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

[Berkowitz, Daniel J]

But Cath,
 
A properly tagged PPT exported to PDF can be saved as Text using Acrobat Reader 7.0.  It isn't pretty but it can be done. (Not sure where I was going with that -- just thought I'd throw it in to the conversation). 
 
Speaking of OO (or getting back to OO) - the recently announcement about the Plug-In that started this whole conversation makes me want to comment on what is to me a significant step backwards in the new MS-Office 2007. The Beta version had a direct "Save As" to PDF. It was quite nice to have this option at your fingertips. This has disappeared in the 60-day trial version available on line. Next week one of my staff will be attending a full day MS developers forum and bringing back a full copy of Office 2007 and we will take a look-see.
 
In the meantime, Open Office has always had the ability to export as PDF without the need for Acrobat. Though I have found myself becoming addicted to Office 2007 - I have come to realize it is because of the interface (I rather like it) - I have been assured by a friend of mine who knows such things that the OO interface can be skinned to look like MS-Office 2007. 
 
 
========================= 
Daniel Berkowitz - Assistant Director 
Boston University Office of Disability Services 
19 Deerfield Street, 2nd floor 
Boston, MA 02215 
  
(617) 353-3658 (office) 
(617) 353-9646 (fax) 
djbrky at bu.edu <mailto:djbrky at bu.edu>  (eMail) 
www.bu.edu/disability 

________________________________

From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org on behalf of Kilcommons,Cath
Sent: Fri 2/9/2007 5:57 PM
To: Access Technologists in Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Accessible Office Export Plug-In That's NOT UIUC




> 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?


I'd say not off-topic and not obvious either.
First, for someone like me who is paper-impaired when it comes to
notetaking, I can't take that PDF and take notes on it using my laptop.
If it is posted as a ppt, I can create the outline version, I can create
a Word doc, or various options. PPT may be proprietary, but open source
software like OpenOffice and Neo Office also offer me the ability to
open PPT. So, even if ppt is not a great option, it does offer
flexibility. Also, if the content is visible in the outline tab of the
Normal view in PPT, then a screen reader can read it.

Second, (the biggest drawback I think), is that when converted to PDF,
you cannot retain the speaker notes used in PPT presentations, so you
cannot use the notes to supplement graphic descriptions, or to "fill in
the blanks" if you are one of those faculty who feels the need to leave
holes in their presentations so that the student will come to lecture. 

Using  PPT > Send to Word, using the " Notes next to slides" options,
then you get a document that has the notes and has the slide content in
text and resizable graphics, but the files are huge. This becomes a
fully accessible Word, that could be used on someone's laptop so they
could take notes.

Now if you turn that to PDF, you get back down to a reasonable file
size, but I still can't take notes in it. 

This is something I've been working on looking into best practices, and
here are some file size figures for one presentation put through many
paces:

PPT = 786Kb
PPTConvert to Adobe PDF= 277Kb but no notes content.
PPT >send to word with Notes = 4,236Kb
PPT compressed =657Kb (this is a picture format option in PPT)
PPT compressed >send to word with Notes = 4,236Kb
PPT compressed >send to word with Notes using Links to slides =  3,522Kb
PPT compressed >send to word with Notes using Links to slides THEN
Convert to Adobe PDF = 743Kb (Tags are on table generated by Word)
The same file originally done in S5 format = 521Kb with 495Kb in images.

If people have not looked over Terry's treatment of the subject,I
thought this was one of the most completely considered presentations I
have ever seen on the topic, and I would recommend it to all.
http://staff.washington.edu/tft/talks/powerpoint/index.html

Best,
Cath


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