text, Microsoft currently leads in providing accessibility tools, both for learners and creators, provides errors, warnings, and tips. It does a lot, but not everything. Learn to use the M S tools, especially Styles in Word and the slide content "placeholders" in PowerPoint. (SPEECH) Because basically at this moment it's currently leading and providing accessibility tools for the production of documents. And it's great for learners if you're teaching in like word processing. It's always good to teach your students to learn how to use this tool. It's also great for us as creators to understand why it's important to provide this type of service to our learners as well as teach our other teachers how to do this. Now basically, this tool provides errors, warnings, and tips. And as we go through this in terms of looking at what are errors, and these are the ones we really want to fix the errors, but warnings and tips are meant like you really should fix a warning, but sometimes you can't. And I'll try to show you an example of that. And then tips such as that it's like helping you find ways to make your document more accessible. Now I want to point out that this check accessibility tool in Microsoft it's really great. It does a lot, but it doesn't do everything. And so I'm going to give you another tool toward the end of the session today to consider using, especially if you are a teacher that really loves to use lots of color, colorful graphics, or text boxes that have a background and a foreground color, or background color for the fill and the text is a different foreground color. It's very important to consider our vision learners and their potential for color blindness of some kind. And I have a tool to help you measure that color contrast. So the other piece is real important that will try to do within the demo if there's enough time before the end of the OTAN Tech Talks is also what are called the slide content placeholders in PowerPoint. They work very much in tune with like a style in Word, which I will show you, to allow you to know that you are placing your content in a structured format, OK? (DESCRIPTION) Text, Demonstration Time. A practice document. The screen goes black, then shows two documents side by side, with Penny Pearson in the top right corner. She scrolls down, showing more titled paragraphs, a chart, tables, and a photo at the bottom. (SPEECH) So we can move on then to the next item here, which is going to be a demonstration. So I'm going to just pause my share for just a moment and I'm going to switch over to my other screen here. I hope, I hope, I hope. So. I have two documents here that I will talk about. And now I'll need somebody to give me a thumbs up. And yes, Josh, everybody will agree with your statement. And that has to do with a lot of different issues that we can't fix. So that's something where, again, structuring your document can be much more helpful. (DESCRIPTION) Both documents are in Microsoft Word. The document on the left starts with a long paragraph in Latin, titled Introduction. (SPEECH) On the left side here, I have a document that starts with an introduction. And then I use what's called Latinised text, because I don't want us to get distracted by reading the content of this document. So you can see that I have separate paragraphs. And I have a graphic. And I have a couple of tables. And then I have an image at the end. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls back to the top and hovers her cursor over the Review tab on the top ribbon. She clicks the Accessibility Button, and a box labeled Accessibility opens on the right. (SPEECH) So in Microsoft Word, and I apologize for the scroll here, I'm going to go up and use this tool called the Accessibility Checker. The Accessibility Checker is on your ribbon under Review Now I have it selected here under Review, and I'm going to go to the Check Accessibility button here on that ribbon and simply click it. Now what happens is, oh, gee whiz, my Accessibility Checker shows up over here on the left hand side. And it says, no accessibility issues found. People with disabilities should not have difficulty reading this document. Well, you'll notice in that previous clip that the Accessibility Checker was very careful once the document was corrected to offer you levels or headings. Now if this document, pretend for a moment, was 50 pages long, and it had an introduction, executive summary, on and on and on, all these different headings, I would have to listen to all 50 pages through my screen reader before I got to where I wanted to go, which may be at the very end where it is recommendations for future whatever. So I really want to use the built-in tools in Microsoft, and I'm not talking