[blindlaw] Update on Track Changes in Microsoft 365

[Amar Jain]

Laura,

Thank you so much for tirelessly working with Vispero and Microsoft on this. And actually not just working on this, but getting this implemented. I have Office 365 on my personal laptop, and I just tested all that you mentioned. And it worked like a charm!

Generations of lawyers who have to deal with large documents on a day to day basis will bless you forever. I have been writing to them since 2013!


As far as pushing for reasonable accommodation is concerned, can we have this somewhere documented publicly, so that it is easier for us to convince our employers? In the firm where I work for instance which is based in India, we are still on Office 2013, and I cannot expect them to migrate everyone on to Office 365 as it is a huge volume licensing cost. But I am going to give it a shot!

Regards,
Amar Jain
-----Original Message-----
From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Michal Nowicki via BlindLaw
Sent: Thursday, May 2, 2019 6:31 AM
To: Blind Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Michal Nowicki <mnowicki4 at icloud.com>
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Update on Track Changes in Microsoft 365

Laura,

Thank you for this great news and, most importantly, for advocating so diligently with Microsoft and Vispero to improve the accessibility of Track Changes. I can’t wait to test out the fixes!

Michal

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Laura Wolk via BlindLaw
Sent: Wednesday, May 1, 2019 3:14 PM
To: Blind Law Mailing List
Cc: Laura Wolk
Subject: [blindlaw] Update on Track Changes in Microsoft 365

Dear all,

I am very happy to report some extremely positive changes on the Track Change front.  I just met with members of Vispero and Microsoft for two hours to review many of the changes that we have proposed.  Almost all of them are implemented in the latest version of Jaws that was just released today.  As I expected, these are only being implemented
in Microsoft Office 365.   I highly encourage everyone who is
experiencing difficulties with track Changes to work with their employers to obtain Office 365 as a reasonable accommodation, and folks at the Microsoft Enterprise answer Desk should be available to field any questions and to verify that in fact Office 365 is the most fully functionable, accessible version of Office with Jaws.  Anyway, here are the changes I verified.

1. Jaws now displays the **correct!** number of revisions in a document in a mere matter of seconds. We tested this with a document with 406 revisions.  Jaws almost immediately announced the number, and I had to wait about four seconds for the full list to load.  Game changer.
2. Jaws now announces the revisions in-line exactly where they occur, instead of just stating "revision" or "insertion" at the beginning of the line.  Jaws also now announces font change attributes immediately following the change.  A few notes on this:
a. In the virtual viewer list, Jaws still just says "revised property."  But they know how to fix this and aim to have it addressed in the June release.  But to reiterate, the precise font changes are announced in-line as you scroll with Jaws using the arrow keys.
b.  Currently, the font attribute change is also displayed in words on the Braille display.  This is cumbersome, especially in legal documents.  They are going to try to figure out a way to toggle whether that information is displayed in Braille.  Again to be clear, this only occurs when you're looking at font attribute revisions, not every time you make a font change when track changes aren't on.
3. And now the moment we've all been waiting for... Footnotes are no longer sluggish!  **and** you can actually select text!  Same goes for comment bubbles!  Notes.
a.  This currently only works in all markup.  It does not work in simple markup.  They are aware of this and know how to change it, and aim to have it addressed in the June release.
b. To change mark up modes, hit alt, r, t, d, then arrow down to select the mark up mode you desire.
4. cursor routing buttons work in footnotes, dots 7-8 no longer display throughout the entire footnote, and Braille marking properly works in footnotes.
5. You can now access revisions in the footnotes.  You have to have all markup selected, and you have to be in the footnote pane when you call up the virtual viewer.  They are working on a way to have them accessible from above the line as well.
6. Jaws announcing revisions even when track changes are off:
Currently, this is occurring because control+shift+e is a Microsoft keystroke that tells the program to stop tracking changes, but even when it's off, the underlying "code" is still there so that the revisions will display again once you turn the feature back on.  Jaws still has acces to that code, even if you toggle track changes off, and sometimes this causes confusion.  If this happens, change markup to no markup by hitting alt, r, t, d and arrowing down to no mark up.
That should solve it.

The teams are also aware of the issue regarding pasting large amounts of text into comments causing the programs to crash.  They aim to address that as well.

Again, I am sorry that we will not be seeing changes in 2016 or 2013, but this honestly is a quicker and more robust solution than I ever expected, and i am very pleased.

Thanks,

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