[Athen] Reading Order in MS PowerPoint

[Greg Kraus]

Back in my LecShare days, what I always told people was that the
reading order would be determined by the order items were created on
the slide. Placing an item on a slide naturally places it in the
layering order, however, at that point I was never convinced that
simply changing the layer would change the reading order too. There
are other properties of objects on slides that I think might influence
the reading order as well, and those properties are not available to
users unless you are accessing the presentation through the API.

With LecShare, I never touched the layering order because that could
also impact the way a slide looked visually. Altering the layers could
make something lie over top of another item that it wasn't supposed
to. Just as a note, for LecShare I built my own data structure
internal to PowerPoint to store the values of what order the slide
items SHOULD be read in instead of relying on PowerPoint to ever tell
me what order it thought they should be read in.

If what you are doing are per Microsoft's instructions and it's not
working, there are so many variables that could be in play here that
the only thing I could say would work with a reasonable degree of
confidence is to rebuild the slide in the correct order.

I don't know if it would help or not, but I could send you a copy of
LecShare Lite which will convert it to accessible HTML. I did stop
supporting LecShare a while ago, so there could be some configuration
issues. It will only work with Windows 7.

Greg
--
Greg Kraus
University IT Accessibility Coordinator
NC State University
919.513.4087
gdkraus at ncsu.edu
http://go.ncsu.edu/itaccess

On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 4:09 PM, E.A.Draffan <ea at emptech.info> wrote:

> This is a lovely strategy - please may I put it on LexDis?

> http://www.lexdis.org.uk/

>

>

>

> I am just wondering if you get any joy with images, shapes, smart art and

> graphs when you have done the conversion - I suspect the person who has made

> the slides needs to be aware of the alt text provision as they add the

> items.

>

>

>

> I really miss LecShare and still use the old version to check slides for

> accessibility.  There are still some sites offering a download.

>

>

>

> Best wishes

>

> E.A.

>

>

>

> Mrs E.A. Draffan

>

> WAIS, ECS , University of Southampton

>

> Tel +44 (0)23 8059 7246

>

> Mobile +44 (0)7976 289103

>

> http://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk

>

> http://www.emptech.info

>

>

>

> From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On

> Behalf Of Angel Chesimet

> Sent: 08 April 2014 20:03

>

>

> To: Access Technology Higher Education Network

> Cc: Access Technology Higher Education Network

>

> Subject: Re: [Athen] Reading Order in MS PowerPoint

>

>

>

> :) sure. You attach the PowerPoint and send it to a Gmail account. You go to

> the web based version of Gmail to open the email with the attachment. When

> you open it there will be options to open as HTML or download and save it.

> You click the HTML option and it will open another browser page with the

> PowerPoint broken down as HTML. Because I am a jaws user  I have my Gmail

> account set up as basic view so this might be something you would do to

> receive the attachment options. I'm not sure if the same options are offered

> in standard view Gmail web-based accounts.

>

> Angel Chesimet

>

> Graduate Candidate Spring, 2015

>

> Clinical Rehabilitation Counseling

>

> Portland State University

>

> Mobile: 503-470-2626

>

>

> On Apr 8, 2014, at 11:26 AM, "Gershman, Cindy" <cgershman at pima.edu> wrote:

>

> HI Angel,

>

> Would you mind breaking that down as if for a 5-year-old? I really know

> nothing about Google mail.

>

> Thanks for any help,

>

> -Cindy

>

>

>

> Cindy Gershman

>

> Advanced Program Coordinator, Alt Format

>

> Disabled Student Resources

>

> Pima Community College

>

> Tucson, AZ

>

> 520-206-6688

>

> cgershman at pima.edu

>

>

>

> From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On

> Behalf Of Angel Chesimet

> Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2014 9:52 AM

> To: Access Technology Higher Education Network

> Subject: Re: [Athen] Reading Order in MS PowerPoint

>

>

>

> A quick and easy fix to power points for jaws is to send it through Google

> mail. If you  attach it to an email and open it using Google mail it gives

> you an option to converted to HTML. It's very clean and easy to read from

> then on. At this point you can also copy and paste it into word for editing

> during lectures.

>

> Angel Chesimet

>

> Graduate Candidate Spring, 2015

>

> Clinical Rehabilitation Counseling

>

> Portland State University

>

> Mobile: 503-470-2626

>

>

> On Apr 8, 2014, at 8:10 AM, Teresa Haven <Teresa.Haven at nau.edu> wrote:

>

> Thanks, Paul.  Karen also let me know that in a private email.  What baffles

> me is the fact that JAWS was reading a couple of slides in almost perfect

> order, despite the reading order in the Selection Pane being completely

> different (and not just backwards of what I would have expected).

>

> Cheers,

>

> Teresa

>

>

>

> From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On

> Behalf Of Paul E. Paire

> Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2014 8:02 AM

> To: Access Technology Higher Education Network

> Subject: Re: [Athen] Reading Order in MS PowerPoint

>

>

>

> Teresa,

>

>

>

> Don't miss that the reading order is bottom up in the Selection pane, not

> top down like you'd expect.

>

>

>

> -Paul

>

>

>

> From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On

> Behalf Of Teresa Haven

> Sent: Monday, April 07, 2014 3:54 PM

> To: Access Technology Higher Education Network (athen-list at u.washington.edu)

> Subject: [Athen] Reading Order in MS PowerPoint

>

>

>

> Greetings, all.  I'm attempting to retrofit a PPT presentation created by a

> colleague who, until recently, was unfamiliar with accessibility needs.

> This particular presentation has been a work in progress for many years and

> across many versions of PPT.  One slide in particular has a lot of separate

> text elements that need to be read in order to make sense; when listening to

> it initially with JAWS, just a couple of items were read out of order so I

> attempted to clean that up (am in Office 2010 for Windows); according to

> Microsoft's help site I should fix the reading order using Arrange>Selection

> Pane.  When I viewed the reading order it was NOTHING like what I was

> hearing with JAWS - it looked completely random, despite the fact that JAWS

> was doing a pretty good job with the page.  Well, I "fixed" the reading

> order in Selection Pane and now the slide is read as complete gibberish by

> JAWS - nothing is in order.  Yes, I still have a copy of the original file

> and can go back, or I can re-create the slide from scratch, but does anyone

> have a suggestion for how to reliably repair reading order in PPT slides?

>

>

>

> Thanks for your ideas,

>

> Teresa

>

>

>

> Teresa Haven, Ph.D.

>

> Accessibility Analyst

>

> Northern Arizona University

>

> (928) 523-6042

>

>

>

> _______________________________________________

> athen-list mailing list

> athen-list at mailman13.u.washington.edu

> http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/athen-list

>

> _______________________________________________

> athen-list mailing list

> athen-list at mailman13.u.washington.edu

> http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/athen-list

>

>

> _______________________________________________

> athen-list mailing list

> athen-list at mailman13.u.washington.edu

> http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/athen-list

>