about the Accessibility Checker here, I'm talking about using styles. (DESCRIPTION) She selects text and makes the changes as she speaks. (SPEECH) So just think a moment about how many of you will select text, and you'll change it to bold, and maybe you'll change the font size to 20. And you go, oh, good. That's visually. It's bigger. People can see it. And everything else. The screen reader still looks at it as plain old text. All you did was make it bold and make it bigger. The screen reader does not differentiate between bold, italic, underlined, 10-point, 25-point. It just sees that as text. So you have not fixed the problem of being able to allow individuals to navigate within their document. Additionally, using styles within Microsoft Word allows you a very quick way to create a table of content with a click. And I personally done very long reports. And I used to have to do table of contents manually, and then the editor would come along and make a change, totally mess up my table of contents. I don't care about that anymore with Word. Because by using styles, I cannot only allow a screen reader, somebody who's using a screen reader to navigate quickly through it, I can edit those styles very quickly across the entire document. And I can create a table of contents in the matter of a couple of clicks. So let's apply some of these headings and see what happens. The Accessibility Checker isn't really going to change that much here. I will tell you that. Because it doesn't see a problem, even though I'm not applying headings. I have personally sent a note to Microsoft saying, you really need to change that. You need to identify and tell people, use styles to help people navigate through the document. So I'm going to undo all those changes that I just did. And I'm going to go back to my Home tab on the ribbon. And you'll see in this middle section here, Styles. (DESCRIPTION) She un-does her changes, then hovers her cursor over the Styles box in the top ribbon. (SPEECH) I'm going to simply use the default styles in Microsoft. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the X in the Accessibility Checker to close it. (SPEECH) Know that you can change them. You can create your own. You can make them different colors. You can do whatever you want with them. I'm just going to use the built-in ones for purposes of time. So I'm going to go ahead and turn off my little Accessibility Checker. Hopefully, everybody can see this OK. (DESCRIPTION) She zooms in on the document on the left to increase the size. (SPEECH) I know that our screens are a little different sometimes. (DESCRIPTION) She selects the word, Introduction, then makes the changes as she speaks, repeating for each paragraph title. (SPEECH) And I'm not seeing anything in the chat. So I think we're good. So I'm going to just select this. And through my styles on my shortcut bar here, I can choose what style I want to apply. I'll apply Heading 1, change the color. I get this little triangle indicator here that tells me visually as the creator that I apply to style. And I'll come down to these other ones. And I'm sorry, I just notice I misspelled executive. But we'll just pass right on by that. And I'm going to apply styles here. And you know what, I'm getting a little lazy. So I'm going to use my Control key. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls down the entire document, selecting the last two paragraph titles. (SPEECH) And I think that was the last note. I have another one here. And I'm going to select that second heading. And I have two headings selected here. And I'm going to apply Heading 2 to both of them. So now everything has a heading. And if I go back to my Review bar, my Review ribbon, and I choose my Accessibility Checker, I'm going to get the same message. But I know in my mind that I now have applied styles that will allow someone using a screen reader, they'll be able to hear heading 1. And they can jump directly to the next heading, heading 2, heading 2, heading 2, heading 2. And they'll hear, heading 2-- data collection and analysis. And they'll go, oh, I want to listen to this part. They can skip everything else, whether it's on page two or 202. They have the control with that screen reader to navigate. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls down to the chart. (SPEECH) Now from here, I may have other items such as, oh, maybe my chart. Notice it didn't say anything about my chart. One thing you need to be careful of in Microsoft Word is that when you put in a image or a chart, it wants to look for what's called alt text. