Deane Nettles | Advertising & Graphic Design

ACCESSIBILITY

Taking a course in basic web design would be useful in understanding accessibility; both from the aspect of structuring your documents and giving you more ways to control Blackboard.

Blackboard

Use Text Style > Title, Header, Subheader to add hierarchy to your text, much like you would add levels to an outline for a research paper, so students understand the structure of your document. Try to be consistent from page to page in how you add that structure.

Add alt tags to any image you place; if it's strictly for decoration, write "decoration" for the alt tag.

The hardest part of creating a good accessible website is being consistent throughout.

INDESIGN

File > File Info allows you to add:

• Title
• Author
• Subject

(Though you will need to check to make sure they show up in Acrobat when you export them)

Structure

USE PARAGRAPH STYLES!!!

• In each paragraph style, first go to [Basic Paragraph] and set Export Tagging to "P"
• Then create a hierarchy of styles with H1 being the most important, H2 less important, etc. and set the export tagging appropriately.

Alt Tags

• Select object, right-click, Object Export Options
• Alt Text Source changes to "Custom" and type your alt tag in.
  (There may be ways to automatically create alt tags from meta tags or such; but have not researched this yet.)

Bookmarks

Window > Interactive > Bookmarks

You can even add subsets

Bookmarks can be added to whole pages or anchored to specific items.

Forms

Use paragraph styles to keep your form elements consistent.

(I find it easier to create an entirely different layer for setting up form elements. Rather than the form elements being the actual elements, I tend to overlay them on the printable elements.)

• Draw a box and keep it selected (when setting up, good to give them a border so you can see them.)
• Go to Window > Interactive > Buttons and Forms
  • Pick Text Field
  • Check the other options to see if you need them, such as Required and Multiline
• Try to create the tabs in order.
• If checkbox, to change the color of the check, use the Direct Selection arrow

Tab Order

• Object > Interactive > Tab Order
• To then use this tab order, when you export the interactive pdf, uncheck "Use Structure for Tab Order" (otherwise it ignores YOUR tab structure and uses the order you created them in; perhaps could be fixed if you change layer order)

Also, might set view default to "Fit Page" and "Single Page Continuous"

ACROBAT

Document properties

• Title
• Author
• Subject
• (Can also set initial view here)

Accessibility Tags

• Auto-tag if there aren't tags
• Possible to re-order tags using the pallet

Bookmarks

You can add bookmarks in Acrobat, but no spaces are allowed in names for some reason so better to add in InDesign or Word.

MICROSOFT WORD

Properties

File > Properties to add document name

Hierarchy

Use Home > Style Panel to create hierarchical order by using styles Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, Heading 4 and Normal

Images

1. Place picture
2. Select picture and right-click
3. Select "View Alt Text" and write description of image for non-sighted people

Forms

Create tab order for forms by clicking the form, using the shortcut menu and selecting Tab Order, and moving the appropriate selection up or down in the order. (Microsoft: Set tab order using the tab order dialog box)