Skills for Access

Description

Part of Microsoft's Office suite of software, Word is a widely used word processing package for creating text-based documents. Word documents can be extended to add interactivity through adding multimedia resources and form filling features such as drop-down menus for multiple choice selections. Additional functionality can be programmed using Word's macro facility.

Authoring Word documents requires Microsoft Word, although viewing Word content is possible with a Word viewer application. Microsoft Word is available for Windows and Mac operating systems; for UNIX/Linux, other software is available to open Word files.

Accessibility Issues

As predominantly text-based documents, accessibility problems presented by Word resources are most likely to be faced by people who have difficulty reading on-screen text. In addition, any graphical or multimedia content added to a Word document may also present access difficulties to people with visual impairments if no text alternative is provided for the multimedia object (this can be supplied using a feature of Word, but current versions of the software do not automatically prompt for the addition of alternative text). Problems may also arise if authors do not use appropriate structural information - for example if Word's custom styles are not used to identify heading text as a heading, or if Word's features to add columns and tables are not used.

Specific problems arise when Word documents are converted to HTML for publishing on the Web. Authors without any prior knowledge of HTML can use Word to quickly create an HTML version of their presentation, but the HTML created as a result is often unnecessarily complex, and may need significant repair work in order to create code that validates to an accepted standard of HTML. This problem is exaggerated if the document does not include accessibility features such as text alternatives or appropriate structural information. Usefully, though, several programs now exist to 'filter' Word-generated HTML into more standards-compliant streamlined code.