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

[Christine Robinson]

Karen, thank you SO much!

Christine Robinson | Technical Trainer/Writer | Center for Teaching Excellence
Georgia Gwinnett College | 1000 University Center Lane| Lawrenceville, GA 30043

From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Karlen Communications
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2018 3:12 PM
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Subject: Re: [Athen] MS Word cross-references, citations, captions, index marks... oh my!

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<mailto: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<mailto: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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