Making Documents Accessible (INC1-V46)

Transcript: Making Documents Accessible

Hello everyone, and welcome to the accessible document training. We're going to be looking at different ways to make documents accessible today, all using the Office suite that is already installed on most people's computers.

So, I'm going to open up a Word document and everything within it is going to be in Office 365. But for anyone who's using an older version, I will also be providing examples on how to do the things that are 365 unique.

So, the first thing that we're going to do, is we're going to take a look at the Accessibility Checker that's built into any Office product, so how to access the Accessibility Checker is that you click on the File menu, and then you scroll down to the Info tab and then within there, there is an Inspect Document section and if you click on the Check for Issues button, one of the options available there is Check Accessibility.

So, let's go ahead and activate that. And now you'll notice on the top right side of the screen, it says that this document is not able to use the accessibility checker, because it is a wrong format. And so, in order to make sure that it is able to work properly, we're going to click on the Convert button here. And now the accessibility option works. An alternative way, I'll revert that change here for a second.

And an alternative way to do that is to click on File, Info and then you can click on the button here to convert. And then you'll notice here that there are a couple of things that are being identified as kind of warnings, but no errors are being specifically identified.

Now, the thing about the built-in accessibility checker is that it's only going to identify about 20 percent of issues in accessibility. And the reason for that is that computers can only know things that computers are able to measure, and the rest of the document will need to be checked manually.

And so, let's talk about the various issues that are present within this document that the accessibility checker is not going to identify. So, the first one, we're going to take a look at the various headings that are present in this document.

And what that will do is tell us all of the different elements that are currently present within the headings structure. And you'll notice that, "Protecting the Great Lakes" here, this top-level heading, is not actually in any of the navigation headings. And so that means that it is not a heading.

So, let's go ahead and click on the Home tab here. And when we highlight it, it's actually a Normal style. So that what that means is that to a sighted user who navigates through this content, they will see that it looks like a heading, but for anyone using adaptive technology, whether it be a screen reader or someone who is using speech-to-text and they're wanting to navigate through this document using verbal commands, they won't be able to get to the first level heading, because it is not correctly identified as a heading.

Now, I will show you how to change that. So right now, I've got the heading selected. And if you go to the Styles sub tab here within the home tab ribbon, you'll see here that there's heading level one or Heading 1.

And when I hover over it, it changes the style. Well, what if I want to keep the style that's currently here, but still have it read as a heading? There's a way to do that that's pretty easy. If you hover over Heading 1 and you right click on it, you can update Heading 1 to match the selection. So now, you'll notice that "Protecting Great Lakes" is showing up in the navigation menu as a top-level heading.

So that means that this information here is now going to be easily identified by various types of adaptive technology as a heading. Next, I will turn off the Show/Hide paragraph information here and we'll look at the second heading.

OK, it looks kind of centered, but the reality is that this is also not a heading. So, we're looking at "Protecting the Great Lakes" and the next heading is "Strengthening Great Lakes protection". So, again, this is something that we need to, we need to fix in order to make sure that it does show up properly in the Navigation menu.

So first, let's address this formatting here.

So, this text here has been formatted in a way that they're trying to centre the text, but instead they're actually using space, the space bar, to kind of move the text around.

This is not an accessible way to manipulate content. When a screen reader user happens upon this content here, it will read out as blank, blank, blank, blank. And that can be really frustrating and annoying when you're trying to navigate through a document.

So, let's go ahead and remove that.

And there is a whole bunch of other spaces afterwards and we'll remove those too. Now, if you need to centre text, we recommend using the paragraph styles here, under the Home tab and clicking on Center.

However, we recommend against using center text anywhere but on the title page, simply because users who might be navigating using a screen magnifier which zooms in on the content on screen, you know, they may have some kind of a vision impairment which prevents them from seeing the content of the screen without it being magnified in some way.  And they rely on these to navigate.

Often when they're navigating the document, this is what it would look like, where they're kind of seeing the different sections and then they use the margin on the left side to navigate through it.

And you'll see here, they can't see the heading for this area. And it's rare that they'll want to try to scroll right, in order to see what's there. They'll just use that margin. And so, in most cases, we try to avoid using that kind of centering within a document, because it impairs certain users.

So, we'll use left justification for that.

So, let's go ahead and right click and update that. And now we've got a heading level 2 that is right beneath the Protecting the Great Lakes section here. And it's within the Navigation menu.

Next, let's take a look at these paragraphs beneath it. Now, they have been styled using what's called full justification, where the text is flat on both sides of the document. This is reserved typically for newspaper articles and things like that, where you have thin columns of text.

However, when it's being used in a document like this one, what it does is it actually creates rivers of white space between all the words and it's uneven. And for someone with a cognitive disability, this can prevent them from easily navigating the content, because it's a visual distraction.

And so, they may get lost and not be able to know where they are within that sentence or that paragraph. And so rather than using full justification, we recommend using just left justification.

It straightens out all of the spacing, so that's even and consistent and much easier to navigate.

Next, we've got content here that has been moved to the next page. Looks fine. We've got one section that ends here and the new section that begins with that heading.

Now, the problem, though, is that the way that the user who built this document did it, is that they hit a return or enter over and over again until that content reached the next page.

What that means, again, is that a screen reader user who's navigating through this page will encounter blank, blank, blank, blank, blank over and over again until they get to the next heading. There's an easier way to do this that is also fully accessible.

So, let's go ahead and remove all of those extra spaces.

I've got the cursor right at the beginning of the heading here, and I'm going to go ahead and click on the Insert tab, in the top ribbon bar, and under Pages, there's a section called Page Break.

If I click on that, it brings that heading to the next page without having any extra characters. And so, a screen reader user who's navigating this content will arrive at the end of this paragraph and then it will bring them directly to the next page, to the next heading without any extra information that is unnecessary.

So, let's look at this next paragraph here. We've got what appears to be a bulleted list. And to a sighted user, it may appear that it is. However, to someone using adaptive technology, like a voice to text software or screen reader, they will not be able to have this recognized as a list because it isn't actually a list, it's just a bullet and a tab, that's not actually formatted as a list. And so, in order to make sure that content is properly formatted as a list, you'll want to use under the Home tab, within the paragraph subsection here, you want to make sure that you've selected Bullets, rather than just kind of styling it to look like bullets.

It's relatively common to see people using dashes and then tab as a list, instead of this actual function here. If that's something that you want to use, you can actually change the style of the bullets, just by double clicking on them. Or clicking on this drop-down menu within the Bullets, and you can change the style.

So, for example, I want these dashes instead. Now it can have the style that you're looking for and still be correctly recognized as a list. And so that becomes accessible for a much larger group of people. Next, let's talk italicization. So, we've got a huge paragraph here, that is entirely italicized. When it comes to italics, if we're relying on the Canada Style Guide, it's actually recommended that we only use italicization for the name of acts or laws that are being used in the document.

And so, when it comes to italicizing, let's remove that italicization and let's only italicize it right here on the "Act" itself.

That way we're adding emphasis to the thing that needs emphasis. And we're not really making a user have difficulty reading that content, because the reality is when we're looking at italic paragraphs, it actually makes it much more difficult to read both for users with vision impairments or users with cognitive disabilities.

Another thing that we'll take a look at while we're here, is that the font size of this, we recommend on a whole, that we use the standard text size or the default text size that is within a document. So, if we create a new paragraph here, that default size is 12.

So, let's go ahead and increase that font size to 12.

What this does is it ensures that anyone with some kind of a vision impairment or even people who rely on glasses have an easier time reading that content. Next, we'll look at the font itself. Now, I'll zoom in as I explain to you what this is. But this is what's called a serif font.

Serifs are these little legs that are at the bottom of most of the characters within a serif font. These font styles were developed for print material. When it's looked at in a digital way or in a digital format, it actually makes it more difficult to read the content. So, let's use a sans serif, which means without those little legs, on this font area here, let's use Arial.

Other examples of good, solid sans serif fonts include Verdana, Century Gothic and plenty of others. Calibri is another one.

Anything that is really easy to read will greatly benefit the largest number of people. Below that paragraph, we've got another paragraph here that is entirely bolded. Now, again, we recommend against bolding an entire paragraph, because it doesn't actually take away or it doesn't actually add any benefit to that paragraph. When you're trying to emphasize something, if you emphasize everything, you end up emphasizing nothing.

So rather than emphasizing this whole paragraph, using the bold function, we're going to remove that. And let's emphasize only the section that is important, only the line that's important here, so "Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry". That way, we've got an emphasis on important text here without emphasizing an entire paragraph and then taking away from the real emphasis of anything.

Below here, we have a paragraph of French text. Now when it comes to multilanguage documents, it's important to make sure that content is correctly identified as the right language. And the reason for that is when someone's navigating using a screen reader, it will switch between languages. However, if it's identified as the wrong language, what ends up happening is that anyone who's ever taken a GPS through Gatineau or a French language place will know that an English GPS reading French words just sounds like gibberish.

And so much like a GPS, when this text is read out by a screen reader in English, it won't make any sense. However, if we change it to the correct language and let's go ahead and do that, I'll show you how.

Down at the bottom left-hand corner of the page here, there's a language tab that's being selected. So right now, it is English Canada.

Let's go ahead and click on that.

And within here, you can actually change it to French Canada. And let's click Okay. Now, when a screen reader navigates to this portion of the text, it will be read out in French by a French speaking screen reader. So rather than having confusing gibberish read out, it will read out the correct language.

Below this French paragraph here, we have a link, ok. What this translates to is: "learn more", en savoir plus. When it comes to hyperlinks within a document, we recommend against using ambiguous link text like, "learn more". The reason for this is that when someone who's navigating using keyboard navigation and may also be relying on text to speech or screen reader technology, they can tab to the individual hyperlinks within a document.

And so, if they don't receive any context with this link, they won't know where it's going to take them. Because if you happen on "learn more" without any additional context before it, you don't really know what this link is for. So rather than using a link after a paragraph that says learn more, it's always best to hyperlink the information within a paragraph.

So, let's go ahead and copy this hyperlink and let's select text that is relevant to that link.

So, in this case, let's assume that it's going to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. So, let's go ahead and insert a hyperlink in that text itself and I'll show you how to do that in two ways. The first, if you hit Control K, it will open the Insert Hyperlink menu.

Alternatively, if you want to use the menus above, you can click on the Insert menu here. And then there's a Link button under the Links section and you can click on it and it will open up that Insert Hyperlink menu.

Let's go ahead and paste in that hyperlink and now you've got meaningful link text, if someone tabs to this link itself without reading any of the content around it, they still know, oh, this is going to take me to the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry.

There will be no confusion at all.

Let's talk about images. Before we demonstrate how to make images accessible within this document, let's kind of talk about what makes images accessible. So, we've got, I've got a little mini presentation here on image accessibility.