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls down to the image at the end, then opens the Accessibility Checker. The image is a woman holding a smartphone in her left hand and pointing at the screen with her right, her eyes are very wide. (SPEECH) Now on this image, you'll notice the screen checker said nothing about this image. No, it's OK. The reason why it is, is Microsoft employs artificial intelligence, which might be an interesting phrase in and of itself. But it will go through and say, oh, I'm going to tell you what this image is. And if I select this image, and that could do this a couple of ways, I use my right mouse button because it's fast. (DESCRIPTION) A drop-down box opens from the image. (SPEECH) And I'm going to come down here and look at Edit Alt Text. (DESCRIPTION) An Alt Text panel opens on the right. A box says the description was automatically generated. (SPEECH) Now what happens over here in my little panel is that I see, oh, this was automatically generated. But does this description, a person posing for the camera, really say what's going on in this image. I personally don't think so. She's not posing for the camera. She's looking surprised at something that she sees on her cell phone. (DESCRIPTION) She selects and deletes the description. (SPEECH) So I would change it. Now if I were to delete this-- OK, I'm going to close this. (DESCRIPTION) The Alt Text panel closes and the Accessibility Checker opens. It shows error, missing alternative text, with Additional Information and Steps to Fix below. (SPEECH) And now my Accessibility Checker goes, oh, you don't have alternative text on this picture. And it's named picture one. And in the Accessibility Checker, it comes down and it tells you why should you fix this second screen. (DESCRIPTION) Document 1 fills the screen. (SPEECH) So by this now with that change, I remove that artificially implanted, embedded description. Now the Accessibility Checker says, oh, wait a minute, you need to fix this. Because I need to have something that tells my individuals using a screen reader what is this image. And the Accessibility Checker underneath here will give you the steps to fix that problem. (DESCRIPTION) A drop-down box opens from the image. (SPEECH) So I will right click on the object and then select Edit Alt Text, which you saw me do just a moment ago. And I'm going to provide that new alternative text. (DESCRIPTION) She opens the Alt Text panel and types in the box. (SPEECH) Woman looking surprised at what she sees-- oops, sees on her mobile phone. (DESCRIPTION) She closes the Alt Text, now the Accessibility Checker shows a check mark. She scrolls up to the chart. (SPEECH) That sound like a better description than somebody posing for the camera. So once I close this, now my Accessibility Checker says, I'm fine. Everything is peachy. But I want you to understand that I've also provided alt text on my chart. (DESCRIPTION) A drop-down box opens from the chart, she opens the Alt Text panel. The description is filled in. (SPEECH) So if I look at this, oops, here, I have provided a descriptor. Bar chart showing threshold percentages across age groups 18-25, 25-50, and 50 and above. Now you should also provide that same data in a table. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls down to the tables. (SPEECH) Now some people say, no, if I describe my chart well enough, I shouldn't have to do that. And that is a personal decision. (DESCRIPTION) The Accessibility panel shows a check mark. (SPEECH) But if you look at these two tables that I put in here, each one passed accessibility. The key thing with accessibility in a table, no empty cells, no merge cells. (DESCRIPTION) She highlights each cell in the table as she reads left to right, top row to bottom row. Next, she reads the second table. (SPEECH) And then the screen reader will read it fine from left to right. So the screen reader is going to read sample age, number below threshold, number above threshold. Second row, 18-25, 75%, 20%. So the person at the screen reader is trying to have to remember, what was the first column, what was the second column, what was the third column? So if you reverse it and change the way that the person experiences this data through a screen reader, now that reader is going to read sample age, 18 to 24, 75% below threshold, 20% above threshold. Next row, sample age, 26 to 50, 45% below threshold, 50% above threshold. Which is a better experience for someone who's using assistive technology? I'll leave that to you, OK? (DESCRIPTION) She hovers the cursor over the second table. (SPEECH) I personally like this one, but people reading this will go, what? So we have to kind of get over this mindset of we're all visually oriented. What we see on the page is what's happening. But that's really not the case for that 25% of individuals who may be using assistive devices in some way, including a screen reader. So being able to provide the information that can be interpreted in multiple ways, I believe is very important. So now this document, what are the things that I have done? I have applied my styles. