fun stuff: inaccessible accessibility
Quick Update! Here's the accessible inaccessible accessibility presentation version , courtesy Timothy J. Luoma!
Recently, I posted an inaccessible accessibility presentation here on my web site. The irony was not lost on me the day I did it and in fact I posted why I was doing it right here in this spot. People wanted it fast, so I did what I could to get it online, well aware that unless I redid the PowerPoint as an accessible HTML file, it would have limited accessibility, especially for the blind. I didn't have the time, I used the lousy conversion tools and also made the full .ppt file available for download.
I got pretty well-reamed by a few people for doing this, despite my cautionary comments here. And the points within the reamings were good ones. Yes, it should all have been accessible. No question there from me. I agree. Did I make a mistake? Maybe. I honestly was trying to provide the quick-fix for attendees of that event.
But it feels pretty terrible to be reamed. Please be careful of doing that. We writers and speakers are not experts by self-definition in most cases. We are simply doing the best we can, learning what we can, and trying to work hard to reach some modicum of success in reaching higher goals.
That said, we can all take the opportunity as a lesson to be learned. Some excellent suggestions were provided by other people on the list, as follows:
- There's a tutorial on making accessible PowerPoint presentations available at WebAim.
- There's a utility for Windows that will allow you to convert a PowerPoint presentation into accessible HTML . Still not perfect but worth a try.
- There's a great feature in Opera that allows you to set up one HTML or XHTML file plus style sheets as per your need. You can then use Opera as the viewer, or just access the long file. This will be the way I do all of my presentations in the future unless I have to follow a PowerPoint template provided by a conference (which happens a lot).
- Bill Stocking provides a presentation with better accessibility that was created using Open Office
Hat tip to Karl Dubost of the W3C Conformance & Quality Assurance group for items 1 & 2; Hat tip to Eric A. Meyer for item 3.
Finally, if anyone here has time to volunteer to help me convert powerpoint presentations to make them available and accessible here, I sure would value the support. Please understand, I am just one person. I am definitely not an expert. I am learning just as we all are learning, and your constructive comments and assistance are very important to me. So let's work together on this and create a better web at the end of it all, okay?