So, what identifies the useful information to a user, whether it be someone who relies on a screen reader, for, due to vision impairment or whether it be someone with cognitive disabilities who relies on a screen reader to allow them to more easily understand the content, alternative text within an image is what relays the information about an image to those users. So, in this case, we, we need to identify what kind of alternative text needs to be included in an image in order to relay the important information. Now I think it's important to note that alternative text should not be describing literally everything in an image.

You don't want to say six geese by a river, eating green grass near a small coniferous tree. That's too much information. Before you can determine what the alternative text is, you need to identify the context under which this image is being used. So, let me provide you some context now.

Let's imagine that this image is being used in an article about polluted waterways and its impact on wildlife. Now we have a little bit more context so we can say, OK, this is an image of geese eating by a polluted waterway. Now, I did say that this is an image of, but when it comes to alternative text, you don't actually need to use the words  and then whatever it is you're describing, because a screen reader will already identify that it is an image.

And so, if you add the words "image of" it will say "image, image of" and that's redundant and confusing information. So you would just say, "geese eating by polluted waterway". If we change the context, though, maybe you need to add a little bit more detail.

So, let's say that this is a scientific article about the mating patterns of geese, and you're trying to describe the specific patterns themselves.

Well, in this case, the alternative text may not be sufficient. You might need to say in the alternative text, "geese mating pattern" and then beneath it you would have a long description which describes all of the things that are going on within the image that provide context for the geese's mating patterns.

Next, this is a different type of image, this is what we call a decorative image.

Decorative images do not require any alternative text. Instead, you'll just have it marked as decorative. That will tell a screen reader that this image is not important, and they don't need to worry about it. You may be tempted to just not add alternative text, but unfortunately, what that does is it will identify an image, but give no information. And so, the visitor or the user might think, oh, this could be an important image that I'm just not you know, that just doesn't have alternative text.

Maybe this is important information that I need to know. And so that's why it's important to mark it as decorative, so that the screen reader and the user know, OK, this is not important. It's just stylized. It's just something to beautify the document. And I don't need to know any more about it.

Next, we've got image of text. Now, as a rule, we recommend against using images of text at all costs. The reason for that is that some users rely on adaptive technology such as colour inversion or high contrast mode to view their content. And so, you'll notice here in my screen and also if I quickly jump back to the Word document, I've got dark mode enabled on here. And the reason for that is that I'm someone who is very sensitive to bright colours. And so, I rely on this dark mode in order to ease the way I read it.

This slide is also built in dark mode. However, an image of text is not affected by the change in those settings. And so rather than being able to correctly read this in high contrast mode, this image will stay the same regardless. And so, in most cases, we recommend against using images of text. However, from time to time we're required. It's been given to us; we don't have a choice and we have to identify this information.

How we make this image accessible is to only provide the text itself. So EnviroZine, Environment Canada's online magazine, that's the only important information that's here. You don't need to describe the background. You don't need to describe the flowers or the rock or anything like that, because the only pertinent information within this image is the text itself.

Next, we've got what's called a complex image. So, this is a map from one place to another. When it comes to maps, they need both alternative text and a long description, so the alternative text would be: "instructions to or directions to the party" and underneath the image, you would then have a long description, something like this.

So, it needs to convey all of the information that a sighted user would have in order to be able to know what's going on.  So, in this case, it would be turn by turn. So, it describes right at the beginning where they're going, how far it is, and then step-by-step, all of the turns that need to be done in order to go from one destination to the next. And at the end, we've also got an estimated walking time. So, it'll allow a non-sighted user or someone who relies on a screen reader to have all of this information without actually having to see what the image is about.

Next, we've got a chart or graph here. Again, this is what we consider a complex image, and so it requires both alternative text and a long description. So, let's take a look at what that would look like.

So, the alternative text would say something like "flowchart illustrating, login process". And then beneath it, you would have the description of that login process.

And you'll notice that we added numbers to the image to allow an ease of understanding of the content.

Because it's not only screen reader users who rely on long descriptions. Sometimes an image is complex enough that the long description actually eases the understanding of it and allows users who may have cognitive disabilities or even just people who need a little bit more context to easily navigate the information within the image without losing any of it.

So, in this long description here we have Step 1, get username. And then go to Step 2. Now we're at Step 2. If the username is blank? Is the username blank? And then if it is Yes, then go back to Step 1. And if No, continue to Step 3. That way we've got all of the information that's contained within this complex image. And so even if you can't see it, you can still understand the information that's being conveyed.

Next, we've got a graph here that's describing farm and non-farm populations. Once again, we've got content here that has a lot of information to it, and we may be tempted to simply just include the table upon which this information is built. However, there's a lot more information being conveyed by this than the individual bits of data.

So beyond just the data itself, by looking at this graph, we can see trends, ok? So, we can see that the farm populations have been decreasing over time and non-farm populations have been increasing over time. That trend is something that would need to be included in the long description. In terms of alternative text for this image, we would include something like "Chart, 2.1, Farm and non-farm populations", short and concise.

The user will know what it is and expect a long description beneath it. We also should include the source, because that's built into there as well. So, all of this information that's within it can now be conveyed when you're describing the trends, the sources, and also including a table with all of the pertinent data within this image.

So, let's jump into the document.

Now that we understand how to build and create alternative text and long descriptions or what to do to create that content. Now, I will show you how to apply that to a document. So, let's go ahead and click on this image here, this is what I described earlier as a decorative image, and in order to add alternative text to it, there are two ways to do it.

So, the first one I'm going to show is in Office 365. So, if I right-click on the image, I can click on Edit Alt Text here and it will bring up this alternative text box. You'll notice that in Office 365 there is a checkbox that says, "Mark as decorative". We recommend right now against using that.

And the reason for it is that it is not backwards compatible. So, if you create this document in Office 365 and then someone else opens it in Office 2016, this information here is not conveyed to them.

So instead of using the checkbox, we're going to type that information in.

So, decorative within that box. So now, when a screen reader or a text to speech navigator comes across this image, it will just simply identify it as an image and that it is decorative. No information is needed.

No one will wonder whether or not they have all of the information. Now, if you're using Office 2016 or earlier, there's a different way to add alternative text. So, you right-click on the image, but you won't see an Edit Alternative Text. Instead, you'll only see Size and Position and Format Picture.

You'll want to click on Format Picture and then you'll have the Format Picture tab that pops up on the right side of the page and then within the Layout and Properties tab, if you click on it, they'll also be a box here that says Alternative Text that will pop up.

And rather than looking like this one, you'll have a title box above it and a description box beneath it.

Don't type anything at all in the title box, because it doesn't serve any purpose. You want to put that alternative text in the description box.

Next, let's look at a standard image, ok? So this is, let's imagine this is an article about the Great Lakes. So, in this image here, we see waves on Lake Superior. So, let's go ahead and describe this as "Lake Superior waves".

Now, this image will be described adequately, so even if they can't see it, they will know what's within it. And then if this was a complex image, on top of that alternative text that we added, underneath it, you would have some kind of a description that breaks down all of the important content that is going on inside it. And yes, I literally mean, you know just write it right beneath the window.

You don't need to have a title that says long description, and that's how you would add it, after the fact.

Let's start taking a look at colour and use of colour within a document. So here we have blue text that's being highlighted in a grey colour, maybe for someone's stylistic desires, maybe they like the way it looks, but let's test if this colour contrast is actually accessible.

So, I'm going to pull up a tool called Colour Contrast Analyzer, this is a free tool that can be downloaded off the internet.

If it's not in your Software Center, you can have the IT department add it for you or simply install it. And it's a very simple program to use. You simply click on the eyedropper here.

And highlight the text itself and you'll notice that it's zooming in, so it's easier to select. Let's go ahead and choose that and then you click on the background selection, which would be the grey.

And then it will tell us whether or not this is passing.

So, in the case of small text or regular sized text, it fails, because the contrast ratio is below the threshold needed in order to meet the level AA, which is the standard that the government relies on or must meet.

However, the large text, the title here, does pass. And so that would mean that this kind of formatting would be ok for a title, but not ok for regular text. So, let's go ahead and change it and we'll see how that contrasts. Or that description changes once we do that. So, let's remove the highlighting altogether, no colour.

And let's bring Colour Contrast Analyzer back in here and let's change the foreground colour to white.

Now it passes AA.

So, all across the board, whether it be large text or small text, this colour contrast will pass.

Now something to note with documents like this one, when we're adding colours to them, it will actually prevent a user from using their built-in accessibility features. So, let's say some users may have invert colours activated, which means that there would be a black background here with white text.

If you have white or blue text here, it will be blue text on a black background, which is hard to read.

So, we recommend in most cases to choose black text.

However, if you just simply select black within the Theme Color, it will actually stay black, even when the user is using high contrast mode. So, you'll have black text on a black background. But if you select Automatic, that means that it will automatically change, based on the user settings.

And so, if the user has high contrast mode activated, this text will automatically change to a high contrast colour based on what the background is.

Next, let's talk about using colour to identify information. So here, we have a table that says, "Overdue items are coloured in red". And red is highlighted, and then you've got two columns or two rows here that have been coloured red to identify this information.

However, if this were printed out in black and white, suddenly you lose all of that information. The same thing applies if the person has a vision impairment, like colour blindness or the need to use a black and white monitor. And so, it's important to use more than one method if you're using colour to identify information.

So, one that's pretty common on the internet is to use an asterisk. So, let's go ahead and say, ok, "Overdue items are coloured in red" with an asterisk and let's go ahead and add an asterisk to the important information. And now suddenly, you've got information that can be conveyed, regardless of what colour it's being displayed in.

So even if it's printed out in black and white, you will still know, ok, the overdue items are the ones that have an asterisk in front of them. Alternatively, you could just add another column that says overdue and then just put X's or check marks or yes, for the overdue items. And that's an alternative way to identify the overdue items without relying on colour.

Let's talk about colour contrast a little bit more, let me open up infographic here and we'll talk about the different aspects and elements that are built within it.

So, when it comes to using colour to identify information, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. In a case of this infographic here, you've got information that's being conveyed in a low colour contrast.

So, this grey on light blue, if I open up the Colour Contrast Analyzer and I select this is the foreground text and the light blue as the background, it tells me it fails across the board.

So, it can't be read by someone with low vision or someone who has some kind of vision impairment like colour blindness. However, they tried to get around that by also using the icons for female and male, in order to get around that. Now, realistically, it would probably be wiser to just have these words in the correct contrast, as it will allow for more users to understand more information. Next, we've got these circles here that are in a light grey on the blue.

Now they're trying to demonstrate the areas or the percentage of the circle that is not included in each section. However, that's a visual cue that someone with a vision impairment may not pick up on. And so, it would be a good idea to heighten the contrast between those so that it's easier to read.

