I am in way over my head. I can do this!
Just when I was starting feel so confident. It’s just gonna take some creative thinking!
But I could use some help…
The project
It is a ten-page interactive PDF describing different types of plagiarism and includes multiple examples of how to properly cite various types of sources. All ten pages are littered with hyperlinks to outside references and parenthetical citations in APA format. A lot of the things that need to translate via a screen reader include special characters (in a programming coding example), audio files (in a music composition example and a radio advertisement example), and images of sheet music and print advertisements.
I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ve been watching courses on LinkedIn Learning and trying to wing it. I’m going through feelings of confidence one minute followed by hopelessness the next. Could there have possibly been a more complicated document to hand over to an accessibility newbie with instructions to “just make it read”? It sounds so simple! And yet…
The original PDF, in addition to what’s described above, is laid out in a magazine style; there’s horizontal lines being used for design purposes, pull quotes, boxes of “quick tips” sprinkled throughout, and images galore. Obviously most of this stuff is not necessary to understanding the actual content and only serves to make it “pretty” and give the information some breathing room between points to aid in navigation for sighted users.
To use this PDF as is and remediate it to be accessible would be a nightmare. The sheer number or useless [to a nonsighted person] design elements that would need to be artifacted in the PDF or InDesign, and the amount of logical reordering of the content that would need to take place to make it make sense would be a monumental task for a team of just me and one coworker who is also brand new to this.
So, since we were [thank God!] the original creators of the file, I was able to go back to the original Word doc—which already had defined paragraph styles applied—and make some basic tweaks to at least just make it readable as a logically flowing document. All imagery that served no contextual purpose was removed and alt text added for the images that are necessary. Lovely; it reads.
Heads up! If you’re using the Read Aloud feature in Word to try to test things out as you go, it will not read your alt text. You’re just gonna have to test that out in the PDF [or InDesign if you’re placing in there afterward—get it? After Word?]
Hurdle 1: Audio Files
With the discontinuation of Flash last year, I thought this was going to be our biggest issue, but it turns out we can just place them as buttons in the PDF with alt text instructing students to click the button to hear the audio examples.
Update: This actually might not be possible, but a possible alternative is to host the audio files online and link out. This idea will require collaboration from our Production department.
Hurdle 2: Chunks of Code
This is the part that has me really scratching my head. To preface, I am not a programmer. Beyond some standard HTML and that one time I dabbled through half of a MOOC about Python on Coursera, I’m not very adept at understanding random chunks of code or how to explain in a visual way what’s being shown. I also know that certain things like spaces vs. tab characters and line breaks vs. hard returns carry special meaning in this arena, and I wouldn’t be able to tell the subtle differences from looking at an image of some code with no “nonprint characters” showing.
While the code itself can be retyped from the image as live text, a large portion of it includes special characters, which most screen readers will not read. Most popular screen readers, such as JAWS and NVDA, have “verbosity settings” in which users can set the reader to read all punctuation, but I have yet to be able to test these features because 1.) we don’t have access to JAWS, which isn’t free, and 2.) NVDA, while open source and free, is Windows only, and our whole team uses Macs [I don’t even own a PC, or at least not one that’s reliable and up-to-date].
The best idea I’ve been able to come up with *so far* is to make an audio file of an actual programmer reading these examples out loud in a way that will be clear to those student cohorts. We could then possibly host the file online and link out to it. The same solution might work for the citation-formatting examples [and would presumably sound better and easier to understand than the weird AI voice].
In the meantime, I’ve been searching for blogs specifically by nonsighted computer programmers in an effort to figure out what tools they rely on the most and what accessibility features and methods work best for blind programmers/coders/computer science students, etc. to see if I can glean some more helpful ideas.
Also, if anyone is reading this and just so happens to have personal experience, links to blogs or other resources, or is part of the community I am desperately trying to serve, I would 1000% welcome and love the help! Please comment your insight! This is such an underserved community, and I really want to help get our institution fully compliant in all collateral, not just the ones that students specifically ask for via accommodations requests.
The Humble Pedant 