Hello Friends. Today I'm going to work
with a basic table in Word that has not
been prepped for accessibility. I'll
convert it to a PDF file and then make
that PDF file accessible. I'm also going
to demo various examples of the file
with an NVDA screen reader to help you
better understand what our visitors
using screen readers would hear in each
example. In the first example we start
with a Word document that contains a
basic table which is only three rows, so
we can speed through the example. You
need to imagine the table having lots of
rows and pay attention when the reader
gets into the body of the table. You will
hear repetition and understand how easy
it could be to get lost in the table and
not know what row you were on. Here's
how it sounds with the NVDA screen
reader. NVDA Screen reader: Page 1, My Apartments, January, These
are the apartments for January.
Table with five rows and three columns.
Level one row one column one date, column
two customer, column three amount, column 4.
Row 2 column one January 1 2016 column,
two Johnny Ramjet, column three dollar 400 column 4,
row three column one January 2, 2016; column two
Little Jimmy, column three dollar 350
column 4; row 4, column January 8,
2016, column two Betty Latepay, column three
dollar 400, column 4; row 05 column one, Total,
column two dollar 1,150, column three
out of table.
Larry: I need to point out a couple of things
about what you just heard. First you need
to know where the problems can occur. The
example only contains three rows and the
data is very easy to hear with a screen
reader since I spelled out months names
and added a dollar amount... the three
fields are easy to differentiate. A
better example of the problem would have
been if I had rows that only contained
numbers... you would have a hard time
associating which column you were on
because the column name is not repeated.
NVDA by default does a very nice job of at
least repeating the column and row
numbers, but even that would be difficult
because it would have said, "row 2 column
1 California, row 2 column 2 20, row 2
column 3 80, row 2 column 4 10"... you see
how tough that would be if you couldn't
see it? Trying to associate the number
value with the type of column it is. In
Window Eyes which is a Microsoft
endorsed reader
the problem is even worse as their
default mode on that would have said on
the same row two: "California 20, 80, 10".
20, 80, 10 what? I mean that's tough.
If my example would have contained all
numbers like the one I'm showing now, the
reader would have been even harder to
understand because by default they read
pretty fast. So let's get back to my
example. After creating the Word doc, I
created the PDF, and just to give you a
baseline - let's listen to the PDF in the
NVDA reader. NVDA Screen Reader:"My Apartments.
January. These are the apartments
for January. Table with five rows and
two columns. Row one, column one, Date;
column two, Customer; column three, Amount;
row two, column one, January 1
2016; column two Johnny Ramjet; column three dollar 400;
row three, column 1, January 2, 2016, column
two, Little Jimmy, column three dollar 350;
row 4, column one, January 8 2016..." (sound fades out).
Larry: So, the thing to notice there is the reader
did a nice job of being consistent
between the non-accessible Word and PDF
documents.
Next let's make this PDF accessible.
Hopefully you've already watched the
other posted video on PDF
accessibility, because the thing we're
going to focus on here is just making
that basic table accessible and then
hearing the difference in the screen
reader. We're starting out in Adobe
Acrobat 11 and this is the Acrobat
Professional. Go to the Tools menu, and
we'll go down to where it says "Touch Up
Reading Order". And that pops up the Touch
Up Reading Order dialogue. And then we're
going to look in the upper portion of
where it says paragraph (). And will
highlight the first heading area there
where it says "My Apartments", will drag
over the entire area there, and then
we'll click the "Heading 1" making that
first one a heading. We'll repeat that for
the second where it says "January" and
we'll click on "Heading 2". To cleanup we'll
click that bottom paragraph () and then
we'll click the background button to
remove it. Then we're going to click on
the table and we'll click "Table Editor"
from the dialogue and now we're going to
get into some table editing. Keeping in
mind the problem that we had was that we
weren't repeating those top three
columns: Date, Customer, and Amount... and
that's what we want to cure now. So what
we're going to do is we're going to
highlight inside those three fields and
then we're going to right-click and
they'll say "Table Cell Properties". And
we're going to identify these as "header"
and we're going to select the scope that
says "Column" - and then say okay. That makes
all three of those identify as headers.
We're going to do the same with that row
on the bottom where we'll
call it a header cell and then
we'll select it instead as a row because
we're wanting it to go across and get
the other 1150 dollar number.
Next we're going to go to each one of
them, and then name them. So the header cell
we'll name "Date" of the first one. We're
right-clicking in
each of these cells as you can see. Then
we just go down into the ID of each
one and put what it's supposed to say.
"Customer" in this case, and finally number
three we'll say that it is the "Amount".
We'll finish up by saying "Total" in the
bottom. And what we're doing here is, this
is what is then read back and instead of
saying "row" or "column 1" or "column 2", it
may stay still say "column one", but it's
going to say "column one, Date"... and really
lets them know.
Now this is the tedious part in PDF,
there is no quick escape from this. You
have to go to each one of these cells
then, right click on it, and then choose
there... you're seeing that if you choose
the plus after you right-click, it
gives you the option of all that you
have identified so far. And so what we're
doing is, we're just right clicking in
each of the data fields and identifying
what the related column is... our header is.
So we do that tedious part through
everyone, we identify and that's how that
goes.
We are going to fast forward to the end of
it, where we do the last cell which is
the "amount". And what we're doing in that
last corner cell, is we are checking amount
and then we're going back in on the
total... we're going to do it again after
we've done the first column, and we're
going to go to the list again this time
we're going to select "total" from it and
add it. And now we've got both on that
last field. It just identifies the very end
of having the total amount. That's as far
as we're going here, and then we just
save the document and then we'll listen
to it in NVDA and hear the difference.
NVDA Screen Reader: "Heading Level 1, My Aapartments; Heading Level
2, January. These are the apartments
for January. Table with five rows and two
columns. Row one, column one, Date . Column two
Customer. Column three, Amount. Row two Date,
column one January 1, 2016.
Customer, column two - Johnny Ramjet. Amount column three,
dollar 400. Row three, Date; column one
January 2, 2016; Customer column two
Little Jimmy. Amount, column three dollar
350. Row four, Date column, January 8, 2015
Customer, column two, Betty Latepay.
Amount column three, dollar 400.
Row five, date column one, Total.
Amount, column two, dollar 1,150."
Larry: " So now we have a PDF accessible document that is going to
sound good the way we wanted to in the
different screen readers that are on the
market. Next we're going to do the
Read Out Loud functionality in PDF and
the reason i want to show you this is
that we're going to do this on the exact
document that we just saved. And I want
you to hear
the Read Out Loud functionality,
because you're going to find out that it
is not a "true" screen reader that it is
going to ignore the accessibility step
that we put into it. So listen to the
Read Out Loud functionality.
PDF Read Out Loud: "My Apartments. January. These are the
apartments for January. Date, Customers,
Amount. January 1, 2016; Johnny Ramjet;
$400. January 2, 2016; Little Jimmy;
$350. January 8, 2016; Betty Latepay;
four hundred dollars. Total, 1150 dollars."