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls up and down the document. She hovers the cursor over the Accessibility box that shows a check mark. (SPEECH) I have ensured that my alt text on my images and my charts are accurate. And now I can look at this document and go, I can believe this statement, no accessibility issues found because I've employed those tools that will help. And I'll just give you an idea of how valuable using styles can be. I'm going to go back to my home screen here. At the top of this page, I'm going to insert a table of contents, OK? Manually no. There is not. The only way that the screen reader can be adjusted is typically with different languages. Some languages read right to left. So I have not seen an example where you can force it on tables to read by column. But is something we can look into. So I want to now show you how quickly you can use styles to make your document much more navigable for anybody else by putting in a table of contents. Now when I want to do that, I'm going to come up here up under References on the ribbon. And on the far left side, this might be hidden just a tab, is my table of contents. (DESCRIPTION) A drop-down box shows different style options for Table of Contents. She clicks on Automatic Table 2. (SPEECH) And I have different varieties here. And you can make custom ones and all kinds of things. But I'm just going to make an automatic table of contents by clicking this. (DESCRIPTION) A numbered table of contents appears at the top of the document. (SPEECH) Boom, there's my table of contents. How hard was that? (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls down and corrects the misspelled Executive Summary heading, then scrolls up to the table of contents where it is still misspelled. She clicks the area and a box appears around the table of contents, with tabs at the top. (SPEECH) What's nice about it is that if I go in and I make a change like, OK, I can't stand this spelling error anymore. I look at this and I go, OK, I've spelled it correctly. And when I come up to my table of contents, wait a minute, it didn't fix it until I update it. So when I click in my-- this gray space of my table of contents, I see this little button up here says, Update Table. And all I have to do is click that. And I can either update the page numbers, because I know I made a change that shifted my page numbers, or I can update everything, which includes how these headings were spelled. And I can click OK. (DESCRIPTION) She hovers over an item in the table of contents. A box pops up that says Control Plus Click to follow link, the screen blurs, then moves to the selected paragraph heading in the document. (SPEECH) Now it's properly spelled. Also, they are all hyperlinked. So in the Word document, I can hold down my Control key, now let's pretend this is 220 pages long, and I can jump immediately to that heading to get me to where I want to go, all right? Now if I change any of my headings, if I change what I've written, all I need to do is update my table of contents. Very straightforward, very simple to do. But most of us are not trained to use the tools within Microsoft Word. We just learn how to make it look like we want it to look like. Now I want you to consider use the tools such as styles to help you, not only make it look like you want it to look, but allow others who may use assistive technology to navigate within that document freely. OK, that's Microsoft Word. Now I'm going to pause my share here for just a second and get up some other documents, because we're going to take a little peek at Microsoft PowerPoint. So let me see if I can get this up. And I want you over here. Come on. Come over here. You're not going to come over here? OK, we might have to do this a little different way. Let me see if I can pull this over. Sorry for the-- I think you're getting a blank screen, aren't you? MARJORIE OLAVIDES: We're actually still seeing your Word document. PENNY PEARSON: Yeah, OK. So I'm trying to get my PowerPoint document to come. I have two screens here guys. So that's why I'm looking way over here because it's like five miles away. (DESCRIPTION) The screen shows a PowerPoint. (SPEECH) Let me see if I can-- MARJORIE OLAVIDES: She's actually got one long screen. PENNY PEARSON: Yeah. MARJORIE OLAVIDES: She's got one of those. PENNY PEARSON: So sorry. OK, now what I'm going to do-- MARJORIE OLAVIDES: We see your PowerPoint. PENNY PEARSON: OK. So I'm going to need to expand the space