Next, and a more common use of colour, is a pie chart here. And they have actually done an excellent job of making sure that the information within the pie chart is easy to identify, regardless of whether you have an impairment of some kind or not. So, if all of these sections were stuck together without any space between them, someone with colour blindness may not be able to distinguish between this segment and the green one,
but, because each segment has been separated and has a space between them, even if you can't see any of these colours, you can still identify the individual segments.

They've also gone ahead and added the percentage points within each one and gone even further and identified what the segments are in a very clear and descriptive way. So those are really important ways to identify information beyond colour. Now, another thing that you could do if you can't separate them is to add texture. So, if you've got horizontal lines in the green section, vertical lines in the red section and diagonal lines in the yellow section, that's another way to kind of identify the different sections and segments without having to rely only on colour to relay that information.

Let's jump back into our document here.

And let's talk about tables now, ok? This is what we call a complex table, and the reason for that is that you have merged cells. And the reason that a complex table is not accessible, is because if someone is using a screen reader and cannot see this table, the screen reader will read out, column 1 of 1, row 1 of 9. And then they'll tab to the next row and it will say, column 1 of 5, row 2 of 9, and so suddenly they went from having a single column table to having a five-column table. And then if they jump to the next, it'll say column 1 of 6, row 3 of 9. And so, they will have no idea where or which information corresponds to which information. They won't know that employee is above name and position because that information is not provided.

The only thing they know is that this is row 1 of 5 and this is row 1 of 6.

And so, they don't receive any context as to what information falls beneath what information. So this makes it impossible to navigate this table. However, if we simply remove all of those merge cells and remove any information that is not tabular data, it makes it much easier to navigate for someone using a screen reader.

Now, when I say tabular data, I mean information that adds to the context of the table. So, for example, this heading here, Human Resources, it doesn't need to be in the table. You don't lose any context by having it outside the table as a heading. And so, what they've also done here is they've removed the need to add this Employee section here by simply adding Employee Information to the heading itself.

And then each section has a column header. And we also included Nationality, so you don't need to have two separate segments here within the table and that way, column 1, row 1, the name heading will always be above it. So, they will always know that column 1 is Name and column 2 is Position, column 3 is Nationality and so forth. They'll never lose the context for the rows beneath it, because they will always know, OK, I'm in row 3. That means its Nationality.

And so, it's really important to avoid using complex tables with merged cells as much as possible, to ensure that your table is the most accessible it can be. Now, that said, you can make a merged table accessible within PDF Acrobat or PDF Foxit Phantom, but it requires enormous technical knowledge and you can also make a complex table accessible when it's posted online, using HTML, if you're adding that correct information. But unfortunately, within Word documents, there's no way to do it.

Now let's talk plain language. Plain language is a big buzzword right now. We're hearing a lot about it, but what does it mean? Well, I'll show you how to measure plain language, but essentially plain language is the reading level for a specific grouping of text.

So, there's a way, built into Word, that allows you to measure the reading level.

So, let's go ahead and activate that and I'll show you how to activate it. So, if you go to the File menu at the top here, and then you click on Options. This window will appear and under the Proofing section, if you scroll down to "When correcting spelling and grammar in Word", you can show the readability statistics.

So, if you check this checkbox and click, OK, now when you highlight this text and you go to the Review section and you check spelling and grammar under Proofing. Now, make sure that when this box pops up, you click no, because you don't want it to scan the whole document, you only want to scan the section that you've highlighted. It will include the readability statistics here.

So, the Flesch Kincaid grade level is grade 14.8, essentially a PhD or postdoc level reading level. Whereas this section here is the same information as before, but if we check, its reading level.

It's actually a grade 5. Now within the federal government, we try to aim for a grade 8 level reading in order to allow the highest number of people possible to understand this content.

And according to numerous studies, they've demonstrated that even let's say that this was a scientific document and it's destined to people who have PhDs, well, you're able to understand and remember more information if it is at a lower reading level than your current education level.

So even for people who have that education, that high education and that high grade level, it will be more beneficial to them to have an easier reading level, as it will allow them to absorb and retain a greater number of information. Now, I think it's important to identify, though, that this built-in tool is only available in English.

So, if you have French text, there is a tool online for free, called Scolarius. And if you access that site, you simply copy the text that you want to use in it, paste it in and it will give you a similar grade level that's similar to Flesch Kincaid, but is the French equivalent of it.

Now let's talk about abbreviations, that's something that's very common here in the government and it's an important thing to talk about.

The rule of thumb for abbreviations is that you want to make sure to identify them or define them in their first iteration. So, in this case, let's talk SSC, this would be Shared Services Canada, and then the acronym itself would be within parentheses.

And that way, you know, if you're using SSC again, in a lower paragraph, you don't need to define it again, because they already know what it is. There is an exception to that, however. Let's say that you have a 100- or 200-page document. Well, we recommend that every five or six pages, if you're using an acronym again, that you define it again. That will allow a user who maybe doesn't remember what that acronym is and is seven or eight pages away from the original definition, they won't need to scroll back up through the document in order to find what SSC means.

That's just kind of a thing that is smart to do and that benefits all users.

We're going to talk about exporting content to PDF form and also how to make sure that your PDF content is accessible.

And also, I'll do a basic demonstration of what it's like to have to retroactively make a PDF accessible if it hasn't been exported correctly or if the origin document wasn't accessible. So, there's the right way and a wrong way to export a PDF from Word. The wrong way is to simply print to PDF. What that will do is it will scrub all of these great accessibility features that we've built in and it will simply be a fully inaccessible document again.

Now, if you've got Adobe Acrobat or Foxit Phantom PDF installed on your machine, you'll have a tab here at the top that will allow you to create a PDF and it will already have those built-in settings ready to go.

So, your PDF will contain all of this new information.

However, if you don't have one of these PDF editors installed, you can still export an accessible PDF.

The way to do that is to click on the file menu at the top left.

Click on the Export button. And then there's a button under Create PDF XPS Document, called Create PDF XPS that you can click on, but before you click Save, it's really important to click on this Option button here and to make sure that you have checked all of the include non-printing information within that document.

These headings and bookmarks, as well as the document properties and tags for structuring, will all be included in this document when it's converted to PDF.

Another thing that's important to add or to note is that when you're exporting this document, you also want to make sure that within the Info tabs, let's go to File Info. You've added a meaningful title.

When it comes to documents, the title here may not be relevant to a sighted user, but for someone using adaptive technology, when they're navigating through the different documents that are open, it will read this title to them rather than the file name. If we're looking at this file name here, 2-PGL_ON_EN, doesn't really convey any meaningful information.

And many of the government file naming conventions make it almost impossible for anyone who is not part of the group that created that document to understand what it's about. So, let's add a meaningful title here.

Let's call it "Protecting the Great Lakes" and now, not only will they be able to understand what this document is, but this information will also be exported when you save it to an accessible PDF.

So here I've got that same document, but it hasn't been altered.

So, Foxit Phantom, which is the application that I'm using, has a built-in accessibility checker that is similar to the one in Word and let's run a full check here.

Once you run that full check, it will go through it and it will identify some of the issues that it sees. So right now, it's saying, oh, there's no title. There is a lack of appropriate headings and there's a whole bunch of other issues that have been identified. So, if I wanted to go back through this and make it accessible within here, you have to manually change every single item.

So, if we look at this first block of text here, this is identified as a paragraph, but it's actually a heading.

And so, in order to make this a heading level 1 now, I have to use the HTML code, H1, in order to properly identify that as a heading.

Even more interesting, if I skip down to this other page.

This image is being identified as a paragraph as well, so you have all sorts of really complicated issues and there's no way to change them all at once. So, you need to go through every single section and remove all of the content that isn't relevant and that includes all of these empty spaces.

So, you see all of those empty spaces, if I expand that character here, there's a whole bunch of spaces that will need to be removed, so I need to go into the Content tab.

Find that paragraph again, which is supposed to be a heading. Open that up, and then manually remove every single blank space that's built-in there. And that can be really time consuming and really annoying, especially if we're talking about a very large document. Now, this is something that I have done in previous jobs, where I had to go through and retroactively make existing PDFs accessible.

And I'm an expert in this. And so for, let's say, a 150-page document, that would take me about two weeks. And so, for someone who isn't an expert, you're looking at a month or maybe more to make this document accessible, whereas you saw how easy it was for me to make that document accessible within Word.

And so, if at all possible, you have to try to make the source file accessible. And if you need to make any changes or you notice that a PDF isn't accessible, try to access the source file itself, rather than trying to change it in PDF form, because you're just opening yourself up to a world of hurt. So now that we've taken a look at PDFs, let's talk about PowerPoint accessibility.

So here we have a standard PowerPoint and what we're going to do is we're going to use the accessibility checker that's built into it, much like the one in Word. So, we click on File and then Info. Under the Inspect Presentation tab, you can click on the button, Check for Issues and Check Accessibility. And it's already identified one error and several warnings here.

So, let's click on the first error.

This title doesn't have, or this slide doesn't have a title, and so it's important that every single slide has a unique title in order to be accessible.

So, let's call this "Understanding the Great Lakes".

And great, we've got a unique title that is different than all the other ones. Now, let's imagine that this slide needed to be separated in two.

We've got a lot of information there, maybe we want to make this text bigger, have less text on one page so that it's easier for everybody to read. Let's create a new slide.

So, let's paste that in.

Well, we can't just take that same title as before, even though it is the same information, because then you've got a title that's being reused. And the reason that's bad is because if you're navigating this content here using a screen reader, skipping between slides, it will only read out the title. And so, you won't know if the first "Understanding Great Lakes" is where the information is or the second one. You don't know which one you're in, because it's not going to say the "Understanding the Great Lakes" one of two. It just says, "Understanding the Great Lakes". And so how to get around this unique titles solution here, this issue, is to add something like 1 of 2.

Or one of three or whatever. That way you can add a relevant title into this one that's unique and original and it is different from the first one.

So now, when you're navigating through these slide titles on the side here, it will read out, "Understanding the Great Lakes (1 of 2)", and beneath it it'll say, "Understanding the Great Lakes (2 of 2)". This is especially important if you have a topic that continues over five or six slides, because if you're navigating through six slides that all say, "Understanding the Great Lakes", if you're not sure if you're stuck in one of the slides, you have no idea where you're going because, you know, as a screen reader user, you have no way of seeing where you're at.

And so, you don't know if there's a problem. Whereas if you have that information, one of two, two of two, all of a sudden, it's adding context to the reason that that information is being repeated. Next, let's take a look at this warning here.

