OASIS TC Requirements for ODF Accessibility

OASIS TC Requirements for ODF Accessibility

Rich SchwerdtfegerIBM Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Strategy and Architecture

©2004 IBM CorporationIBM Confidential

Form Accessibility Analysis Sub-team - ODF

Goal: Produce Accessibility Assessment/Recommendations 3-6 months• Start in January

• Involve industry support

• Involve advocacy groups and accessibility influencers

• Make ODF more accessible than proprietary document formats

Provide editor from Oasis

Select a chair

Industry technical• IBM (will involve accessibility experts from Emerging Technologies, Research, and Accessibility Center)

• Sun (Star Office, Accessibility)

• Adobe (Accessibility)

• Corel (Accessibility)

Advocacy groups and accessibility influencers• Royal National Institute of the Blind

• Massachusetts commission for the Blind

• Daisy Consortium

• Bay state council for the Blind

• Free Standards Group


Accessibility Requirements – Basic Principles

Ensure Alternative text for all non-text elements

Ensure text on image maps

Ensure allowance for relative font sizes

Ensure provides for structural and list semantics

Ensure provides for changes in natural language

Ensure provide for table header and row/column descriptions

Ensure author can provide a logical keyboard navigation (needed for presentations)

Ensure may group large blocks

Ensure label associations

Link Identification (allow author to describe where a link goes)

Ensure synchronized media may include captions

Ensure accessibility features from W3C specifications are supported


Accessibility Requirements – Trumping proprietary office formats

Support DAIST standards for talking books(allow for XSLT conversion to DAISY)

Enhance Braille support

Improve the accessibility of presentations• Z-order

• Groupings

• Navigation

• Relationships

• Slide summary

• Support for tables (include tables in presentations)

Incorporate Dynamic Web Access Standards being developed in the W3C• Support for dynamic web content resulting from scripting (would like use cases from ODF Working group)

- Through namespaces or direct incorporation

• Support role attribute from XHTML2

• Document structure meta data


API Effort – Exterior to OASIS

IBM Workplace has built accessibility API extensions for Workplace documents• Design involved AT vendors and developers up front

• Leverages basic MSAA 1.3 to speed AT vendor support

• Extensions designed to facilitate port to Linux accessibility infrastructure

• Consulted key AT vendors in design (Windows and Linux)

Extend API to ensure leveraging new ODF accessibility extensions

Ensure features adopted by FSG for Linux

Deliver Documentation to industry

ODF Initial Assessment – Very Early


Checklist based on WCAG 1.0

WCAG 1.0 Microsoft Office OpenOffice.org ODF

1.1 Alt Text for non-text element Yes Insufficient Insufficient

1.2 Alt Text for Image Map Not Supported Yes Yes

3.4 Relative font size No Yes Yes

3.5 Heading Yes Yes Yes

3.6 List structure Yes Yes Yes

4.1 Changes in natural language Yes Yes Yes

5.1 Table header No No Yes

9.4 Logical tab order No Yes (Forms)No (Drawings)

Yes (Forms)No (Drawings)

12.3 Divide large blocks into groups

Yes Insufficient Insufficient

12.4 Label Association No Yes (Forms)No (Drawings)


13.1 Link identification Insufficient Insufficient Insufficient


Alternative Text for non-text elements

Object MS PowerPoint OOo Impress ODF

Image Yes No (Not yet) Yes

Line and Arrow Yes No No

Rectangle and Circle Yes No No

Auto Shape Yes No No

3D Shape Yes No No

Grouped Object Yes No No

Image Map Not Supported Yes Yes

Reference

OpenDocument Specification v1.0 Chapter 9, 9.3.9 Alternative Text


Suggestion

ODF should allow <svg:desc> (Alt Text) in any drawing shapes • <draw:line> (Line and Arrow)• <draw:connector>• <draw:polyline> • <draw:path>• <draw:polygone>• <draw:regular-polygone>• <draw:ellipse>• <draw:rect> (Rectangle) • <draw:circle> (Circle)• <draw:custom-shape> (Auto Shape)• <dr3d:scene> (3D Shape)• <draw:g> (Grouping)• <draw:page-thumbnail>• <draw:measure>• <draw:caption>• <draw:control>


Grouping in Presentation

MS PowerPoint OOo Impress ODF

Text Box Yes Yes Yes

List Yes Yes Yes

Grouping Yes Yes Yes

Table Yes No No

WCAG 1.0 12.3 Divide large blocks of information into more manageable groups where natural and appropriate. [Priority 2]


Suggestion

OpenDocument Specification v1.0, Chapter 8Chapter 8 Tables

This chapter describes the table structure that is used for tables that are embedded within text documents and for spreadsheets.

