Accessible Digital Office Document (ADOD) Project

Result

[ADOD-Office-Applications-UI 7.1] Use all applicable operating system and accessibility standards and conventions that are important or essential to accessibility. The techniques for this checkpoint include references to checklists and guidelines for a number of platforms and to general guidelines for accessible applications.
ADOD Note: The Checkpoint is very general, and includes: Supporting relevant accessibility API(s); Web-based tools conforming to WCAG; Keyboard access; Providing keyboard shortcuts where recommended for a platform; Respecting platform settings (such as “high contrast” modes); and Providing documentation.

Yes.

• Screen reader support is confirmed by testing (see below).
• Most features are keyboard accessible.
• Keys assigned to desktop system are not available to OpenOffice applications.
• Underlined characters on menu bar and submenus indicate shortcut keys.
• Shortcut keys for mouse actions.
• Respects platform settings including “high contrast” mode.

[ADOD-Office-Applications-UI 7.2] Allow the author to change the presentation within editing views without affecting the [office document]. This allows the author to edit the document according to personal requirements, without changing the way the document is rendered when published.

Yes. “Zoom” feature and support for high contrast settings.

[ADOD-Office-Applications-UI 7.3] Allow the author to edit all properties of each element and object in an accessible fashion.

Yes. Including shortcut keys for drawing, arranging, and grouping graphical objects.

[ADOD-Office-Applications-UI 7.4] Ensure that the editing view allows navigation via the structure of the document in an accessible fashion.

Yes. Via the “Navigator” feature.

[ADOD-Office-Applications-UI 7.5] Enable editing of the structure of the document in an accessible fashion.

Yes. Via the “Navigator” feature.

[ADOD-Office-Applications-UI 7.6] Allow the author to search within editing views.

Yes. Via the “Find and Replace” feature.

VoiceOver OS X 10.6

Title slide

Yes.

Bulleted list with formatted text and a misspelled word

Yes.  It was possible to access the text by entering edit mode (see section 3), but the VoiceOver text attributes command (control + option + t) did not appear to function in OpenOffice.

Image with “alt” text

Yes.

Table

Yes.  VoiceOver reports this as empty.  After entering edit mode (see section 3) tab keys and arrow keys could be used to navigate the cells of the table.

Flowchart created from grouping shapes

No.

Search function

Yes.  VoiceOver did not report what was typed into the search combo box, but did perform the search and moved to the appropriate slide.

VoiceOver OS X 10.6

Add and then edit paragraph text (e.g. do a select-cut-paste)

Yes.  To add a text frame it was necessary to ensure that the Text toolbar was enabled (View > Toolbars > Text).  To add the text frame to a slide press F6 to move to the Text toolbar and press (command + enter) on the Text button to add the text frame to the current slide.

Insert an image

Yes. It was necessary to double click on the image with a physical mouse to access a menu from which the “Name” could be set (see “Other Comments”, below).

Insert a 3-by-3 table and fill it with content

No. It was possible to create a 3 by 3 table, but it was not possible to fill it with content reliably (see “Other Comments”, below).

Create a bullet list

It did not appear to be possible to create a bullet list. The dialog for Format > Bullets and Numbering was not accessible with VoiceOver.

Use text formatting (bold, text colour)

Yes.  It was possible to set bold, it did not appear to be possible to set a font color. The font color control did not appear to be accessible with VoiceOver.

Save document

Yes.

Other Comments by the Screen Reader Tester:

Interacting with OpenOffice was non-intuitive for VoiceOver users.  VoiceOver users are accustomed to using special object navigation and interaction commands (some of which crash VoiceOver when used in Impress).  Using more standard commands such as those described in the message below resolved this for the most part.

Pressing enter on a selected object on a slide entered edit mode, pressing escape exited edit mode.  For some of the above tasks it was necessary to be in edit mode to access all of the contents of the slide.

Table navigation was non-intuitive as it did not use any of VoiceOver’s table navigation commands. Once in edit mode on a table using the arrow or tab keys would navigate cells, however this was not reliable. Using (option + arrow keys) was slightly more reliable. VoiceOver did not report row and column position while navigating the tables. See also VoiceOver table navigation bug http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=103230

There were times when attempting to activate a control with VoiceOver (control + option + space), or with the virtual mouse (shift + control + command + space) would not work.  In these cases it was necessary to ensure that the control was in the cursor (control + option + F3), and then to physically click using the touchpad.

At different times it was necessary to disable cursor tracking (control + option + shift + F3). Cursor tracking allows the focus to follow the VoiceOver virtual focus.  This appeared to have some undesirable results when navigating within toolbars.

The OpenOffice help pages are known to be poorly accessible with VoiceOver, see above table bug.