So, it says "Check reading order". In PowerPoint, the content that's added is not necessarily in the right reading order, which means when adaptive technology is navigating through it, it may not read the way that a sighted user would, so let's go ahead and "Verify the object order" in this slide.

So, it's telling me that the first item on the list is the content and the second is the title. A way to test this manually is to click outside of the slide here and then hit the Tab key.

So, for someone who's using keyboard only navigation to navigate this document, they're going to receive that information out of context.

So, let's go ahead and swap it around, do another test, and now it's reading in the correct way.

Let's skip to slide four now. And we'll do that same manual test where I click outside of the slide, hit Tab.

The first item that's being selected is the image. Then it's the first paragraph, then it's the title, and then it's the fourth or the second paragraph here. Now, when it comes to information, the way that it's being presented can change its meaning if it's read in the wrong order.

And so that's why it's really important to manually check this reading order, because a computer has no idea the way that it's supposed to be. It doesn't know that the heading comes first and then it's the first paragraph, then the image, then the second paragraph. All it knows is that there's a bunch of boxes that have been added to a slide.

So, we need to manually move this heading to the top. Next, it needs to be this paragraph. So, let's move that up. Then the image, then the second paragraph. Now, when we do the manual check, the reading order is logical. Now, the reason that I keep emphasizing this is that when you're reading something out of order, it changes its context and meaning, so let's use this alphabet as an example.

We start with A, C, D, E, B. You wouldn't instinctively know that this is an alphabet, by hearing those letters out of order. However, if I move that B up underneath A and we tap through it again, you have A, B, C, D, E, now you know that it's the alphabet.

And so, this is a really simple way of demonstrating that. But it's really, really important to recognize that the way that a non-sighted user navigates through these things depends on the way that this content is laid out and the reading order can significantly impact someone's ability to understand what's being presented to them.

And that's even more important when you deal with things like placemats.

So here we've got a placemat document. Let's go ahead and zoom in on that a little bit. And let's take a look at this reading order, ok? So, let's click outside here and I hit tab.

Well, the first item that's being selected now is that 1 at the bottom of the page. Then it's the title, then this stylish line, and then it skips below this paragraph here to a subtitle.

And then it skips below these three paragraphs to another title and then it skips below that to this section here. And all of this content, and then it skips way down into the middle of this section to a whole bunch of different stuff, so you aren't going to absorb this information in a meaningful way.

You aren't going to be able to read this and know, ok, this follows this, and this follows this. And here's the logical way, and it's a sequential way to read all of this information. And so, with a really complex placemat or slide like this one, it becomes really, really, really important to be able to properly lay out issue or this information in a way that is meaningful.

So, if we were to go in and verify the object reading order here, we've got a whole bunch of information that is in the wrong order.

Let's zoom out again so you can see the boxes. And there's a relatively easy way to fix it, simply by making sure that the right information it is built into the right context. And that also includes inside these groups here.

Because within the groups, you need to make sure that this information is going to be correctly identified and that they can navigate through it and all of these stylistic things that have been added, like the coloured boxes and the images are all marked as decorative.

So that a screen reader user can easily navigate through this information without losing any of the context and while being able to read it in the right order. Let's jump back to our first PDF document here.

We may be tempted to export a PDF from PowerPoint, however, unfortunately, the way that PowerPoints are built, actually prevents it from exporting an accessible PDF, and so sadly, there's no real easy way to export an accessible PDF from PowerPoint because it will not be accessible, and you'll still have to go through it and manually change a bunch of stuff to make sure that it is accessible.

So, we've got, you know, a lot of serious issues here that can create some significant problems. And so, if you have the option, rather than using PowerPoint to export to PDF, you could use Word, where you can still lay it out in the same way. Many of the features that are built into PowerPoint are also present in Word. And you can still easily make them accessible.

So there's a lot of information that's been presented here, and if I were to summarize it all for you, the important take home is to make sure that you're making those manual checks, that you're going through all of these documents and verifying all of the tools that I've shown you, making sure that you're using the right styles, that you don't have incorrectly built bullets, that you're not using enter, enter, enter, enter to go through the documents, that you're thinking about all of the images and what kind of alternative text is there.

And that includes, you know, when you're creating a document, if you make it accessible and you're sending it to translation, it's important to then identify to them, oh ok, well, these images have alternative text. Please make sure that you translate that information as well.

And at times you may even need to tell them how to do it. Now, fortunately for you, I'm not asking you to memorize everything that I've demonstrated today. We will be providing you with our accessible document guides that walk you through many of the things that I've shown you today, step by step. And so, you'll be able to share something like that with them to make sure that they are able to ensure that these documents are accessible as well.

And before I close, I think it's important to kind of note that when we're thinking about accessibility ahead of time, we're saving ourselves money and time. If you remember, when I was talking about retroactively making the PDF accessible in my first job, if I had access to the original files or if they themselves had made that information accessible from the get-go, we would have had a greater ease of navigating through that content. And it would have saved my employer a significant amount of time and resources having to go back and make something that wasn't accessible, accessible again.

And so, it benefits everyone to be actively working for accessibility because it means that we don't have to do anything retroactively. And if you're using a lot of the functions and tools that I have shown you, it will actually also save you time, using the built-in styles and the bullet functions and all of these fancy accessibility tools will actually streamline your efforts and the things that you're doing within a document. And if it becomes second nature, then you'll just be creating accessible documents with every document that you create.

Transcript with visual description: Making Documents Accessible

[Visual description: A slide with the words "Making Documents Accessible" appears on screen, with the Canada School of Public Service symbol visible in the top right corner of the slide, and a white stick figure on a blue circle. The Canada School of Public Service corporate signature appears in the bottom left corner.]

[Visual description: Another slide with the words "Please note that the charts, graphs and data used in this video may not be accurate and are intended for informational purposes only." appears on screen.]

Hello everyone, and welcome to the accessible document training. We're going to be looking at different ways to make documents accessible today, all using the Office suite that is already installed on most people's computers.

[Visual description: A slide appears entitled MS Word, which indicates the topics covered in this section of the video: Accessibility Checker, headings, text and paragraph styling, fonts and hyperlinks.]

[Visual description: The instructor opens a Word document with the heading "Protecting the Great Lakes."]

So, I'm going to open up a Word document and everything within it is going to be in Office 365. But for anyone who's using an older version, I will also be providing examples on how to do the things that are 365 unique.

So, the first thing that we're going to do, is we're going to take a look at the Accessibility Checker that's built into any Office product, so how to access the Accessibility Checker is that you click on the File menu, and then you scroll down to the Info tab and then within there, there is an Inspect Document section and if you click on the Check for Issues button, one of the options available there is Check Accessibility.

So, let's go ahead and activate that. And now you'll notice on the top right side of the screen, it says that this document is not able to use the accessibility checker, because it is a wrong format. And so, in order to make sure that it is able to work properly, we're going to click on the Convert button here. And now the accessibility option works. An alternative way, I'll revert that change here for a second.

And an alternative way to do that is to click on File, Info and then you can click on the button here to convert. And then you'll notice here that there are a couple of things that are being identified as kind of warnings, but no errors are being specifically identified.

[Visual description: The instructor selects the Convert button and demonstrates selecting Compatibility Mode as an alternative. At the top of the right-hand side panel, warnings appear under the accessibility checker.]

Now, the thing about the built-in accessibility checker is that it's only going to identify about 20 percent of issues in accessibility. And the reason for that is that computers can only know things that computers are able to measure, and the rest of the document will need to be checked manually.

And so, let's talk about the various issues that are present within this document that the accessibility checker is not going to identify. So, the first one, we're going to take a look at the various headings that are present in this document.

[Visual description: The navigation pane opens on the left side of screen.]

And what that will do is tell us all of the different elements that are currently present within the headings structure. And you'll notice that, "Protecting the Great Lakes" here, this top-level heading, is not actually in any of the navigation headings. And so that means that it is not a heading.

So, let's go ahead and click on the Home tab here. And when we highlight it, it's actually a Normal style. So that what that means is that to a sighted user who navigates through this content, they will see that it looks like a heading, but for anyone using adaptive technology, whether it be a screen reader or someone who is using speech-to-text and they're wanting to navigate through this document using verbal commands, they won't be able to get to the first level heading, because it is not correctly identified as a heading.

Now, I will show you how to change that. So right now, I've got the heading selected. And if you go to the Styles sub tab here within the home tab ribbon, you'll see here that there's heading level one or Heading 1.

And when I hover over it, it changes the style. Well, what if I want to keep the style that's currently here, but still have it read as a heading? There's a way to do that that's pretty easy. If you hover over Heading 1 and you right click on it, you can update Heading 1 to match the selection. So now, you'll notice that "Protecting Great Lakes" is showing up in the navigation menu as a top-level heading.

So that means that this information here is now going to be easily identified by various types of adaptive technology as a heading. Next, I will turn off the Show/Hide paragraph information here and we'll look at the second heading.

[Visual description: The instructor highlights the heading "The importance of the Great Lakes."]

OK, it looks kind of centered, but the reality is that this is also not a heading. So, we're looking at "Protecting the Great Lakes" and the next heading is "Strengthening Great Lakes protection". So, again, this is something that we need to, we need to fix in order to make sure that it does show up properly in the Navigation menu.

So first, let's address this formatting here.

[Visual description: The instructor uses the cursor to indicate the heading "The importance of the Great Lakes."]

So, this text here has been formatted in a way that they're trying to centre the text, but instead they're actually using space, the space bar, to kind of move the text around.

This is not an accessible way to manipulate content. When a screen reader user happens upon this content here, it will read out as blank, blank, blank, blank. And that can be really frustrating and annoying when you're trying to navigate through a document.

So, let's go ahead and remove that.

[Visual description: The instructor deletes the spaces in front of the heading "The importance of the Great Lakes," and the heading is aligned to the left.]

And there is a whole bunch of other spaces afterwards and we'll remove those too. Now, if you need to centre text, we recommend using the paragraph styles here, under the Home tab and clicking on Center.

However, we recommend against using center text anywhere but on the title page, simply because users who might be navigating using a screen magnifier which zooms in on the content on screen, you know, they may have some kind of a vision impairment which prevents them from seeing the content of the screen without it being magnified in some way.  And they rely on these to navigate.

Often when they're navigating the document, this is what it would look like, where they're kind of seeing the different sections and then they use the margin on the left side to navigate through it.

[Visual description: The instructor scrolls down the page along the left-hand margin of the magnified text and shows the gap that appears at the centred heading.]

And you'll see here, they can't see the heading for this area. And it's rare that they'll want to try to scroll right, in order to see what's there. They'll just use that margin. And so, in most cases, we try to avoid using that kind of centering within a document, because it impairs certain users.

So, we'll use left justification for that.

So, let's go ahead and right click and update that. And now we've got a heading level 2 that is right beneath the Protecting the Great Lakes section here. And it's within the Navigation menu.

