Enabling Staff to Produce Accessible Content

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Enabling Staff to Produce Accessible Content

• Excellence through Accessibility Workshop
• 27th February 2007

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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 doesnt know what a Press Release, a
  Chapter, or a Report is
• (HTML doesnt 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
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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 gt
  Outline)
• Easy to navigate long documents (using View gt
  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 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

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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
• PRO/ Communications

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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

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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
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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 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

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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 re-format in
  Word

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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 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
  ready-to-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
  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

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Questions and Answers

• Enabling Staff to Produce Accessible Content
• Eoin Campbell, XML Workshop Ltd.
• www.xmlw.ie