(machine startup) (music)
Today I'm going to show you new capabilities in Office 365 (music) [Accessibility authoring tips and updates for Office 365]
to help you easily create accessible content. (music) [Accessibility authoring tips and updates for Office 365]
These include accessible templates in Office for PCs and Macs. (music)
Auto-generated descriptions for images and titles for hyperlinks. (music)
As well as how Word Format now creates accessible PDFs. (music)
In Office 365, we're making it easier
for you to ensure your content is usable by people with disabilities.
Let's start with PowerPoint.
Accssible templates are a great way to get started.
A simple search for accessible
returns all of the templates that we've recently upgraded for accessibility.
Today I want to make a business plan.
So let me add that to the scope of my search.
This plan looks good.
Let me open it and show you what exactly makes it accessible.
To do this, i'm going to switch to the slide outline view
So you can see how every slide here has a unique title.
As I update the text,
the labeling and the formatting is automatically taken care of.
Making this deck easy-to-navigate
for someone who is a keyboard user and a screen reader user.
For example, this slide.
Every element is easy to navigate using a keyboard
because we have taught through tab order.
Similarly in this slide,
if I open a screen reader narrator
you can hear how its read out to someone who's blind.
SCREEN READER NARRATOR: Volume mute.
SCREEN READER NARRATOR: Title text box.
SCREEN READER NARRATOR: Editing.
SCREEN READER NARRATOR: Content placeholder
SCREEN READER NARRATOR: five
SCREEN READER NARRATOR: chart
SCREEN READER NARRATOR: cluster column.
SCREEN READER NARRATOR: Bar chart shows cost analysis
SCREEN READER NARRATOR: with y-axis displaying expenditure in currency
SCREEN READER NARRATOR: and x-axis indicating a respective category in which the amount was spent.
SCREEN READER NARRATOR: Bar chart shows cost analysis.
What you just heard the narrator reading out
is a description of this chart
that was provided by this author in a field called "Alt Text".
Alt Text is another field that we're making much easier to use.
Let me show you a new service that we're designing
to make Alt Text easier to use by opening a blank presentation and inserting a picture.
Now when I right click on this image and select "Automatic Alt Text",
I can generate a description for this image using our cognitive services API.
In this case, the service figures out that this image is a group of people
standing on a football field.
If my intention for this image was different,
I can alter this by typing some extra words.
With machine learning, the service will keep improving the more that people use it.
In addition to Alt Texts and the work we're doing with templates,
we're also making it easier to work with hyperlinks and creating accessible documents.
Here I have Word open on my PC and I'm working on a report.
Notice that every heading in this paper is using the default styles that are built into Word.
These are designed to be easy to navigate with a screen reader
and have sufficient color contrast.
In addition, if I insert a new hyperlink in any section of this document,
I can use the link gallery which shows me a list of the most recently used files.
When I insert a link from here,
it automatically uses the filename as the display text.
This is much more accessible than including a URL.
One more thing I want to show you is the accessibility checker.
Now discoverable from the review tab.
This scans my document and shows me any errors
that might make it difficult for someone with a disability to use my document.
Clicking on the error takes me to the place where the error has occurred.
As well as shows me why I should fix the error and how to fix it.
It also gives me a link to learn more about this type of error.
We recently brought the accessibility checker to more PC apps,
such as OneNote, Office Web Apps and Office for Mac.
Additionally, in Word for Mac we're introducing a service
to export a stacked PDF via Save As.
So, screen reader users can navigate exported documents by sections,
understand images and access hyperlinks.
These are a few updates to help you alter your files with accessibility in mind.
We'll continue adding new capabilities to help advance digital inclusion.
To stay up-to-date, search accessibility in Office blogs [Aka.ms/A11ylnO365]
and keep checking back to the Microsoft Mechanics accessibility playlist. [Aka.ms/MicrosoftMechanicsAccessibility]
Thank you for watching. (music)
Microsoft Mechanics (music)
www.microsoft.com/mechanics (music)