Should be

embedded within text documents, spreadsheets and for presentation documents.

ODF should support Table in presentation documents


Link Identification

MS WordMS ExcelMS PowerPoint

OOo WriterOOo CalcOOo Impress

ODF

Hint Text for Hyperlink Yes No No

WCAG 1.0 13.1 Clearly identify the target of each link. [Priority 2]

Reference

OpenDocument Specification v1.0 Chapter 5, 5.1.4 Hyperlinks


Suggestion

ODF should support hint text for hyperlink.• <text:a> (text hyperlink) should have the element such as <text:desc> which represents hint text for hyperlink.


Logical Tab Order

MS Office OpenOffice.org ODF

Z order Yes Yes Yes

Tab order No Yes (Forms)No (Drawings)


WCAG 1.0 9.4 Create a logical tab order through links, form controls, and objects. [Priority 3]

PowerPoint and OOo Impress apply Z order as Tab order. Screen reader reads objects according to its Z order.

Reference

OpenDocument Specification v1.0 Chapter 11, 11.5.15 Tab Index


Suggestion

ODF should support tab order attribute for all drawing shapes.• All drawing shapes listed below should have the attribute such as <draw:tab-order> which represents the tab order.

- <draw:line> (Line and Arrow)- <draw:connector>- <draw:polyline> - <draw:path>- <draw:polygone>- <draw:regular-polygone>- <draw:ellipse>- <draw:rect> (Rectangle) - <draw:circle> (Circle)- <draw:custom-shape> (Auto Shape)- <dr3d:scene> (3D Shape)- <draw:g> (Grouping)- <draw:measure>- <draw:caption>- <draw:control>- <draw:frame>


Label Association

MS Office OpenOffice.org ODF

Label Association No Yes (Forms)No (Drawings)


Screen reader cannot recognize the association between a text element and a non-text element.

WCAG 1.0 12.4 Associate labels explicitly with their controls. [Priority 2]

Reference

OpenDocument Specification v1.0 Chapter 11, 11.5.9 Label


Suggestion

ODF should support label associating function for all drawing shapes

• <draw:text-box> should have the attribute such as <draw:label>

• <draw:label> should support the elements listed below

- <draw:line> (Line and Arrow)- <draw:connector>- <draw:polyline> - <draw:path>- <draw:polygone>- <draw:regular-polygone>- <draw:ellipse>- <draw:rect> (Rectangle) - <draw:circle> (Circle)- <draw:custom-shape> (Auto Shape)- <dr3d:scene> (3D Shape)- <draw:g> (Grouping)- <draw:measure>- <draw:caption>- <draw:control>- <draw:frame>


What needs to be done?

Perform accessibility assessment of ODF 1.0 – Content to drive accessibility API• Opportunity to improve accessibility of Documents through Open Standards

• Opportunity to deliver accessible documents to open source platforms (Linux)

• Establish OASIS subgroup targeting full accessibility assessment in 3-6 months

- Involve major industry players (IBM, Sun, Adobe, FSG)- Involve Advocacy groups (RNIB, Bay State Council for the Blind, Daisy Consortium, etc.)

• Providing basic accessibility that aligns with what is provided in MS Office formats

• Provide for Improved access to presentations (above what is provided in MS Office formats)

• Assess what W3C accessibility features are incorporated or are missing to support

- SMIL captioning, XForms, SVG, XForms, Dynamic Web content

- Scripting and extend the specification to support these features

Address Assistive Technology Support – Interoperability discussion

Platform Accessibility API

Address Developer

BACKUP


Assistive Technology Support

Open Office launches separate JVM to marshal accessibility communications between AT and Office applications

• Slow performance (Multiple context switches)

• Difficult to maintain (debugging nightmare)

- Is the bug in UNO, UNO Access Bridge, “accessibility JVM”, Java Access Bridge, or underlying platform accessibility API?

• UNO API does not map exactly to Java Accessibility API anyway (8 major differences)

IBM Replacing bridge in Workplace with direct COM Implementation

• FAST (AT vendors run in process on Windows)

• Spent good portion of 2005 working with Freedom Scientific to document access speed and MSAA support

• Reuses MSAA where applicable

• Same mechanism could be employed in Open Office


Tooling

Instances where OpenOffice, Workplace not exposing accessibility properties• OLE embeddings allowed alt text property but not saved in file format

• ODF format does support alt text on OLE Objects

More to be assessed