Next, let's take a look at these paragraphs beneath it. Now, they have been styled using what's called full justification, where the text is flat on both sides of the document. This is reserved typically for newspaper articles and things like that, where you have thin columns of text.

However, when it's being used in a document like this one, what it does is it actually creates rivers of white space between all the words and it's uneven. And for someone with a cognitive disability, this can prevent them from easily navigating the content, because it's a visual distraction.

And so, they may get lost and not be able to know where they are within that sentence or that paragraph. And so rather than using full justification, we recommend using just left justification.

It straightens out all of the spacing, so that's even and consistent and much easier to navigate.

Next, we've got content here that has been moved to the next page. Looks fine. We've got one section that ends here and the new section that begins with that heading.

[Visual description: The next page appears with the heading "Strengthening Great Lakes protection."]

Now, the problem, though, is that the way that the user who built this document did it, is that they hit a return or enter over and over again until that content reached the next page.

What that means, again, is that a screen reader user who's navigating through this page will encounter blank, blank, blank, blank, blank over and over again until they get to the next heading. There's an easier way to do this that is also fully accessible.

[Visual description: The cursor is moved to start of "Strengthening Great Lakes protection."]

So, let's go ahead and remove all of those extra spaces.

I've got the cursor right at the beginning of the heading here, and I'm going to go ahead and click on the Insert tab, in the top ribbon bar, and under Pages, there's a section called Page Break.

If I click on that, it brings that heading to the next page without having any extra characters. And so, a screen reader user who's navigating this content will arrive at the end of this paragraph and then it will bring them directly to the next page, to the next heading without any extra information that is unnecessary.

So, let's look at this next paragraph here. We've got what appears to be a bulleted list. And to a sighted user, it may appear that it is. However, to someone using adaptive technology, like a voice to text software or screen reader, they will not be able to have this recognized as a list because it isn't actually a list, it's just a bullet and a tab, that's not actually formatted as a list. And so, in order to make sure that content is properly formatted as a list, you'll want to use under the Home tab, within the paragraph subsection here, you want to make sure that you've selected Bullets, rather than just kind of styling it to look like bullets.

It's relatively common to see people using dashes and then tab as a list, instead of this actual function here. If that's something that you want to use, you can actually change the style of the bullets, just by double clicking on them. Or clicking on this drop-down menu within the

Bullets, and you can change the style.

So, for example, I want these dashes instead. Now it can have the style that you're looking for and still be correctly recognized as a list. And so that becomes accessible for a much larger group of people. Next, let's talk italicization. So, we've got a huge paragraph here, that is entirely italicized. When it comes to italics, if we're relying on the Canada Style Guide, it's actually recommended that we only use italicization for the name of acts or laws that are being used in the document.

And so, when it comes to italicizing, let's remove that italicization and let's only italicize it right here on the "Act" itself.

[Visual description: The instructor highlights the italicized paragraph and selects the Italic button in the font section of the Home ribbon to remove the italics.]

That way we're adding emphasis to the thing that needs emphasis. And we're not really making a user have difficulty reading that content, because the reality is when we're looking at italic paragraphs, it actually makes it much more difficult to read both for users with vision impairments or users with cognitive disabilities.

[Visual description: The instructor highlights the paragraph below the heading "Setting clear targets." The font size is very small.]

Another thing that we'll take a look at while we're here, is that the font size of this, we recommend on a whole, that we use the standard text size or the default text size that is within a document. So, if we create a new paragraph here, that default size is 12.

[Visual description: The instructor creates a blank line in the document by hitting return above the heading "Setting clear targets" and then uses the cursor to indicate the font size in the font area of the Home ribbon.]

So, let's go ahead and increase that font size to 12.

[Visual description: The instructor highlights the small font paragraph. In the font area of the Home ribbon, he increases the font size to 12 points.]

What this does is it ensures that anyone with some kind of a vision impairment or even people who rely on glasses have an easier time reading that content. Next, we'll look at the font itself. Now, I'll zoom in as I explain to you what this is. But this is what's called a serif font.

[Visual description: The instructor zooms in on a paragraph of Times New Roman font.]

Serifs are these little legs that are at the bottom of most of the characters within a serif font. These font styles were developed for print material. When it's looked at in a digital way or in a digital format, it actually makes it more difficult to read the content. So, let's use a sans serif, which means without those little legs, on this font area here, let's use Arial.

[Visual description: The instructor highlights two paragraphs of serif type. In the font area of the Home ribbon, he selects the font Arial from the drop-down menu.]

Other examples of good, solid sans serif fonts include Verdana, Century Gothic and plenty of others. Calibri is another one.

Anything that is really easy to read will greatly benefit the largest number of people. Below that paragraph, we've got another paragraph here that is entirely bolded. Now, again, we recommend against bolding an entire paragraph, because it doesn't actually take away or it doesn't actually add any benefit to that paragraph. When you're trying to emphasize something, if you emphasize everything, you end up emphasizing nothing.

So rather than emphasizing this whole paragraph, using the bold function, we're going to remove that. And let's emphasize only the section that is important, only the line that's important here, so "Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry". That way, we've got an emphasis on important text here without emphasizing an entire paragraph and then taking away from the real emphasis of anything.

Below here, we have a paragraph of French text. Now when it comes to multilanguage documents, it's important to make sure that content is correctly identified as the right language. And the reason for that is when someone's navigating using a screen reader, it will switch between languages. However, if it's identified as the wrong language, what ends up happening is that anyone who's ever taken a GPS through Gatineau or a French language place will know that an English GPS reading French words just sounds like gibberish.
And so much like a GPS, when this text is read out by a screen reader in English, it won't make any sense. However, if we change it to the correct language and let's go ahead and do that, I'll show you how.

[Visual description: The instructor highlights the paragraph in French.]

Down at the bottom left-hand corner of the page here, there's a language tab that's being selected. So right now, it is English Canada.

Let's go ahead and click on that.

[Visual description: When the instructor selects the language tab, the Language dialogue box opens.]

And within here, you can actually change it to French Canada. And let's click Okay. Now, when a screen reader navigates to this portion of the text, it will be read out in French by a French speaking screen reader. So rather than having confusing gibberish read out, it will read out the correct language.

Below this French paragraph here, we have a link, ok. What this translates to is: "learn more", en savoir plus. When it comes to hyperlinks within a document, we recommend against using ambiguous link text like, "learn more". The reason for this is that when someone who's navigating using keyboard navigation and may also be relying on text to speech or screen reader technology, they can tab to the individual hyperlinks within a document.

And so, if they don't receive any context with this link, they won't know where it's going to take them. Because if you happen on "learn more" without any additional context before it, you don't really know what this link is for. So rather than using a link after a paragraph that says learn more, it's always best to hyperlink the information within a paragraph.

So, let's go ahead and copy this hyperlink and let's select text that is relevant to that link.

[Visual description: The instructor puts the cursor in the hyperlinked text, right clicks and selects Copy Hyperlink from the menu that opens.]

So, in this case, let's assume that it's going to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. So, let's go ahead and insert a hyperlink in that text itself and I'll show you how to do that in two ways. The first, if you hit Control K, it will open the Insert Hyperlink menu.

Alternatively, if you want to use the menus above, you can click on the Insert menu here. And then there's a Link button under the Links section and you can click on it and it will open up that Insert Hyperlink menu.

[Visual description: The instructor pastes the hyperlink into the address field of the Insert Hyperlink menu]

Let's go ahead and paste in that hyperlink and now you've got meaningful link text, if someone tabs to this link itself without reading any of the content around it, they still know, oh, this is going to take me to the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry. There will be no confusion at all.

[Visual description: A slide appears entitled Alternative text – applies to web and non-web documents, which indicates the topics covered in this section of the video: Decorative images, Images of text, Long descriptions of complex images, charts and graphs.]

Let's talk about images. Before we demonstrate how to make images accessible within this document, let's kind of talk about what makes images accessible. So, we've got, I've got a little mini presentation here on image accessibility.

[Visual description: A slide appears displaying a picture of Canadian geese.]

So, what identifies the useful information to a user, whether it be someone who relies on a screen reader, for, due to vision impairment or whether it be someone with cognitive disabilities who relies on a screen reader to allow them to more easily understand the content, alternative text within an image is what relays the information about an image to those users. So, in this case, we, we need to identify what kind of alternative text needs to be included in an image in order to relay the important information. Now I think it's important to note that alternative text should not be describing literally everything in an image.

You don't want to say six geese by a river, eating green grass near a small coniferous tree. That's too much information. Before you can determine what the alternative text is, you need to identify the context under which this image is being used. So, let me provide you some context now.

Let's imagine that this image is being used in an article about polluted waterways and its impact on wildlife. Now we have a little bit more context so we can say, OK, this is an image of geese eating by a polluted waterway. Now, I did say that this is an image of, but when it comes to alternative text, you don't actually need to use the words "image of" and then whatever it is you're describing, because a screen reader will already identify that it is an image.

And so, if you add the words "image of" it will say "image, image of" and that's redundant and confusing information. So you would just say, "geese eating by polluted waterway". If we change the context, though, maybe you need to add a little bit more detail. So, let's say that this is a scientific article about the mating patterns of geese, and you're trying to describe the specific patterns themselves.

Well, in this case, the alternative text may not be sufficient. You might need to say in the alternative text, "geese mating pattern" and then beneath it you would have a long description which describes all of the things that are going on within the image that provide context for the geese's mating patterns.

Next, this is a different type of image, this is what we call a decorative image.

[Visual description: A slide appears displaying an image of a blue streak.]

Decorative images do not require any alternative text. Instead, you'll just have it marked as decorative. That will tell a screen reader that this image is not important, and they don't need to worry about it. You may be tempted to just not add alternative text, but unfortunately, what that does is it will identify an image, but give no information. And so, the visitor or the user might think, oh, this could be an important image that I'm just not you know, that just doesn't have alternative text.

Maybe this is important information that I need to know. And so that's why it's important to mark it as decorative, so that the screen reader and the user know, OK, this is not important. It's just stylized. It's just something to beautify the document. And I don't need to know any more about it.

[Visual description: An image appears with the text "EnviroZine: Environment Canada's On-line Newsmagazine" superimposed over a nature background.]

Next, we've got image of text. Now, as a rule, we recommend against using images of text at all costs. The reason for that is that some users rely on adaptive technology such as colour inversion or high contrast mode to view their content. And so, you'll notice here in my screen and also if I quickly jump back to the Word document, I've got dark mode enabled on here. And the reason for that is that I'm someone who is very sensitive to bright colours. And so, I rely on this dark mode in order to ease the way I read it.

