[stylist] Tech Writing: Ten Steps To Make Accessible Word Documents For PDF Production

[Homme, James]

Hi,
I will be cleaning this piece up a bit, but I wanted to see how clear it is to you. For other people interested in tech writing, Bookshare has a manual of style written by Microsoft. It contains all sorts of conventions for how to write things like names of buttons, menus, key strokes, and all that stuff. I may add notes for screen readers other than JAWS, or I may remove the JAWS notes and make the article screen reader neutral. I originally put the note in there because JAWS won't select the image, even though the cursor is on it without this method.

My next article is going to be how we have a flat world, and how the sun goes around the earth, complete with scientific proof. And it looks like all of the styles got stripped out of the e-mail when I pasted the article.

Ten Steps to Make Accessible Word Documents for PDF Production
By Jim Homme

You will do most of the work to make accessible PDF documents in Word. If you have to create accessible PDF's, the more attention you pay to Word accessibility, the easier and more efficient the PDF touch up will go when you convert the document with the Acrobat plug-in, or the Microsoft Save As PDF process.
A great way to make accessible word documents for PDF production, if you know that you are going to repeatedly create a certain type of document, is to do the following ten things.[1]

1.       Start a new template document. By that, I mean actually create a .dotx file, not a .docx file. This is very important. I am talking about a real Word template file, not a template in the figurative sense.

2.       Here is how to make visually pleasing, accessible document elements. Note: When you create normal paragraphs, do not hit ENTER twice. Word takes care of the visual aspects of telling where paragraphs break. If you need to make a line break within a paragraph, press SHIFT+ENTER.

a.       If you do not like how the built-in Word styles look, check the various themes in the Theme Gallery to see if you can get a theme setting as close as possible to how you want the document to look. If you can get a theme that you like, apply it. If not, then create one that you like. Manipulating and creating themes is beyond the scope of this article.
Use the Styles dialog and pick the styles whose names are "Heading 1," "Heading 2," and so on, for section and subsection titles, styles whose names start with "List," for bulleted and numbered lists, and so on, and pick a title style for the document title. Avoid what Word calls direct formatting. For example, use a style, rather than making a bold line of text that someone would interpret as a section title.

3.       If you do not like any of the themes, choose the styles whose names are "Heading 1," "Heading 2," and so on, and edit their paragraph properties. Save each style and make sure that you save it to the template file you are building.

4.       If your document uses tables, make sure of the following.

a.       To create tables, use the Insert tab and insert real Word tables. Do not use the TAB key to create lines that look like table rows.

b.      Insure that the number of cells from left to right in each row is always the same. For example, rows do not change from two, to three, to two, cells from row to row.

c.       In the properties of each table, check the box that repeats table headers on each page.

5.       For images, do this.

a.       Describe them by right clicking them, going into their properties, and typing text in their Description and Alternate Text properties. Note for JAWS users: Use CTRL+SHIFT+O to select the image you want to edit, press SHIFT+F10 to open the context menu, then arrow to Edit Picture and press ENTER.

b.      Make the description short, but succinct. Pretend you are describing the image over the phone. Put in just enough text to describe it fully, and keep it as short as possible. Remember, someone has to listen to it and wants to keep their concentration on the document content.

c.       If the image already contains a caption within the document, or is decorative, use a single space as the description. This causes screen readers to ignore the image.

6.       If the document is long enough, create a Table of Contents, and let Word generate it automatically.

7.       To save the finished document:

a.       On the Review tab, if Word's default language is not set to your native language, set it. You will only have to do this once. This adds the document language to every Word document you create. That carries over into the PDF. You won't have to repair that in Adobe Pro.

b.      Make sure you put a title in the Title property in the Document Properties. If you do not do this, it will fail the PDF Accessibility Check. This also carries over from Word to Adobe Pro.

c.       Save the document with a file name, that contains no spaces or special characters. This helps people who use operating systems other than Windows.

d.      Then Save the document as a Word document, not a Word template.

8.       To get the document template ready to use again, do the following.

a.       Make sure that you are once again working with the .dotx (template) file, not the document (docx) file.

b.      Keep the text you want to repeat each time you create this document type.

c.       Delete the text that you know you will recreate each time you make this type of document.

d.      Save the template (dotx) document.

9.       For new documents of this type, and other document types, keep the following in mind.

a.       Start with the empty template (dotx) file.

b.      Repeat this process for each new kind of document you want to produce.

c.       You only have to create the styles and template text you like once, and they just work after that.

d.      If you tweak the styles or repeated text, always start with the template, not a Word document, and re-save the template file. This makes sure that you save even more time because you do not have to keep making accessibility changes in individual documents.

10.   Finally, pat yourself on the back for a job well done.




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[1] You can also use this process for one-off documents. Ignore the instructions about saving templates.

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