[Athen] Accessible Office Export Plug-In That's NOT UIUC

Sean Keegan skeegan at htctu.net
Fri Feb 9 14:20:22 PST 2007



> This may seem obvious -- or off topic -- but what about simply

> saving the PPT documents as PDF's before throwing them up on Bb sites?


Actually, not really off-topic. For awhile, that was one of the only ways
to get a PPT presentation into a format that could be somewhat usable for an
individual using assistive computer technology (barring use of the old
PowerPoint Accessibility Wizard).

I do know some who still use that conversion process, but with the advent of
better conversion utilities it is not something I recommend as a first (or
even second) option. At the very least, you still need to have a copy of
Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional to create the tagged-PDF, which can
cost about the same amount as either the Accessible Web Publishing Wizard or
LecShare/LecShare Pro. Also, while Acrobat has gotten better with some
assistive technologies, for ease of use and overall reliability, I think
HTML-based content has the edge. Besides, if you do not have Adobe Reader
installed, you are looking at a 20+ MB download for Reader 8.

Ideally, when creating such presentations and delivering the content via the
Web, you could deliver the presentation in several different formats. I
still think an HTML-based option works best for the current generation of
assistive computer technologies. I am hopeful that an export application
will be developed that allows for the simple generation of a variety of
accessible formats that can all be posted to the Web page and give users a
choice as to which to utilize (e.g., PPT, DAISY, HTML, Video-based, etc.)

Take care,
Sean






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