Comments for jebsblog

Comment on Making Facebook Accessible by Steve Hoad

Steve Hoad — Sun, 13 May 2012 22:33:01 +0000

I would certainly argue that a little accessibility is Not better than none; a little gives FaceBook and company the appearance that accessibility is “just around the corner”. They make their goldmine, we get the shaft. Nuggets of accessibility are worthless without a doubt, it means you can only get just so far. And it feeds the myth that the only way to make a popular and flashy website is to avoid full accessibility.

Their IPO should only be available in Braille they might understand then.

Comment on Making Facebook Accessible by Christopher Sims

Christopher Sims — Sun, 13 May 2012 02:44:17 +0000

for the most part, I would argue that the main Facebook site is accessible. I know that I’m able to post on people’s walls, read my news feed, etc. Sure they still have a way to go. There headed in the rite direction though.

Comment on Flaws Found in Adobe Acrobat Pro X by blumma

blumma — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:39:01 +0000

Good grief, it seems one has to dig deeper in the commands to get things to work. However, in Adobe X in a 64 bit environment under Windows 7, you can now distribute forms via email without the blasted error message of no default mail server. Though, there is a couple of times, I get the error still that it didn’t send it, it does a few minutes later.

Comment on Microsoft Office 2010 and Accessibility by jeb

jeb — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:41:38 +0000

Yes, it is my understanding that the MS Office Accessibility Checker will only work on .docx files (Word version 2007 or newer). If you do the check on the .docx file and it passes, it *should* convert safely to an accessible .rtf version. I say this but I have never personally tried it. I know there are some policies out there that require .rtf as being more accessible and recommend against PDF, but PDF can be very accessible these days.

Comment on Microsoft Office 2010 and Accessibility by Courtney Noblett

Courtney Noblett — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 22:51:26 +0000

Thanks for this article. I have a document that I saved in rich text format (rtf) but when I run the Word accessibility checker, I get the “cannot check the current file type for accessibility issues” message. The checker works fine if the same document is saved as .doc. Have you ever heard of difficulty in using the checker while in rtf? I’m not finding much about this on the internet. Thanks!

Comment on Microsoft Office 2010 and Accessibility by jeb

jeb — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:49:40 +0000

It is a little strange…yes, the Accessibility Checker is not built into the MS-Office for Mac product, but the ability to add accessibility features to documents is. For example, you can add alternative descriptions to images, photos and objects. And if you check documents created in the Mac version with the Accessibility Checker in the Windows version, the checker works just fine. On the other hand, MS-Office for Mac does not work completely with VoiceOver on the Mac, so a screen reader user is not able to even use the product. As I note in another blog entry (http://jebswebs.net/blog/2011/01/ms-office-for-the-mac-and-accessibility/ ): “Unfortunately, Apple’s own office suite, iWork, isn’t much better when it comes to making accessible documents. iWork ’09, the latest iteration, does not have the capacity to make accessible documents either. Specifically, there is no way to add alternative descriptions to images or other objects inserted in a document.

But the good news is that at least VoiceOver can read the contents of documents made in iWorks in addition to working with all of the menus and toolbars.”

Comment on Microsoft Office 2010 and Accessibility by Jay Wyant

Jay Wyant — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:24:29 +0000

As I understand it, the accessibility checker does not exist for the Mac Office 2011 products – correct? Are Mac users SOL or are there alternative resources on the Mac side of things?

Comment on MS Office for the Mac and Accessibility by Lyndoo Williamson

Lyndoo Williamson — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 16:26:22 +0000

We purchased a MacBook Pro for our training center and was preparing to buy MS Office 2011 for the Mac. I first tried it with a friend’s computer who already had it on his iMac and was disappointed that it only read menus and toolbars, but no text in the document. This does not make it accessible for a totally blind user. I am amazed that Microsoft can claim that it is accessible, but this half-baked approach seems to be consistant with Microsoft.

I will check out the product mentioned above along with Pages and Numbers.

Comment on Flaws Found in Adobe Acrobat Pro X by jeb

jeb — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:43:47 +0000

Hmm…”Forms” created in Adobe Acrobat Pro are different from basic PDF documents. It’s been along time since I played with the form maker. I gave up when I discovered that the forms create were not accessible to screen readers. So I just stopped using them. I guess I can’t help.

I suggest you head over to the Acrobat Users Community http://acrobatusers.com/ and look/search for answers there. If you post your question there, you are likely to get a quick response since there are a lot more folks with a lot more expertise in that group.

Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.

Comment on Flaws Found in Adobe Acrobat Pro X by Missy Wind

Missy Wind — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:31:24 +0000

I am having the same issue I think Chris from Nov 12th was having. I created a form in Pro X, but when I email it to people who only have Reader they get a message that states they can’t do a File, Save As. They can only type in their information & print the doc. All the searches I’ve done have stated I can adjust a feature in Advance, but I don’t have an Advance Tab in Pro X. I tried right clicking in the doc as you suggested, but none of the options in there scream “people can now save your doc” to me Thoughts?