This slide is also built in dark mode. However, an image of text is not affected by the change in those settings. And so rather than being able to correctly read this in high contrast mode, this image will stay the same regardless. And so, in most cases, we recommend against using images of text. However, from time to time we're required. It's been given to us; we don't have a choice and we have to identify this information.

How we make this image accessible is to only provide the text itself. So EnviroZine, Environment Canada's online magazine, that's the only important information that's here. You don't need to describe the background. You don't need to describe the flowers or the rock or anything like that, because the only pertinent information within this image is the text itself.

[Visual description: A slide appears showing a map with a directional path.]

Next, we've got what's called a complex image. So, this is a map from one place to another. When it comes to maps, they need both alternative text and a long description, so the alternative text would be: "instructions to or directions to the party" and underneath the image, you would then have a long description, something like this.

[Visual description: A slide appears showing an example of a long description of the directional path. The long description is detailed with step-by-step directions from the starting point to the final destination.]

So, it needs to convey all of the information that a sighted user would have in order to be able to know what's going on.  So, in this case, it would be turn by turn. So, it describes right at the beginning where they're going, how far it is, and then step-by-step, all of the turns that need to be done in order to go from one destination to the next. And at the end, we've also got an estimated walking time. So, it'll allow a non-sighted user or someone who relies on a screen reader to have all of this information without actually having to see what the image is about.

[Visual description: A slide appears displaying a complex chart.]

Next, we've got a chart or graph here. Again, this is what we consider a complex image, and so it requires both alternative text and a long description. So, let's take a look at what that would look like.

[Visual description: A slide appears showing the same complex chart on the left and the text equivalent version or long description on the right.]

So, the alternative text would say something like "flowchart illustrating, login process". And then beneath it, you would have the description of that login process.

And you'll notice that we added numbers to the image to allow an ease of understanding of the content.

[Visual description: The instructor uses the cursor to point to the numbers that have been assigned to the different parts of the chart.]

Because it's not only screen reader users who rely on long descriptions. Sometimes an image is complex enough that the long description actually eases the understanding of it and allows users who may have cognitive disabilities or even just people who need a little bit more context to easily navigate the information within the image without losing any of it.

So, in this long description here we have Step 1, get username. And then go to Step 2. Now we're at Step 2. If the username is blank? Is the username blank? And then if it is Yes, then go back to Step 1. And if No, continue to Step 3. That way we've got all of the information that's contained within this complex image. And so even if you can't see it, you can still understand the information that's being conveyed.

[Visual description: A slide appears displaying a bar graph.]

Next, we've got a graph here that's describing farm and non-farm populations. Once again, we've got content here that has a lot of information to it, and we may be tempted to simply just include the table upon which this information is built. However, there's a lot more information being conveyed by this than the individual bits of data.

So beyond just the data itself, by looking at this graph, we can see trends, ok? So, we can see that the farm populations have been decreasing over time and non-farm populations have been increasing over time. That trend is something that would need to be included in the long description. In terms of alternative text for this image, we would include something like "Chart, 2.1, Farm and non-farm populations", short and concise.

The user will know what it is and expect a long description beneath it. We also should include the source, because that's built into there as well. So, all of this information that's within it can now be conveyed when you're describing the trends, the sources, and also including a table with all of the pertinent data within this image.

So, let's jump into the document.

[Visual description: The instructor returns to the Word document, which is opened at the section "Setting clear targets."]

Now that we understand how to build and create alternative text and long descriptions or what to do to create that content. Now, I will show you how to apply that to a document. So, let's go ahead and click on this image here, this is what I described earlier as a decorative image, and in order to add alternative text to it, there are two ways to do it.

So, the first one I'm going to show is in Office 365. So, if I right-click on the image, I can click on Edit Alt Text here and it will bring up this alternative text box. You'll notice that in Office 365 there is a checkbox that says, "Mark as decorative". We recommend right now against using that.

And the reason for it is that it is not backwards compatible. So, if you create this document in Office 365 and then someone else opens it in Office 2016, this information here is not conveyed to them.

[Visual description: The instructor points to the Mark as decorative checkbox with his cursor.]

So instead of using the checkbox, we're going to type that information in.

[Visual description: The instructor types the word "decorative" into the Alt Text's text box.]

So, decorative within that box. So now, when a screen reader or a text to speech navigator comes across this image, it will just simply identify it as an image and that it is decorative. No information is needed.

No one will wonder whether or not they have all of the information. Now, if you're using Office 2016 or earlier, there's a different way to add alternative text. So, you right-click on the image, but you won't see an Edit Alternative Text. Instead, you'll only see Size and

Position and Format Picture.

You'll want to click on Format Picture and then you'll have the Format Picture tab that pops up on the right side of the page and then within the Layout and Properties tab, if you click on it, they'll also be a box here that says Alternative Text that will pop up. And rather than looking like this one, you'll have a title box above it and a description box beneath it.

Don't type anything at all in the title box, because it doesn't serve any purpose. You want to put that alternative text in the description box.

Next, let's look at a standard image, ok? So this is, let's imagine this is an article about the Great Lakes. So, in this image here, we see waves on Lake Superior. So, let's go ahead and describe this as "Lake Superior waves".

[Visual description: The instructor types in the description "Lake Superior waves" in the Alt Text's text box.]

Now, this image will be described adequately, so even if they can't see it, they will know what's within it. And then if this was a complex image, on top of that alternative text that we added, underneath it, you would have some kind of a description that breaks down all of the important content that is going on inside it. And yes, I literally mean, you know just write it right beneath the window.

[Visual description: The instructor types random letters as an example directly underneath the image of waves.]

You don't need to have a title that says long description, and that's how you would add it, after the fact.

[Visual description: A slide appears entitled Use of colour – applies to web and non-web documents, which indicates the topics covered in this section of the video: Colour contrast, Font colour and Colour to identify information.]

Let's start taking a look at colour and use of colour within a document. So here we have blue text that's being highlighted in a grey colour, maybe for someone's stylistic desires, maybe they like the way it looks, but let's test if this colour contrast is actually accessible.

So, I'm going to pull up a tool called Colour Contrast Analyzer, this is a free tool that can be downloaded off the internet.

If it's not in your Software Center, you can have the IT department add it for you or simply install it. And it's a very simple program to use. You simply click on the eyedropper here.

[Visual description: The instructor selects the foreground picker in the Foreground section of the Colour Contrast Analyzer menu and then selects the blue text.]

And highlight the text itself and you'll notice that it's zooming in, so it's easier to select. Let's go ahead and choose that and then you click on the background selection, which would be the grey.

[Visual description: The instructor now selects the background picker in the Background section of the Colour Contrast Analyzer menu and then selects the grey background behind the text.]

And then it will tell us whether or not this is passing.

[Visual description: The instructor uses the cursor to point to the area of the Colour Contrast Analyzer that shows the results.]

So, in the case of small text or regular sized text, it fails, because the contrast ratio is below the threshold needed in order to meet the level AA, which is the standard that the government relies on or must meet.

However, the large text, the title here, does pass. And so that would mean that this kind of formatting would be ok for a title, but not ok for regular text. So, let's go ahead and change it and we'll see how that contrasts. Or that description changes once we do that. So, let's remove the highlighting altogether, no colour.

[Visual description: The instructor highlights the paragraph of regular-sized text and removes the grey background.]

And let's bring Colour Contrast Analyzer back in here and let's change the foreground colour to white.

[Visual description: The instructor selects the background picker in the Background section of the Colour Contrast Analyzer menu and then selects the white background behind the text.]

Now it passes AA.

So, all across the board, whether it be large text or small text, this colour contrast will pass.

Now something to note with documents like this one, when we're adding colours to them, it will actually prevent a user from using their built-in accessibility features. So, let's say some users may have invert colours activated, which means that there would be a black background here with white text.

If you have white or blue text here, it will be blue text on a black background, which is hard to read.

[Visual description: The instructor highlights the blue heading and paragraph text.]
So, we recommend in most cases to choose black text.

[Visual description: The instructor selects the black Theme Colour option in the Font Colour pull-down menu on the Home ribbon. The text changes to black.]

However, if you just simply select black within the Theme Color, it will actually stay black, even when the user is using high contrast mode. So, you'll have black text on a black background. But if you select Automatic, that means that it will automatically change, based on the user settings.

[Visual description: The instructor selects Automatic at the top of the Font Colour pull-down menu. The text stays black.]

And so, if the user has high contrast mode activated, this text will automatically change to a high contrast colour based on what the background is.

Next, let's talk about using colour to identify information. So here, we have a table that says, "Overdue items are coloured in red". And red is highlighted, and then you've got two columns or two rows here that have been coloured red to identify this information.

However, if this were printed out in black and white, suddenly you lose all of that information. The same thing applies if the person has a vision impairment, like colour blindness or the need to use a black and white monitor. And so, it's important to use more than one method if you're using colour to identify information.

So, one that's pretty common on the internet is to use an asterisk. So, let's go ahead and say, ok, "Overdue items are coloured in red" with an asterisk and let's go ahead and add an asterisk to the important information. And now suddenly, you've got information that can be conveyed, regardless of what colour it's being displayed in.

So even if it's printed out in black and white, you will still know, ok, the overdue items are the ones that have an asterisk in front of them. Alternatively, you could just add another column that says overdue and then just put X's or check marks or yes, for the overdue items.

And that's an alternative way to identify the overdue items without relying on colour.

Let's talk about colour contrast a little bit more, let me open up infographic here and we'll talk about the different aspects and elements that are built within it.

[Visual description: The instructor opens a PowerPoint presentation and selects the colourful infographic on the first slide.]

So, when it comes to using colour to identify information, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. In a case of this infographic here, you've got information that's being conveyed in a low colour contrast.

[Visual description: The instructor moves to the second slide, which features some of the elements of the infographic. He highlights a diagram where grey text is displayed against a light blue background.]

So, this grey on light blue, if I open up the Colour Contrast Analyzer and I select this is the foreground text and the light blue as the background, it tells me it fails across the board.

[Visual description: The instructor uses the Colour Contrast Analyzer to test the colour contrast in the diagram.]

So, it can't be read by someone with low vision or someone who has some kind of vision impairment like colour blindness. However, they tried to get around that by also using the icons for female and male, in order to get around that. Now, realistically, it would probably be wiser to just have these words in the correct contrast, as it will allow for more users to understand more information. Next, we've got these circles here that are in a light grey on the blue.

Now they're trying to demonstrate the areas or the percentage of the circle that is not included in each section. However, that's a visual cue that someone with a vision impairment may not pick up on. And so, it would be a good idea to heighten the contrast between those so that it's easier to read.