here, because I want you to be able to see this. (DESCRIPTION) The screen shows the first PowerPoint slide on the right and other slides on a panel to the left. (SPEECH) And so help me out Marjorie to make sure that we're seeing what we need to see. Are we seeing these side by side? That's what I want. (DESCRIPTION) Two PowerPoints side by side, both titled "Considerations for Pottery." (SPEECH) MARJORIE OLAVIDES: Two PowerPoint, side by side. Yes. PENNY PEARSON: OK. Now I just want you to look at these. I'm going to go through each one and the different sides-- slides, sorry. (DESCRIPTION) She moves to slide 2 on both, titled Clay Bodies with three heat ranges and an image. (SPEECH) And you tell me. We're relying on vision. I know. I'm going to switch over. Here we go. (DESCRIPTION) Slide 3 is titled Glaze Options, with two list items, a sub list, and an image. (SPEECH) Here's slide 3. Slide 3. (DESCRIPTION) Slide 4 is titled Types of Pottery, with four list items and an image. (SPEECH) Slide 4. Slide 4. (DESCRIPTION) Both slideshows look the same. (SPEECH) Do you see any difference between these two documents? Now I'm going to go into one. And I'm going to run the Accessibility Checker. And we will see what it says. So again, it's under Review. And I'm going to check accessibility. (DESCRIPTION) She opens the Accessibility Checker on the PowerPoint on the right side. It shows 4 errors. (SPEECH) And here's my-- ooh, oops, oops. I got four errors. Missing slide titles. Wait a minute, all of these slides have titles, don't they? (DESCRIPTION) She opens the Accessibility Checker on the PowerPoint on the left side. It shows 1 error and 1 warning. (SPEECH) Keep that in mind. I'm going to go to the other slide show, which is over here on this side, and I'm going to do the same thing. I'm just going to go and check accessibility. Oh, I got different results. [SIGHS] Here I got no errors. I only got-- I'm sorry. I got one error, excuse me, and a warning. (DESCRIPTION) She selects the title, Types of Pottery, on the right-hand PowerPoint. (SPEECH) So I have to go and look at these. But my first thought is, well, why does this one on the right say that all of my slides are missing a slide title. This is a slide title, but it really isn't. Because what happened is that whoever created this PowerPoint presentation used blank slides and created text boxes. (DESCRIPTION) Next, She clicks Add New Slide on the left-hand PowerPoint. A new slide appears with a box at the top labeled, Click to add title, above a box labeled Click to add text. (SPEECH) And the Accessibility Checker says, well, this is just a text box. I don't know what-- it's not a title because the person creating this presentation never used the tools available within PowerPoint, their document more accessible. And in this case, it is those placeholders that you see all the time when you come into Microsoft PowerPoint, and you go to Insert a new slide, and you get this, click to add title, click to add title. Those are the PowerPoint placeholders. They are the styles of PowerPoint. This is where you can put in your information and PowerPoint will recognize, oh, this is the title of the slide. Because that's what the screen reader is-- reads, excuse me. That's what the screen reader reads. So when you don't use the title placeholder and you use a text box placeholder, like we have on the other side, the screen reader is going, I don't know where to go. I don't know which is first or what is second. So rule number one, always try to use the placeholders provided in PowerPoint. And a lot of times we'll hear teachers say it's like, well, I don't want that there. I want it somewhere else. Well, you can move them. You can resize them. They're still the placeholder and Microsoft will recognize it as the title slide. And hopefully that part makes sense. But let's try to fix some of these other things in this document on the left, the demo document, and to ensure that we can fix those errors that we have, and we can fix some issues with this hard to read text section. So I'm going to delete this slide because I don't need it. (DESCRIPTION) She deletes the slide she just created. She clicks in the Accessibility Panel on the left-hand PowerPoint. She clicks on the Missing Alternative Text error, a note saying diagram on slide 5 pops up. (SPEECH) And I'm going to click on this missing alternative text. (DESCRIPTION) Slide 5 is labeled Color Contrast and has a diagram of three colored horizontal bars with text in them. There is one yellow, one green, and one blue bar. (SPEECH) When I do so I see this as saying, well, there's a diagram on slide 5. So when I click it, it brings it up for me. And how many of you use this type of art in PowerPoint? This