Enabling Staff to Produce Accessible Content
Excellence through Accessibility Workshop
27th February 2007
XML Workshop Ltd.
• Technical Director: Eoin Campbell • We provide the NDA with Word to accessible HTML conversion service • Also offer accessibility auditing services
• And YAWC Word to HTML subscription service
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Outline
• Alternative title of talk:
– How to upskill your colleagues to provide you with quality content for electronic publication
– (through the medium of Microsoft Word)
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Rationale
• Most written content starts life inside a wordprocessing document…
– Press Releases, Annual Reports, FoI Manuals, Customer Service Action Plans, etc.
• …so improving the quality of the (upstream) authoring process should hopefully simplify its' (downstream) publication in various formats
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What is Quality...
• In relation to narrative text content? • A number of facets:
– Is it written well?
– Is it presented well?
– Is it structured well?
• For electronic publications, structure is important
– This is a new and non-intuitive concept!
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What is Structured Information?
• Press Release: title, body text • Annual Report: frontmatter, chapters (with sections), appendices • FoI Manual: functions, records, publications, procedures
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Web Page Visual Structure
• Top navigation and branding/logo • Side navigation • Main page content • Footer links
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Web Page Content Structure
• H1 – main page title
– H2 – section heading 1
• H3 - subsection heading 1
– H2 – section heading 2
• H3 - subsection heading 1 • H3 - subsection heading 2
• HTML has a generic structure, it doesn't know (or care) what a Press Release is
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Word Document Structure
• Title style – Document title • Heading 1 style - section heading 1
– Heading 2 style – sub-section heading 1
• Heading 1 style - section heading 2
– Heading 2 style – sub-section heading 1 – Heading 2 style – sub-section heading 2
• Plus list and table structures
– List Bullet, List Bullet 2…,
– Table heading rows, table cells
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Word Document Structure is Generic
• Word doesn‟t know what a Press Release, a Chapter, or a Report is
– (HTML doesn’t know either)
• So the same Title style should be used for the main title of any document
– Press Release, Report, or Chapter
• It's easy to map built-in Word styles to corresponding HTML elements
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Word Style to HTML Element Map
Title Heading 1 Heading 2 List Bullet List Number Normal Hyperlink h1 h2 h3 ul/li ol/li p a
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How to get Structured Content From Authors
• Show authors how they benefit from structure
– Because they don't care about anyone else
• Teach how to create structure
– With class-room and Just-in-time learning
• Make it easy to apply structure
– It is surprisingly difficult to do so in the default Word environment
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Benefits of Word Structure for Authors
• (or, What's In It For Me?) • Easy to create and update a Table of Contents
• Easy to modify appearance (e.g. change font family for Heading style) • Easy to move sections around (using View > Outline)
• Easy to navigate long documents (using View > Document Map)
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Teaching Authors about Structure
• Typical application training courses teach people about features
– Teaching people about structure is in the "Advanced" Word course
– So some customised training is needed
• Staff roles change, so new people always arriving
– Need to plan for this with lots of resources
• Reinforce message using allies in the www.xmlw.ie organisation
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Learning Resources for Authors
• A short, hands-on, class-room introduction
– Scheduled every 3-6 months for new staff – Because staff roles change quite frequently
• A printed and online guide to formatting
• Online demonstrations using 'screencasts„
• Formal publishing procedures operating manual • Ongoing feedback (constructive) on delivered content www.xmlw.ie 16
Screencasts for Training
• Create interactive 'How-To' demos
– e.g. How to insert a hyperlink
– Always available for reference (e.g. on an intranet)
• Lots of good, cheap recording/annotation tools available
– Macromedia Captivate, Camtasia, Wink (free)
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Publishing Procedures Manual
• Important tool to capture essential knowledge/know-how • E.g. “How to publish a Press Release”
– File name convention
• YYYYMMDD.htm - Date format that sorts well
– Folder location (/press/2007/)
– Title Case Format Convention (CamelCase)
• Or use sentence case – BUT BE CONSISTENT!
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Help from Allies
• Other parts of the organisation can help achieve common goals
– Training Unit
– Disability Services – IT Support
– Records Management/Archive Unit
– Freedom of Information Officer
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Default Word Editing Environment
• By default, Word does not support creating structured documents
– The formatting toolbar is presentation, not structure, oriented
– No menu for applying styles
– No keyboard shortcuts for structure styles
• So authors need a Word template that assists them www.xmlw.ie
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Word Structure Styles Template
• Should provide multiple ways to apply structure
– To suit different authoring styles
• A menu for choosing structure styles • A toolbar for selecting common styles • Keyboard shortcuts for common styles
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Word Styles Menu
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Word Style Keyboard Shortcuts
Word Style Title Heading 1 Heading 2 Heading 3 List Bullet Normal Hyperlink Shortcut Key +T +1 +2 +3 +* ++N +K
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Publishing Word
• Structured Word documents are quite accessible in their own right, but
– Not device/platform-independent
• Not even Word version independent!
– Slow to download (with embedded images) – Insecure (may spread viruses)
– Not suitable for search engine indexing
• So should not be www.xmlw.ie published online
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Converting Word
• Word can be converted to accessible PDF, if
– Adobe Acrobat Word plug-in is used – Acrobat configuration enables accessibility settings
• 3rd-party PDF converters do not support accessibility • Acrobat does not convert PostScript files into accessible PDF
• Some PDF resources available online
– cf. www.xmlw.ie/aboutaccessibility/resources.htm www.xmlw.ie
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Digression: DTP Packages
• Many publications are typeset using specialised applications, such as QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher • PDFs from these packages are often published online
– But they are not accessible – i.e. not navigable, don't resize, and text flow is incorrect
• Best approach is to save as RTF, and reformat in Word www.xmlw.ie
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Publishing Word Online
• Relatively easy to convert structured Word into HTML
• Copy and paste Word into DreamWeaver or good web-based editing interface
– e.g. eWebEditPro, XStandard
– These automatically strip out excess formatting
• Use "Save as Web page" command in Word
– With Microsoft add-on to strip excess formatting
• But manual clean-up usually necessary to www.xmlw.ie ensure accessibility
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Converting Word to Accessible HTML
• Specialist 3rd-party Word to XML/HTML converters
– Far superior quality to copy and paste approach
– Avoid manual clean-up entirely – Logictran and UpCast are best commercial applications – Quite cheap, but do require customisation
– Cf. http://www.xmlw.ie/aboutxml/word2xml.htm
• List of converters we have tried
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YAWC Online Service
• Hosted conversion service
– Based on Logictran conversion engine – Customised to generate fully accessible HTML – Automatically includes design template to create readyto-publish HTML
• Used by us to provide NDA and others with a document conversion service (~ €5 per A4 page) • Used by Dept. Enterprise staff to maintain www.xmlw.ie website directly
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Summary
• Structured information is accessible information
• Structured information costs less:
– to manage, maintain, publish and find
• With a little help, everyone can create structured information using Word
– Its much cheaper to create structured information at the start, than add structure at the end
• Structured information in Word converts into accessible HTML www.xmlw.ie
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Questions and Answers
Enabling Staff to Produce Accessible Content
Eoin Campbell, XML Workshop Ltd.
www.xmlw.ie