Next, and a more common use of colour, is a pie chart here. And they have actually done an excellent job of making sure that the information within the pie chart is easy to identify, regardless of whether you have an impairment of some kind or not. So, if all of these sections were stuck together without any space between them, someone with colour blindness may not be able to distinguish between this segment and the green one,

[Visual description: The instructor uses the cursor to point to the red segment of the pie.]

but, because each segment has been separated and has a space between them, even if you can't see any of these colours, you can still identify the individual segments.

They've also gone ahead and added the percentage points within each one and gone even further and identified what the segments are in a very clear and descriptive way. So those are really important ways to identify information beyond colour. Now, another thing that you could do if you can't separate them is to add texture. So, if you've got horizontal lines in the green section, vertical lines in the red section and diagonal lines in the yellow section, that's another way to kind of identify the different sections and segments without having to rely only on colour to relay that information.

Let's jump back into our document here.

[Visual description: A slide appears entitled MS Word (cont'd), which indicates the topics covered in this section of the video: Tables, Plain language and Acronyms.]

[Visual description: The instructor returns to the Word document.]

And let's talk about tables now, ok? This is what we call a complex table, and the reason for that is that you have merged cells. And the reason that a complex table is not accessible, is because if someone is using a screen reader and cannot see this table, the screen reader will read out, column 1 of 1, row 1 of 9. And then they'll tab to the next row and it will say, column 1 of 5, row 2 of 9, and so suddenly they went from having a single column table to having a five-column table. And then if they jump to the next, it'll say column 1 of 6, row 3 of 9. And so, they will have no idea where or which information corresponds to which information. They won't know that employee is above name and position because that information is not provided.

The only thing they know is that this is row 1 of 5 and this is row 1 of 6.

[Visual description: The instructor indicates row 1 of 5 by highlighting the heading Employee, then indicates row 1 of 6 by highlighting the heading Name.]

And so, they don't receive any context as to what information falls beneath what information. So this makes it impossible to navigate this table. However, if we simply remove all of those merge cells and remove any information that is not tabular data, it makes it much easier to navigate for someone using a screen reader.

Now, when I say tabular data, I mean information that adds to the context of the table. So, for example, this heading here, Human Resources, it doesn't need to be in the table. You don't lose any context by having it outside the table as a heading. And so, what they've also done here is they've removed the need to add this Employee section here by simply adding Employee Information to the heading itself.

And then each section has a column header. And we also included Nationality, so you don't need to have two separate segments here within the table and that way, column 1, row 1, the name heading will always be above it. So, they will always know that column 1 is Name and column 2 is Position, column 3 is Nationality and so forth. They'll never lose the context for the rows beneath it, because they will always know, OK, I'm in row 3. That means its Nationality.

And so, it's really important to avoid using complex tables with merged cells as much as possible, to ensure that your table is the most accessible it can be. Now, that said, you can make a merged table accessible within PDF Acrobat or PDF Foxit Phantom, but it requires enormous technical knowledge and you can also make a complex table accessible when it's posted online, using HTML, if you're adding that correct information. But unfortunately, within Word documents, there's no way to do it.

Now let's talk plain language. Plain language is a big buzzword right now. We're hearing a lot about it, but what does it mean? Well, I'll show you how to measure plain language, but essentially plain language is the reading level for a specific grouping of text. So, there's a way, built into Word, that allows you to measure the reading level.

So, let's go ahead and activate that and I'll show you how to activate it. So, if you go to the File menu at the top here, and then you click on Options. This window will appear and under the Proofing section, if you scroll down to "When correcting spelling and grammar in

Word", you can show the readability statistics.

So, if you check this checkbox

[Visual description: The instructor selects the checkbox Show readability statistics.]

and click, OK, now when you highlight this text

[Visual description: The instructor highlights a paragraph in his document.]

and you go to the Review section and you check spelling and grammar under Proofing. Now, make sure that when this box pops up, you click no,

[Visual description: A dialogue box pops up saying, "We're finished checking your selection. Want to check the rest of the document?" The instructor selects the No option.]

because you don't want it to scan the whole document, you only want to scan the section that you've highlighted. It will include the readability statistics here.

So, the Flesch Kincaid grade level is grade 14.8, essentially a PhD or postdoc level reading level. Whereas this section here is the same information as before, but if we check, its reading level.

[Visual description: The instructor highlights the plain language version of the same text.]

It's actually a grade 5. Now within the federal government, we try to aim for a grade 8 level reading in order to allow the highest number of people possible to understand this content.

And according to numerous studies, they've demonstrated that even let's say that this was a scientific document and it's destined to people who have PhDs, well, you're able to understand and remember more information if it is at a lower reading level than your current education level.

So even for people who have that education, that high education and that high grade level, it will be more beneficial to them to have an easier reading level, as it will allow them to absorb and retain a greater number of information. Now, I think it's important to identify, though, that this built-in tool is only available in English.

So, if you have French text, there is a tool online for free, called Scolarius. And if you access that site, you simply copy the text that you want to use in it, paste it in and it will give you a similar grade level that's similar to Flesch Kincaid, but is the French equivalent of it.

Now let's talk about abbreviations, that's something that's very common here in the government and it's an important thing to talk about.

[Visual description: The instructor moves to the next page, which shows the heading "Abbreviations."]

The rule of thumb for abbreviations is that you want to make sure to identify them or define them in their first iteration. So, in this case, let's talk SSC, this would be Shared Services Canada, and then the acronym itself would be within parentheses.

And that way, you know, if you're using SSC again, in a lower paragraph, you don't need to define it again, because they already know what it is. There is an exception to that, however. Let's say that you have a 100- or 200-page document. Well, we recommend that every five or six pages, if you're using an acronym again, that you define it again. That will allow a user who maybe doesn't remember what that acronym is and is seven or eight pages away from the original definition, they won't need to scroll back up through the document in order to find what SSC means.

That's just kind of a thing that is smart to do and that benefits all users.

[Visual description: A slide appears entitled PDF Documents, which indicates the topics covered in this section of the video: Exporting to PDF from MS Word and Accessible source documents.]

We're going to talk about exporting content to PDF form and also how to make sure that your PDF content is accessible.

[Visual description: The instructor scrolls back to the beginning of the document to the page with the heading "Protecting the Great Lakes."]

And also, I'll do a basic demonstration of what it's like to have to retroactively make a PDF accessible if it hasn't been exported correctly or if the origin document wasn't accessible. So, there's the right way and a wrong way to export a PDF from Word. The wrong way is to simply print to PDF. What that will do is it will scrub all of these great accessibility features that we've built in and it will simply be a fully inaccessible document again.

[Visual description: The instructor points to the Foxit PDF tab at the top of the screen and then clicks on the tab to display the Foxit PDF ribbon and options.]

Now, if you've got Adobe Acrobat or Foxit Phantom PDF installed on your machine, you'll have a tab here at the top that will allow you to create a PDF and it will already have those built-in settings ready to go.

[Visual description: The instructor points to the Create PDF option on the ribbon.]

So, your PDF will contain all of this new information.

However, if you don't have one of these PDF editors installed, you can still export an accessible PDF.

[Visual description: The instructor returns to the Home ribbon.]

The way to do that is to click on the file menu at the top left.

Click on the Export button. And then there's a button under Create PDF XPS Document, called Create PDF XPS that you can click on, but before you click Save, it's really important to click on this Option button here and to make sure that you have checked all of the include non-printing information within that document.

These headings and bookmarks, as well as the document properties and tags for structuring, will all be included in this document when it's converted to PDF.

[Visual description: In the Options menu under the heading "Include non-printing information," the instructor selects "Create bookmarks using" and the option Headings, then points to "Document properties" and "Document structure tags for accessibility," which have

already been selected. He then selects OK at the bottom of the Options menu and Cancel at the bottom of the Publish as PDF or XPS window. (He doesn't finish creating the PDF).]

Another thing that's important to add or to note is that when you're exporting this document, you also want to make sure that within the Info tabs, let's go to File Info. You've added a meaningful title.

[Visual description: Under the Properties section of the Info page, the instructor places his cursor in the Title field.]

When it comes to documents, the title here may not be relevant to a sighted user, but for someone using adaptive technology, when they're navigating through the different documents that are open, it will read this title to them rather than the file name. If we're looking at this file name here, 2-PGL_ON_EN, doesn't really convey any meaningful information.

And many of the government file naming conventions make it almost impossible for anyone who is not part of the group that created that document to understand what it's about. So, let's add a meaningful title here.

[Visual description: The instructor types Protecting the Great Lakes in Title field.]

Let's call it "Protecting the Great Lakes" and now, not only will they be able to understand what this document is, but this information will also be exported when you save it to an accessible PDF.

So here I've got that same document, but it hasn't been altered.

[Visual description: The instructor opens the same document in the Foxit Phantom PDF Editor.]

So, Foxit Phantom, which is the application that I'm using, has a built-in accessibility checker that is similar to the one in Word and let's run a full check here.

[Visual description: The instructor clicks on the Accessibility tab to open the ribbon, then selects the Full Check option in the Accessibility Check section. When the Accessibility Checker Options menu opens, he clicks on the Start Checking button. The Accessibility Check results appear in a panel on the left.]

Once you run that full check, it will go through it and it will identify some of the issues that it sees. So right now, it's saying, oh, there's no title. There is a lack of appropriate headings and there's a whole bunch of other issues that have been identified. So, if I wanted to go back through this and make it accessible within here, you have to manually change every single item.

[Visual description: The instructor right clicks on the icon panel on the left side. In the menu that opens, he selects the Tags option and then opens the document to display all of the PDF tags for each part of the document.]

So, if we look at this first block of text here, this is identified as a paragraph, but it's actually a heading.

[Visual description: The Instructor highlights the first ˂P˃ tag in the tag tree. The corresponding text "Protecting the Great Lakes" is identified by a light blue border.]

And so, in order to make this a heading level 1 now, I have to use the HTML code, H1, in order to properly identify that as a heading.

[Visual description: The instructor changes the first ˂P˃ tag in the tag tree to an "h1" tag.]

Even more interesting, if I skip down to this other page.

[Visual description: The instructor highlights a ˂P˃ tag further down the tag tree. The corresponding decorative image is identified by a light blue border.]

This image is being identified as a paragraph as well, so you have all sorts of really complicated issues and there's no way to change them all at once. So, you need to go through every single section and remove all of the content that isn't relevant and that includes all of these empty spaces.

[Visual description: The instructor uses the cursor to point to the spaces in the document before and after the heading "The importance of the Great Lakes."]

So, you see all of those empty spaces, if I expand that character here, there's a whole bunch of spaces that will need to be removed, so I need to go into the Content tab.

[Visual description: The instructor right clicks on the icon panel on the left side. In the menu that opens, he selects the Content option and then opens the document to display all of the Content tags. He locates the paragraph that corresponds to the heading "The importance

of the Great Lakes" and expands it to show the blank spaces that need to be removed.]

