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Overview

Version: Dec. 2010

Abstract

The Accessible Digital Office Documents (ADOD) Project is an undertaking to provide guidance on the accessibility of office documents, office document formats and office applications. ADOD provides both an “ADOD Assessment Framework” and a suite of practical easy-to-use support documents that are intended to help users, purchasers and policy makers use and make decisions about office applications. Currently, ADOD is based primarily on the WCAG 2.0 and ATAG 1.0 Recommendations of the W3C.

Table of Contents

Abstract
Introduction
Scope
Relationship between ADOD and WCAG 2.0/ATAG 1.0
ADOD Supporting Documents
Conformance
Glossary of ADOD-Specific Terms
References
W3C Recommendations:
Other Resources Consulted:
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Digital office documents (or simply “office documents”), whether they are produced by “traditional” desktop office applications (e.g., Microsoft Office, Corel WordPerfect, OpenOffice, Apple iWork, etc.) or web-based applications (e.g., Google Docs, Microsoft “Office Web Apps”, etc.) remain a critical means of communication in domains as diverse as commerce, education, civic engagement and public governance. This has been generally positive for accessibility because digital documents, unlike their printed counterparts, have the potential to be accessible to the millions of individuals globally who face barriers to using print. This includes individuals who are blind, have compromised vision, have dyslexia, cannot turn pages or handle paper due to motor restrictions, or who face cognitive access or literacy barriers.

Unfortunately, despite this potential and despite legislative and policy commitments to equal access, many office documents produced globally are still not prepared inclusively. Factors contributing to this situation include the still under-developed state of accessibility support (e.g., accessibility checkers) in office applications and a general lack of awareness and knowledge by users of the accessibility features that are already present in these applications.

The Accessible Digital Office Documents (ADOD) Project provides a framework for assessing the accessibility of office documents and the accessibility support provided by office applications. ADOD is based on the accessibility guidance provided for Web content and Web content authoring tools by the W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) and Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG 1.0).

ADOD is comprised of the “ADOD Assessment Framework” and a suite of supporting documents.

Scope

The ADOD Assessment Framework specifically targets office documents, which are defined as computer documents that are:

  • Intended to be used by people (i.e., not computer code),
  • Text-based (i.e., not simply images, although they may contain images),
  • Fully printable (i.e., where dynamic features are limited to automatic page numbering, table of contents, etc. and do not include audio, video, or embedded interactivity),
  • Self-contained (i.e., without hyperlinks to other resources unlike web content), and
  • Typical of office-style workflows (Reports, letters, memos, budgets, presentations, etc.).

ADOD Assessment Framework does not simply apply to any document produced by an office application using an office document format. This is an important distinction because office document formats and office applications have been extended over the years to allow the creation of content with many of the same dynamic and interactive features as web content technologies offer (e.g., hyperlinking to other resources, multimedia support, and programmability). When office document formats are used to create dynamic and/or interactive content (whether or not for the Web), WCAG 2.0 rather than the ADOD Assessment Framework should be consulted to assess accessibility.
Since full inclusion includes allowing everyone to be both consumers and producers of content, the ADOD Assessment Framework addresses the question of office document accessibility from several perspectives:

Accessibility of office documents

  • Part 1 ([ADOD-Office-Documents] Assessing the accessibility of office documents) addresses the accessibility of complete office documents, ready for sharing with other users. This section is based on WCAG 2.0.

Accessibility of Office Document Formats

  • Part 2 ([ADOD-Office-Formats] Assessing the accessibility of office document formats) addresses the accessibility of the underlying office document formats, regardless of how they are presented to users in the various office applications. This section is based on a subset of [ADOD-Office-Documents], above.

Accessibility of Office Application User Interfaces

  • Part 3 ([ADOD-Office-Applications-UI] Assessing the accessibility of office application user interfaces) addresses the accessibility to users with disabilities of the user interfaces provided by office applications. This section is based on ATAG 1.0 Guideline 7 (“Ensure that the authoring tool is accessible to authors with disabilities.”)

Support for Authoring Accessible Office Documents

  • Part 4 ([ADOD-Office-Applications-Supports] Assessing the provision by office applications of support for authoring accessible office documents) addresses the features that office applications provide to all users to support and encourage production of accessible office documents. This section is based on ATAG 1.0 Guidelines 1-6.

The supporting documents will focus primarily on three types of office documents:

  • Word processor documents are used for general-purpose text documents (e.g., reports, letters, memos, etc.),
  • Spreadsheets are used for tabular documents (e.g., budgets, inventories, etc.), and
  • Presentations are used for presentations (briefings, sales presentations, etc.).

Note re: Presentations: Of the three types of office documents, presentations are the most likely to make use of dynamic or interactive content (e.g., audio, video, multimedia, animations, hyperlinks to other resources, etc.). When this is the case, WCAG 2.0 should be used to assess accessibility, rather than ADOD’s Assessment Framework.

Note re: Document editing is not considered “dynamic/interactive” content: One of the typical features of office documents is that they are often editable and during editing, a certain amount of interactivity and dynamism may occur (e.g., the document updates to reflect the user’s last entry, when the use updates a spreadsheet cell other cells may also update). However, ADOD does not consider changes caused by editing an office document to constitute interactive/dynamic content.

Relationship between ADOD and WCAG 2.0/ATAG 1.0

The W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) and W3C-WAI Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG 1.0*) provide open, comprehensive and respected guidance on how to develop accessible web content and accessible web content authoring tools. The ADOD Assessment Framework is an attempt to usefully apply these guidelines to the context of office documents/application with as little “adjustment” as possible.

