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

Thu Feb 20 00:20:25 UTC 2014

Jim,
This is excellent! I'm keeping it. For anyone who wants to self-publish, if
you do this with your manuscript, you can upload the PDF to Create Space as
your book interior and avoid paying for Interior Design. CS theoretically
allows you to upload .doc files, but their system has bugs and the PDF is
the best way to go.

BTW, do you know how to write the code to make a downloadable link? For
instance, on my website:
http://DonnaWHill.com
I want to create a page for the press where they can grab a JPG of the book
cover or my photo. I can upload them to the site and include them in pages,
but it doesn't open a window allowing you to download. I did some Googling
about it and confused myself thoroughly.
Thanks,
Donna

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Homme, James
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 10:26 AM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: [stylist] Tech Writing: Ten Steps To Make Accessible Word Documents
For PDF Production

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.

________________________________

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

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