Find that paragraph again, which is supposed to be a heading. Open that up, and then manually remove every single blank space that's built-in there. And that can be really time consuming and really annoying, especially if we're talking about a very large document. Now, this

is something that I have done in previous jobs, where I had to go through and retroactively make existing PDFs accessible.

And I'm an expert in this. And so for, let's say, a 150-page document, that would take me about two weeks. And so, for someone who isn't an expert, you're looking at a month or maybe more to make this document accessible, whereas you saw how easy it was for me to make that document accessible within Word.

[Visual description: The instructor returns to the Word document.]

And so, if at all possible, you have to try to make the source file accessible. And if you need to make any changes or you notice that a PDF isn't accessible, try to access the source file itself, rather than trying to change it in PDF form, because you're just opening yourself up to a world of hurt.

[Visual description: A slide appears entitled MS PowerPoint, which indicates the topics covered in this section of the video: Accessibility checker, Slide titles, Reading order, Selection pane, Placemats and PowerPoint to PDF.]

So now that we've taken a look at PDFs, let's talk about PowerPoint accessibility.

[Visual description: The instructor opens a PowerPoint presentation entitled "La protection des Grands Lacs."]

So here we have a standard PowerPoint and what we're going to do is we're going to use the accessibility checker that's built into it, much like the one in Word. So, we click on File and then Info. Under the Inspect Presentation tab, you can click on the button, Check for Issues and Check Accessibility. And it's already identified one error and several warnings here.

[Visual description: The Accessibility Inspection Results window opens in a panel on the right showing a list of errors and warnings.]

So, let's click on the first error.

[Visual description: The instructor chooses "Missing Slide Title: Slide 2" under Inspection Results. Slide 2 opens and the title field is empty. He places his cursor in the text box.]

This title doesn't have, or this slide doesn't have a title, and so it's important that every single slide has a unique title in order to be accessible.

So, let's call this "Understanding the Great Lakes".

[Visual description: The instructor types the title in the text box.]

And great, we've got a unique title that is different than all the other ones. Now, let's imagine that this slide needed to be separated in two.

[Visual description: The instructor highlights the last two paragraphs on Slide 2 and cuts the text. He increases the font size of the remaining text to fill the available space.]

We've got a lot of information there, maybe we want to make this text bigger, have less text on one page so that it's easier for everybody to read. Let's create a new slide.

[Visual description: The instructor selects the New Slide option from the Slides section of the Home ribbon. A new slide opens, and he pastes the text he had previously cut.]

So, let's paste that in.

Well, we can't just take that same title as before, even though it is the same information, because then you've got a title that's being reused. And the reason that's bad is because if you're navigating this content here using a screen reader, skipping between slides, it will only read out the title. And so, you won't know if the first "Understanding Great Lakes" is where the information is or the second one. You don't know which one you're in, because it's not going to say the "Understanding the Great Lakes" one of two. It just says, "Understanding the Great Lakes". And so how to get around this unique titles solution here, this issue, is to add something like 1 of 2.

[Visual description: The instructor returns to Slide 2, places his cursor in the text box after the title "Understanding the Great Lakes" and adds (1 of 2) in parentheses. He then moves to the new slide and enters Understanding the Great Lakes in the title text box followed by (2 of 2) in parentheses.]

Or one of three or whatever. That way you can add a relevant title into this one that's unique and original and it is different from the first one.

So now, when you're navigating through these slide titles on the side here, it will read out, "Understanding the Great Lakes (1 of 2)", and beneath it it'll say, "Understanding the Great Lakes (2 of 2)". This is especially important if you have a topic that continues over five or six slides, because if you're navigating through six slides that all say, "Understanding the Great Lakes", if you're not sure if you're stuck in one of the slides, you have no idea where you're going because, you know, as a screen reader user, you have no way of seeing where you're at.

And so, you don't know if there's a problem. Whereas if you have that information, one of two, two of two, all of a sudden, it's adding context to the reason that that information is being repeated. Next, let's take a look at this warning here.

[Visual description: The instructor points to the warning "Check reading order" that appears in the Accessibility Inspection Results window.]

So, it says "Check reading order". In PowerPoint, the content that's added is not necessarily in the right reading order, which means when adaptive technology is navigating through it, it may not read the way that a sighted user would, so let's go ahead and "Verify the object order" in this slide.

[Visual description: Under "Check reading order," the instructor clicks on the drop-down arrow next to Slide 3. Under Recommended Actions, he selects "Verify object order." This opens the Reading Order pane.]

So, it's telling me that the first item on the list is the content and the second is the title. A way to test this manually is to click outside of the slide here and then hit the Tab key.

[Visual description: When the instructor hits the tab key, the content of the slide is the first item selected.]

So, for someone who's using keyboard only navigation to navigate this document, they're going to receive that information out of context.

[Visual description: While the content of the slide is still selected, the instructor uses the drop-down arrow in the Reading Order pane to move the content below the title.]

So, let's go ahead and swap it around, do another test, and now it's reading in the correct way.

[Visual description: The instructor clicks outside the slide and hits the tab key to show that the title of the slide is now the first item selected.]

Let's skip to slide four now. And we'll do that same manual test where I click outside of the slide, hit Tab.

The first item that's being selected is the image. Then it's the first paragraph, then it's the title, and then it's the fourth or the second paragraph here. Now, when it comes to information, the way that it's being presented can change its meaning if it's read in the wrong order.

And so that's why it's really important to manually check this reading order, because a computer has no idea the way that it's supposed to be. It doesn't know that the heading comes first and then it's the first paragraph, then the image, then the second paragraph. All it knows is that there's a bunch of boxes that have been added to a slide.

So, we need to manually move this heading to the top. Next, it needs to be this paragraph. So, let's move that up. Then the image, then the second paragraph. Now, when we do the manual check, the reading order is logical. Now, the reason that I keep emphasizing this is that when you're reading something out of order, it changes its context and meaning, so let's use this alphabet as an example.

[Visual description: A slide appears with the wording "Alphabet 1" and the letters A to E underneath. In the Reading Order pane, the instructor manually tabs through the reading order of the letters to show that they are not in order.]

We start with A, C, D, E, B. You wouldn't instinctively know that this is an alphabet, by hearing those letters out of order. However, if I move that B up underneath A and we tap through it again, you have A, B, C, D, E, now you know that it's the alphabet. And so, this is a really simple way of demonstrating that. But it's really, really important to recognize that the way that a non-sighted user navigates through these things depends on the way that this content is laid out and the reading order can significantly impact someone's ability to understand what's being presented to them.

And that's even more important when you deal with things like placemats.

[Visual description: The instructor opens a placemat slide in PowerPoint.]

So here we've got a placemat document. Let's go ahead and zoom in on that a little bit. And let's take a look at this reading order, ok? So, let's click outside here and I hit tab.

[Visual description: The instructor clicks outside of the slide and hits the tab key several times to show the reading order of the different elements of the placemat.]

Well, the first item that's being selected now is that 1 at the bottom of the page. Then it's the title, then this stylish line, and then it skips below this paragraph here to a subtitle.

And then it skips below these three paragraphs to another title and then it skips below that to this section here. And all of this content, and then it skips way down into the middle of this section to a whole bunch of different stuff, so you aren't going to absorb this information in a meaningful way.

You aren't going to be able to read this and know, ok, this follows this, and this follows this. And here's the logical way, and it's a sequential way to read all of this information. And so, with a really complex placemat or slide like this one, it becomes really, really, really important to be able to properly lay out issue or this information in a way that is meaningful.

[Visual description: To activate the Reading Order pane, the instructor chooses File, then Info. He clicks on the "Check for Issues" drop-down menu in the Inspect Presentation box and selects the option Check Accessibility. A series of errors and warnings appear in the

Inspection Results panel on the right, including the warning "Check reading order."]

So, if we were to go in and verify the object reading order here, we've got a whole bunch of information that is in the wrong order.

[Visual description: Under "Check reading order," the instructor clicks on the pull-down arrow next to Slide 1 and selects "Verify object order" under "Recommended Actions."]

Let's zoom out again so you can see the boxes. And there's a relatively easy way to fix it, simply by making sure that the right information it is built into the right context. And that also includes inside these groups here.

Because within the groups, you need to make sure that this information is going to be correctly identified and that they can navigate through it and all of these stylistic things that have been added, like the coloured boxes and the images are all marked as decorative.

So that a screen reader user can easily navigate through this information without losing any of the context and while being able to read it in the right order. Let's jump back to our first PDF document here.

[Visual description: The instructor returns to the slide entitled "La protection des Grands Lacs."]

We may be tempted to export a PDF from PowerPoint, however, unfortunately, the way that PowerPoints are built, actually prevents it from exporting an accessible PDF, and so sadly, there's no real easy way to export an accessible PDF from PowerPoint because it will not be accessible, and you'll still have to go through it and manually change a bunch of stuff to make sure that it is accessible.

So, we've got, you know, a lot of serious issues here that can create some significant problems. And so, if you have the option, rather than using PowerPoint to export to PDF, you could use Word, where you can still lay it out in the same way. Many of the features that are built into PowerPoint are also present in Word. And you can still easily make them accessible.

So there's a lot of information that's been presented here, and if I were to summarize it all for you, the important take home is to make sure that you're making those manual checks, that you're going through all of these documents and verifying all of the tools that I've shown you, making sure that you're using the right styles, that you don't have incorrectly built bullets, that you're not using enter, enter, enter, enter to go through the documents, that you're thinking about all of the images and what kind of alternative text is there.

And that includes, you know, when you're creating a document, if you make it accessible and you're sending it to translation, it's important to then identify to them, oh ok, well, these images have alternative text. Please make sure that you translate that information as well.

And at times you may even need to tell them how to do it. Now, fortunately for you, I'm not asking you to memorize everything that I've demonstrated today. We will be providing you with our accessible document guides that walk you through many of the things that I've shown you today, step by step. And so, you'll be able to share something like that with them to make sure that they are able to ensure that these documents are accessible as well.

And before I close, I think it's important to kind of note that when we're thinking about accessibility ahead of time, we're saving ourselves money and time. If you remember, when I was talking about retroactively making the PDF accessible in my first job, if I had access to the original files or if they themselves had made that information accessible from the get-go, we would have had a greater ease of navigating through that content. And it would have saved my employer a significant amount of time and resources having to go back and make something that wasn't accessible, accessible again.

And so, it benefits everyone to be actively working for accessibility because it means that we don't have to do anything retroactively. And if you're using a lot of the functions and tools that I have shown you, it will actually also save you time, using the built-in styles and the bullet functions and all of these fancy accessibility tools will actually streamline your efforts and the things that you're doing within a document. And if it becomes second nature, then you'll just be creating accessible documents with every document that you create.