ACCESSIBILITY ADD-INMicrosoft Office 2007

The Problem (in case you’ve forgotten)

It is difficult to make a document/presentation “accessible” It must be formatted in a certain way in

order to allow accessibility applications to ‘read’ it

Office 2007 is new While solutions exist for previous

versions of Office (2003, etc.), none exist for 2007

Evolution of Solution (rhyming is

neato)

1st Iteration: XML The Good:

Deployment to the web is made much simpler

The Bad: Communication between the XML and the

Object Model is difficult Altering the document/presentation by

editing the XML is not possible PowerPoint XML is nasty

Evolution of Solution (rhyming is

neato)

2nd Iteration: Object Model The Good:

It is possible to edit the document/presentation through interaction with the Object Model

Much more straightforward – cleaner code The Bad:

Deploying to the web will still require XML interaction (however, web deployment is only a secondary requirement)

Evolution of Solution (rhyming is

neato)

3rd Iteration: Data-binding The Good:

Auto-updates is an error is fixed – less bookkeeping for us

Less bookkeeping => cleaner code The Bad:

A back-end redesign was (once again) necessary

We had to learn data-binding…

Slight Evolutions (adaptations?)

Project Centralization The Word and PowerPoint add-ins were

completely separate projects We combined them into one nice, neat

package Interface Changes

Vertical scroll to horizontal ‘scroll’ Panels!

Demo Time

Enjoy Sorry, no candy ()

The Future (DeLorean not required)

Add Width (i.e. widen) The base foundation is largely complete Check for a broader range of

accessibility errors GUI Adjustments

Move information up to the ribbon Adjust interface so that it better aids the

user in learning the best practices Debugging and Documentation…

The End (My only friend, the end…)

Questions? Comments?

Thanks