WAC Workshop Descriptions and Presentation Materials

We are using Eric Meyer's s5 accessible, JavaScript and XHTML-based in-browser presentation software for most presentations. Format of presentations is noted in parentheses in the links. Presentation materials are in the yellow highlighted bullet lists below descriptions of workshops.

Some Things to Know About s5 Formatted Presentations

• Each s5 presentation is linked to twice. The first link takes you to the slideshow view of the presentation. The second link takes you to an outline view. The second link should be used by screen reader users.
• Outline mode displays notes. You can print from either mode.
• In either view mode, slideshow or outline, you can toggle to the other view mode. To toggle the presentation to its alternate view mode, hit the "t" key. Alternatively, in slideshow view mode, hover over the lower right quadrant of the presentation and click on the ∅ (empty set) symbol that appears. In outline view mode, click the ∅ (empty set) symbol in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
• In slideshow view, use the space or arrow keys to move through the presentation.
• Hovering over the lower right quadrant when in slideshow view will also cause the slide menu to appear. The slide menu allows you to skip to any slide in the presentation
• In slideshow view, if display of characters becomes cramped or characters overrun each other, refresh the web page.

Workshop Title: Word and PDF Best Practices

Last Presented: August 10, 2006

Overview of Workshop: This informational and hands-on workshop covers best practices in the use of MS Word to maximize its usefulness as an writing tool and to get it to produce well-structured and accessible PDF documents (via Adobe Acrobat). One goal of this workshop is to ensure that PDF and Word can be more easily navigated by general users, and, in particular, users of screen reading programs and other assistive technologies. The workshop includes advice on using styles and descriptive text in Word and presents overviews of tagging and other accessibility features in Adobe Acrobat. We also discuss limitations in producing accessible PDF from scanners.

The range of strategies and techniques may help content creators, staff, and faculty improve the general usability and accessibility of course materials in Carmen and elsewhere. We also discuss how best to link to PDFs from within Carmen to maximize universal usability.

Workshop Title: PowerPoint Best Practices and Conversion Techniques

Last Presented: August 15, 2006

Overview of Workshop: This informational and hands-on workshop covers best practices in the use of MS PowerPoint for display on the web. We cover techniques for ensuring the content in PowerPoint is available to all users, regardless of what technologies they are using to access the presentation. To this end, the first part of the workshop teaches how best to embed auxiliary information in PowerPoint presentations (using alternative text for graphics and the notes pane). The second part of the workshop introduces the Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office, which produces accessible HTML documents from PowerPoint, and a PowerPoint alternative, s5, by Eric Meyer. We will then look at how to upload these to Carmen.

The range of strategies and techniques may help content creators, staff, and faculty improve the general usability and accessibility of course materials in Carmen and elsewhere.

Workshop Title: Dead-Simple Web Design (parts 1 & 2)

Last Presented: May 23 and 25, 2007

Overview of Workshop: A two-part workshop teaching HTML and CSS skills with an emphasis on functional accessibility and solid web design practices to fully satisfy OSU's Web Accessibility Policy and generally improve your web resources.

Part One: Hands-on, we will take some text and mark it up with HTML, emphasizing the appropriate uses of the major HTML markup structures, including headings, lists, links, adding emphasis to text, simple tables, simple forms, and displaying images. We will code a few pages, emphasizing structural and semantic correctness and accessibility. We will code a basic form. We will then introduce CSS for improving the presentation of your web documents. The emphasis here will be on basic modifications to the appearance of HTML elements, and we will discuss how to ensure that your CSS helps improve page accessibility.

Part Two: This workshop develops a multiple-page web site, based on the HTML and CSS code from the first workshop (which will be provided for those who did not attend). An unordered list will be transformed with CSS into a highly accessible and efficient navigation bar. We will add markup to pages with a form and a complex table to make these key HTML structures as accessible as possible and then radically improve their appearance using CSS. We will implement skip navigation and accessible CSS "hiding" techniques that provide extra structure to people using screen readers to access web pages, without altering the appearance for sighted users. And we will discuss when it is advisable to use a CSS background image.