is what they call SmartArt. And it's traditionally never good because there's an issue with the color contrast. (DESCRIPTION) She opens an app on her computer. (SPEECH) Now I'm going to open up. And I didn't have it open before when I started, so I'll open it now. I have a Color Contrast Analyser, and I'm going to show you what that looks like. I hope as it opens. (DESCRIPTION) A color contrast analyzer app opens, showing hex colors, background colors, and results at the bottom. (SPEECH) Because these are things that the Microsoft Accessibility Checker does not check. So it's up to you as the creator to do so. Now we will post the link to this Color Contrast Analyser. I'm just going to quickly show you how it works. First and foremost, it checks the foreground color. And it checks the background color. You can do so using this little dropper to pick the color that you're working on. So that's the same on both the foreground and the background color. It gives you a sample preview of what you're doing. And then it gives you the results. And notice that says, WCAG 2.1. And then it has some minimums here. Now with the example that's selected here, white background, black foreground, or white background, black text, it says here everything passes because it has a high enough contrast. (DESCRIPTION) She selects the picker, which magnifies a small circle, and drags it over to the white text in the top bar. (SPEECH) But when I use this picker here, and I'm going to go and pick over here on my text in my-- oops, I move my mouse. Sorry. (DESCRIPTION) She drags the picker to the yellow top bar. The color analyzer app results show red warning signs. (SPEECH) The text in my little triangle here, well, I get white. And now I'm going to come and get my background color, which is this background. Notice what happened at the bottom of the results here. It says, ooh, ooh, everything failed. Everything failed, OK? I didn't make it for AA. I didn't make it for AAA. I didn't even make it for just graphics. It says, no, no, this is hard to see. (DESCRIPTION) She selects View from the top ribbon of the Analyzer. A box with differently colored bars pops up. (SPEECH) And what's nice about the Color Contrast Analyser is that I can look under View here, and I can choose a color blindness simulation. Now, I don't know if you know anybody who is color blind, but this can be very useful for you to see when people suffer these different types of color blindness. They have low red, low green, low blue, no blue, no green, no red. And how it may or may not be easier to see, OK? So to fix this, I have to get this ratio up where I get a pass down here at least for my minimum AA. (DESCRIPTION) She highlights the white text in the yellow bar. (SPEECH) So I'm going to say, OK. I'm going to come in here and I'm going to change my text. (DESCRIPTION) She only selects a few letters. (SPEECH) I'm going to select all this. Oops, sorry. Sometimes my mouse does not cooperate with me. (DESCRIPTION) She selects all the text in the yellow bar. (SPEECH) Marjorie and I were talking about that earlier. And I'm going to go and I'm going to change my color to black. (DESCRIPTION) The text color changes from white to black. (SPEECH) And now I know there may be howls of protests where people say, well, wait a minute, I really like these colors. Well, you're going to have to make a decision. And choose wisely, as I would say, right? So I'm going to choose now to use my little picker again. And I'm going to come over here to my text on my graphic. (DESCRIPTION) She drags the picker to the black text. Two of the three results bars have no red warning signs. (SPEECH) And now I see, oh, I did better, OK? I'm meeting my AA requirements. And that has to do with these ratios. And there's a whole bunch of tutorials on these ratios. I'm not going to go over them. I just like this because I either pass or I don't. And I know that it will pass for user interface components on graphical objects, which is what I'm trying to meet here. So I'm hoping this makes sense because there's many of us that love to use color. But sometimes what we don't understand is that by changing the font color, we may be making it very difficult for somebody else to read our text because they have a situation of color blindness to be able to see it. And we have the same thing over here with this text box. (DESCRIPTION) She hovers over a text box to the left of the three colored bars. The text box is dark green with black text inside. She drags the picker over the font and background color. (SPEECH) I don't know if it's very easy for you to read, but I would always test something like this. So again, it's the same process where I'm going to choose the foreground color, which