Icon: Screen-friendly stylesheet Screen-friendly page

Participate in Our Programs :: Brown Bag Series

Making Web Pages Accessible to All Students, including Students with Disabilities, from Microsoft Office Documents (And Making Good Web Pages to Boot)

Jon Gunderson (Project Director, Disability Resources and Educational Services; Coordinator, Assistive Communication & Information Technology)

As Project Director with the Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services, Jon Gunderson has spent a number of years working to improve the accessibility of online educational materials and documents for all campus students. An important tool that can assist in this work is the Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office. The Wizard was developed in conjunction with the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Illinois Board of Higher Education, University of Illinois College of Applied Life Studies, and Disability Resources and Education Services. The Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard allows authors to create and save web versions of familiar Microsoft Office documents in formats more readily accessible to web browsers, providing greater compatibility with a variety of web browsers like Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, and Mozilla. Since many campus faculty use Office software and then try to share these files with their students, teachers that use the Wizard can insure that all their students will have access to their course materials. "You can write something once and use it with a wide variety of technology," Gunderson explained. "It provides better accessibility to everyone, including those with disabilities."

The design of the Wizard is not only convenient for students and those with disabilities, but instructors as well. "If the tool doesn't work for instructors, I think it has failed," said Gunderson regarding the Wizard's ease of use and accessibility. He also noted that many instructors are not web developers, and therefore know little about how to make information more readily available via different browsers. Therefore, the Wizard has a default markup that uses universal design techniques. No knowledge of accessibility or HTML format is necessary on the user's behalf, as the program automates the creation of text equivalents based on a series of questions that prompt users for information that they wish to make accessible on the web.

Most instructors who use Microsoft PowerPoint for instructional material only know how to publish their slide information as a large file on the Internet, explained Gunderson. However, this method has restricted features, with a default VML format and a limited ability to create text equivalents. With the Wizard, instructors save time because they are able to insert information and follow a simple step-by-step prompt that automatically generates a web version of the material that pops up in their normal browser. Students have the option of then accessing the material on the web, while also being able to print the normal slides with graphics, print the slides as text-only, print handouts, or print outline versions. Those without high-speed Internet can easily access the information through text-only material, which rids the slides of graphics. "So it's giving all users more options." If graphics are an important feature of the file, instructors can still provide graph and data chart summaries in a text version. For blind and vision-impaired students, the text-only version created by the Wizard is designed to work with standard computer screen readers that enable students to listen to the content of lectures. Additionally, the simple text-only version serves as a useful format for any student, providing a simple, customizable view of the content that exists in a very small file size for downloading.

The creators of the Wizard hope to make the program more compatible with improved support, styling, and output options for Excel and other Office programs in the future. Currently they are working with federal agencies such as the Census Bureau and Department of Transportation to "commercialize the technology." Version 2.1 is now available online, and new features are underway for Version 2.2, whose expected release is scheduled for early January 2006. U of I is working together with Harper College, University of Illinois at Chicago, Southern Illinois University, and Northern Illinois University to develop regional workshops to talk about the Wizard and other information technology accessibility problems in the coming months.

All Illinois faculty, instructors, staff, and students may obtain a copy of the Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard available for free from the CITES Software WebStore. Also, downloadable demos and examples of HTML conversions are available on the Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard web site.

About Jon Gunderson

Dr. Gunderson shares a joint appointment with both CITES and Disability Service (DRES) and is responsible for improving the accessibility of campus IT services to students, faculty and staff with disabilities. Dr. Gunderson has taught numerous courses and workshops on designing universally accessible web resources and has guided the development of several tools similar to the Wizard that help authors create universally accessible web resources.

To learn more about the Illinois Web Publishing Wizard, check out our feature article, "Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office".

- By Lauren Eichmann