[Athen] MS Word cross-references, citations, captions, index marks... oh my!

[Karlen Communications]

For a tutorial on citations and bibliographies and one on indexes  and how
to use them/access them using a keyboard/adaptive technology, visit the
Karlen Communications website.

https://www.karlencommunications.com/OfficeForWindowsAccessibility.html

 

There is also a tutorial on Tables of Content, Footnotes and Endnotes and
how to create more accessible images. In each of these tutorials, I move
from the basics to more advanced usages such as a table of contents for each
chapter, tables of tables, tables of figures and how to modify the look and
feel of them. All are accessible.

 

For the captions.I use captions in most if not all of my publications. They
are accessible as long as you aren't using text wrapping. When you use text
wrapping, the Caption is in a text box. So as long as your images are in
line with text, the caption is accessible. I usually modify the caption
style to remove italics so that it is more readable.

 

For citations and bibliographies, the citation is placed in a Content
Control which can be a keyboard trap for Word 2013 and earlier. As of Word
2016/Office 365 subscription if all updates are installed, it is less so.
While there are times when I can't tell if I am out of a citation or not,
most of the time they are manageable. I use citations for journal articles
and contributions to books. While the citations do use style guides like APA
or Chicago, those style guides need updating and Microsoft is aware of this.
As someone using JAWS, I find using citations and bibliography tools a great
way to keep track of articles and publications I use frequently in writing.
There is one problem with the Citation Content Control in that there is
currently no keyboard access to convert the citation to static text if you
need to do that. Additionally, each citation has to be converted to static
text if that is a requirement of the publication you are writing for.I know,
I had to deal with this. There is no "make all citations static. 

 

For cross-references, it is a bit trickier. Usually the text associated with
a cross-reference isn't included in the link so it means a bit more work
going into the field code and making sure the text is there. At least that
was how it worked the last time I tried this. It is accessible but the
usability  may not be completely there. For example, "if we get a list of
links, we may only get the page number without any context. Text like "see
Appendix A" or "see chapter X" may provide more context but some of the text
may not be there.

 

Cross-references are about the only tutorial topic I haven't done so it
might be time! 

 

One of the other issues with cross-references in the past has been that they
don't convert well to tagged PDF. But since I haven't tried/used them in a
while, things may have improved.

 

The other topics you mention do convert to tagged PDF.

 

With the tutorials there are documents attached (look under the paper clip)
that show you how the technique works. I include them for those of us who
use adaptive technology to test out and for those of us who need to see a
sample in order to understand what is going on.

 

Once you take a look at the tutorials, let me know if you have other
questions.

 

Cheers, Karen

 

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf
Of Christine Robinson
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2018 1:00 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] MS Word cross-references, citations, captions, index
marks... oh my!

 

Hi all -

 

I've been learning about some of the features of MS Word which aren't
normally used, but which can be helpful when creating long documents like
policy manuals. Most of these tools are in the References tab of Word:

 

*         Cross-references can help readers easily navigate to other parts
of a long document. For example, if a manual says "See Section 3.13 for more
information," you can make that text into a clickable cross-reference. The
reader clicks that phrase, and is taken to Section 3.13 instead of having to
search for the section. 

Question: is this an accessible feature, or does it create problems for
screen reader users?

 

*         Citations & bibliography: It's possible to insert citations in a
way that follows style guides (you can choose APA, Chicago, IEEE, etc.). It
creates the citation as a field, and - similar to Word Styles and Tables of
Contents, the citations can be used to automatically create a Bibliography. 

Question: Are the formatted citations and bibliographies accessible?

 

*         Captions & Tables of Figures: If you have a non-text object like
an image or table, you can right-click it and add a caption. In the
References tab, you also then have the option of creating a Table of Figures
or Table of Tables. However, when I click on a caption, it LOOKS to me like
the caption is in a text box, and I understand text boxes aren't accessible.
But it may just LOOK like a text box to me, but is formatted differently in
the background.

Question: Are these formatted captions and Tables of Figures/Tables
accessible?

 

*         Marking for indexing: Same kind of thing. You can mark particular
terms and from that formatting, create an index.

 

Summary question: Can anybody point me to a reference which addresses
accessibility of infrequently-used features like these? I have Karen
McCall's excellent book, Styles in Word, but I don't see references to these
types of seldom-used features.

 

Thanks!

Chris

 

 

Christine Robinson | Technical Trainer/Writer | Center for Teaching
Excellence

Georgia Gwinnett College | 1000 University Center Lane| Lawrenceville, GA
30043

 

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