in this case, is going to be the same, but I'm going to demo it again. I'm going to grab that little dropper. And I'm going to come over here and pick my color. And then I'm going to come and grab my background color. (DESCRIPTION) The results bars have six red warning signs. (SPEECH) And I'm going to see, oh, wow, I just failed across the board. Woop. So what am I going to do now, right? I got to fix it. So I could try fixing it. This is just a plain text box. (DESCRIPTION) She changes the text color to white. (SPEECH) So if I tried fixing it with like-- I don't know. What would you think would look better? Should I try white and then see what happens with that color? (DESCRIPTION) She drags the picker over the white font. (SPEECH) Again, I could come and grab that color. Ooh, my mouse is just not helping me today. (DESCRIPTION) The results change to only one red warning sign. (SPEECH) When I select that color, I pass my minimum AA requirements. I pass my UI components. This fail for regular text is really tough because these are the newer, more stringent standards under WCAG. They're not fully in place yet. And not everyone needs to meet these requirements, but it's really nice to see how you compare across the board. So now we've gone through Microsoft Word, the Accessibility Checker, using styles. Looking at the alt text that it provides because sometimes it's not accurate. Looking at how perhaps you could offer data in a chart in a different format in order to allow somebody who's using a screen reader to have a better understanding of what that chart data means. And then also making sure that by using styles, you can see how you have greater flexibility in using these tools for all kinds of reasons. The table of contents to me is just amazing. And then switching to Microsoft PowerPoint, we have the same concept with using placeholders, right? (DESCRIPTION) She opens the Accessibility Checker on the left-hand PowerPoint. (SPEECH) And placeholders do a fine job. And we do have an Accessibility Checker that tells me here, well, I'm missing alternative text on this item. And I'm going to go ahead and do the same process of putting in a-- oh, sorry, I'm going to find it here. Putting in alternative text. I'm going to add a description. Again, it's going to be a list item for the best chocolate. Now chocolate isn't even mentioned here, but chocolate is on my brain right at the moment. So now when I go back, I only have one warning. And it's again going to that same diagram. I would need to change these two additional items to make sure that all of my color contrast is working correctly. (DESCRIPTION) She changes the text color on the next two colored bars. (SPEECH) And I'll change this to black, like I did the others. And I'll bet you, at least I hope I'll bet you, that my warning will go away. And I now receive my no accessibility issues found. (DESCRIPTION) Text, OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network, Face-to-Face and Online Training, News Articles, Teaching with Technology, Teachers' and Administrators' Digests, Annual Technology and Distance Learning Symposium, Online Resources for Adult Education. Subscribe, YouTube slash OTAN Serves Adult Education. Like us, Facebook slash OTAN Serves Adult Education. Follow us, Twitter slash OTAN. OTAN dot U S, 916-228-2580. (SPEECH) MARJORIE OLAVIDES: Thank you, Penny, for a great presentation. And OTAN would also like to thank all of you for coming to this tech talk. If you'd like to present a tech tool, or have some tips to share with your colleagues on adult education, send OTAN an email with your idea to support at OTAN.US. We also encourage you to subscribe to the OTAN YouTube channel where you can view archive tech talks as well as some other OTAN videos. Also check out the OTAN website at www.otan.us for even more resources. And we hope to see you all at future OTAN Tech Talks. (DESCRIPTION) Text, Tech Talk. Creating Accessible Documents. Presenter, Penny Pearson, Distance Learning Coordinator, OTAN. OTAN Host, Marjorie Olavides, Project Specialist 1, OTAN. Visit OTAN dot u s for more information on OTAN offerings. 916-228-2580. August 13, 2021. All O T T presentations are prepared by the speakers in their personal capacity. The ideas, opinions, and information presented are the speaker's and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Outreach and Technical Assistance Network, the California Department of Education, or the Sacramento County Office of Education. Visit OTAN dot U S for more information on OTAN offerings. 916-228-2580. Subscribe, YouTube slash OTAN Serves Adult Education. Like us, Facebook slash OTAN Serves Adult Education. Follow us, Twitter slash OTAN. OTAN dot U S, 916-228-2580.