On 05/01/2018 08:31 PM, Tom Davies wrote: > Hi :) > Sounds like using .doc is the best answer after all. The Pdf route is > intriguing. I think Virgil probably knows whether any of his students have > relevant accessibility issues. >
Yes, none of my students are visually impaired and none need a screen reader, so I'm not concerned about lawsuits. However, I also teach several on-line courses, and this discussion has caused me to rethink some of my practices. After some very preliminary searching, it appears that the problem is not limited to PDF files. Apparently, at least one of the problems is with graphics. As I understand it (and I admit I understand very little of it), screen readers turn text into speech and read the document to the user whose vision prevents him/her from reading it visually. I guess screen readers stumble on pictures. One problem with PDF is that, depending on how its created, the entire file can be a graphic instead of text. For example, if I scan a text document and save it as a PDF, what I have is not a text file, but a picture of a text file. Jonathan suggested that the fillable box in a PDF file is a graphic that screen readers don't comprehend. I'll defer to his greater knowledge of the subject. Since graphics aren't limited to PDF files, neither is the potential for ADA violations. In my cursory search, I found articles explaining how to make DOC files and HTML files more accessible as well as PDF files. (See, e.g., https://www.section508.gov/content/build/create-accessible-documents). I found an interesting article from 2011 dealing with making OpenOffice.org files more accessible. (https://webaim.org/techniques/ooo/) One recommendation was to use paragraph styles for headings as they not only make the headings look nice, but also provide logical organization of the document, so here's yet another benefit of using styles! Having said all this, I also had the opportunity to experiment with LO's creation of fillable PDF forms. I like the way it works, but from what I have found, it would seem to work best if the fillable text is only one line -- a short box here or there. My test is an essay test with answers that will be several paragraphs long. At least with the PDF I created, all of the fillable text was input on one line that didn't initially wrap. Only after I typed the entire fill-in text and hit <enter> did the text wrap and become formatted to the text box that I had created. Assuming this is the way it always works, I don't think this would be very convenient for students trying to write a three paragraph essay. I think it it would be better for students to simply type their answers into the word processing file rather than a PDF. But, it's nice to know that LO has this capability. I'm sure I'll use it in other situations. I also checked one of my school's computers and it appears that it has MSO 2006 on it -- at least that's what the Program Files menu says. It has been several years since I have used any version of MSO, so I'm not up to speed on the different versions of it over the years, and I found no way to open an "about MS Word" dialog to see what version it actually was. I say this to confirm that I have no confidence that my students' unique version of Word (whatever it might be) would be able to adequately read an ODT file created by my LO 6.0.3. However, to date, I've never had a problem with an LO generated DOC file being read by my students' computers. So, as Tom suggests, I've come full circle. When I create an essay exam, I always save it in ODT format until I'm ready to share with my students. Then, I save a copy of the final draft to DOC and send it to my students. LO's conversion has really grown over the years, and I very impressed with the results. My students then type their answers onto the DOC file and send it back to me. It's a very easy solution to create and, thus far, has worked very well. Virgil -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
