Development of Accessible E- documents and Programs for the Visually Impaired Accessibility in electronic documents (V2010)

1. Frequently used formats Online and offline HTML documents Text documents (DOC, RTF, ODT, TXT...) PDF documents

2. Text documents (format) Use sans-serif fonts (Tahoma, Verdana, Arial...) Use standard font sizes Italic and capitals are hard to read for visually impaired users Use contrast colours In multi-column documents separate columns clearly

3. Tables Complex tables are hard to read Split them if possible Or provide text description Uniform tables are easier to read Use merging only if necessary Do not use nested tables if possible

4. Correct table CityArrivalDepartureNumber Košice-15: Žilina18:0018: Bratislava20:50--

5. Incorrect table CityArrivalDepartureNumber Košice Žilina Bratislava - 18:00 20:50 15:00 18:

6. Document structure Make headings visually different (do not use only indentation) Use styles (in Ms Word, Oo Writer...) Mark them somehow (useful, e.g. in plaintext documents) Use all structure elements provided by editor / environment (bullets...)

7. MS Word forms Protected forms are often used Standard text in protected forms is inaccessible Screen reader reads only "text on same line" or immediately above the field Use "status line" text or "help" text to provide long description of form fields

9. PDF documents Supported by more and more screen readers Served in special environment (same as web pages) Document must contain textual information (not "scanned" pictures) Input fields must be labeled and logical order must be defined Document must be tagged

10. PDF documents (2) Reading order must be defined (heading is before the text...) Provide descriptive text to images, links, form fields Provide skip links if necessary Define language in multi-language documents

11. PDF documents (3) Do not be very restrictive in security settings use "Enable Text Access For Screen Reader Devices For The Visually Impaired" to give access for screen readers

12. How to prepare accessible PDF Create correctly structured document (e.g. in OO Writer or MS Word) Use styles to define headings, provide alternative texts to graphics... Use Adobe Acrobat to convert file to PDF and tag the file Open Office 3.0 supports PDF tagging

13. Describing graphs Graphs in documents must be somehow described Description depends on graph type Some examples follow

14. Simple graph

15. Description Picture: Graphs with oriented edges. ´i -> j represents edge from vertex i to j. First graph 1 -> 5, 2 ->5, 5 -> 6, 3 -> 6, 4 - > 6, 6 -> 8, 7 -> 8, 8 -> 8, Second graph 9 -> 10, 10 -> 11, 11 -> 12, 12 -> 13, 13 -> 13. Each edge should be on separate line

16. Convex polygon

17. Description Picture: there is closed convex polygon on the picture. Vertices are named V1 to V8. Vertices are ordered clockwise, v1 is leftmost (´on nine). There is a set of points inside the polygon.

18. 2 arrays

19. Description two arrays, B and A. Array B is splitted to blocks B0, B1,..., Bi,. B0 contains elements b1 to blog m, B1 contains elements b(log m) + 1 to b2 * log m. in general block Bi contains elements bi * log m + 1 to b(i + 1) * log m. Array A is splitted to blocks A0, A1,..., Ai. A0 contains elements a1 to aj1, A1 has elements aj(1) + 1 to aj(2). In general Ai. has elements aj(1) + 1 to aj(i + 1). There are arrows from blocks B(i) to A(i).

20. RBT

21. Description R-B tree: A: 11 (black); B, C B: 2 (red); D, E C: 14 (black); F(right) D: 1 (black); E: 7 (black); G, H G: 5 (red); I H: 8 (red) y; I: 4 (red) x;

22. Mathematical expressions Canot be read in standard notation Different linear formats Special applications for reading and doing maths MATHML

23. linear formats Hard to read for sighted people Hard to work with complex expressions Specially developed formats are better for making "calculations" Specially developed formats are known only by small group of users formats: latex, AMS (ascii mathematics shrift-special format), hrTeX (human readable TeX)...

24. lim example

25. Transcription (ams) Let us define a sequence of functions {f(n;)} (n=1;´%), where [n=1;´%] D(f(n;)) Al :

26. Syntactic dominance of POS rule

27. Transcription Al vi, w (i+1;): vi -> (P,POS;) w(i+1;) Ex v(i+1;): vi -> (P,r;*) v(i+1;) ´& w(i+1;) -> (P;*) v(i+1;)

28. Special applications Developed for blind mathematicians Functionality for doing maths (working with structure, optimized methods for typing mathematical symbols...) Functionality improving communication with sighted users (MathML support, linear-> 2d transformation...)

29. LAMBDA One special application Can import MathML Provides functionality for doing math Primarily developed as a tool for secondary school students Commercial application

Resources Creating accessible documents (in slovak): pristupnych-elektronickych-dokumentov/