The adjustments are necessary because simply applying WCAG 2.0 and ATAG 1.0 to the context of office documents/applications has several drawbacks:

  • Vocabulary confusion: ATAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 both make frequent use of terms such as “web content” and “authoring tool” that need to be re-mapped to be applicable to office documents and office applications. Creating adjusted sets of success criteria for ADOD allowed the office document-specific terms to be inserted
  • Numerous non-applicable success criteria: Because ADOD focuses specifically on office documents without dynamic or interactive content, many WCAG 2.0 success criteria are not applicable. Creating an adjusted set of office document accessibility success criteria for ADOD allowed the non-applicable success criteria to be dropped.
  • Multiple conformance levels: In formulating an easy-to-use assessment framework for office documents it was judged that the multiple conformance levels were an unnecessary complication. Creating adjusted sets of success criteria for ADOD at WCAG 2.0 Level AA meant that the level identifiers could be removed.
  • ATAG 1.0 references WCAG 1.0: ATAG 1.0 references WCAG 1.0, rather than the current W#C Recommendation, WCAG 2.0. Creating adjusted sets of success criteria for ADOD meant that the references could be changed to WCAG 2.0.
  • ATAG 1.0 is prioritized differently that WCAG 2.0: In WCAG 2.0, “success criteria” are assigned a “Level” between Level A and Level AA. In ATAG 1.0, “checkpoints” are assigned a “Priority” between priority 1 and priority 3. “Relative Priority” items take their priority level from the WCAG content in question. Creating adjusted sets of success criteria for ADOD meant that common wording could be employed.

At the same time, in order to reduce the risk of “fragmenting” the guidance provided to office application developers, who have only a limited budget for maintaining and improving of accessibility features, ADOD:

  • Uses the W3C-WAI numbering schemes and
  • Uses the original W3C-WAI wording except where vocabulary adjustments are indentified with square brackets.

* At the time of writing, ATAG 1.0 is the current Recommendation of W3C; ATAG 2.0 is under development.

ADOD Supporting Documents

ADOD includes several sets of Supporting Documents:

  • (1) Authoring Techniques for Accessible Office Documents (specific to each particular office application)
  • (2) Assessments of Support for Creating Accessible Office Documents
  • (3) Assessments the Accessibility of Office Application User Interfaces

Here is the list of Support Documents again, along with the relevant audiences:

(1) Authoring Techniques for Accessible Office Documents (specific to each particular office application)

  • All users of office applications
  • Purchasers of office applications
  • IT personnel
  • Office application developers

(2) Assessments of Support for Creating Accessible Office Documents

  • Office application users with disabilities
  • Purchasers of office applications
  • Policy makers
  • Office application developers

(3) Assessments the Accessibility of Office Application User Interfaces

  • Office application users with disabilities
  • Human Resources personnel concerned with job accommodation
  • Purchasers of office applications
  • Policy makers
  • IT personnel
  • Office application developers

Conformance

Since ADOD is essentially a “view” of WCAG 2.0 and ATAG 1.0 that is specific to office documents and office applications, an ADOD-specific conformance model is unnecessary. Instead, official conformance claims should be made to WCAG 2.0 (for office documents) and ATAG 1.0 (for office applications), noting that any Web-specific wording has been interpreted for an office document/application context.

If the document or application meets the criteria for being an office document or office application under the ADOD definition (i.e., used by people, text-based, fully printable, self-contained, and is typical of office-style workflows) then “Not Applicable” can be entered for all of the WCAG 2.0/ATAG 1.0 success criteria that are left out of the ADOD Assessment Framework.

Glossary of ADOD-Specific Terms

Terms specific to WCAG 2.0 and ATAG 1.0 are defined in those Recommendations.

office documents (digital office documents)
Computer files encoded in office document formats that are:
  • Intended to be used by people (i.e., are not computer code),
  • Text-based (i.e., are not simply images, although they may contain images),
  • Fully printable (i.e., dynamic features are limited to automatic page numbering, table of contents, etc. not audio, video, and embedded interactivity),
  • Self-contained (i.e., without links to other resources as is common with web content), and
  • Typical of office-style workflows (Reports, letters, memos, budgets, presentations, etc.).

Note: This purposefully excludes most documents making use of dynamic and interactive content (audio, video, hyperlinks to other resources, forms, programmability, etc.), since the accessibility of these are better assessed using WCAG 2.0. ADOD does, however, cover some dynamic content (animations, audio and video) in the context of presentations.

office document formats (digital office document formats)
Computer file formats that are produced and viewed primarily by office applications, such as word processor formats (e.g., Microsoft Word (*.doc, *.docx), OpenDocument Text (*.odt)), spreadsheet formats (Microsoft Excel (*.xls, *.xlsx) and OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods)), and presentation formats (e.g., Microsoft Powerpoint (*.ppt, *.pptx) and OpenDocument Presentation (*.odp)).
office applications (digital office applications)
Computer programs that are used to create office documents. Office applications are available for desktop platforms, mobile devices, web-based etc.
office application suite
A set of office applications that are distributed together. The applications that make up a suite often share relatively consistent user interfaces and the ability for enhanced interaction between them (e.g., the ability to paste a spreadsheet directly into a word processing document). ADOD covers the typical core members of most office suites: word processors, spreadsheet applications, and presentation applications. In addition, some suites include note-takers, flow-chart editors, image editors, formula editors, etc.

References

W3C Recommendations:

Other Resources Consulted:

Acknowledgments

This document was produced as part of the Accessible Digital Office Document (ADOD) Project (http://adod.idrc.ocad.ca/).

This project has been developed by the Inclusive Design Research Centre, OCAD University as part of an EnAbling Change Partnership project with the Government of Ontario and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

Partner logos: UNESCO-United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the Government of Ontario and the Inclusive Design Research Centre (OCAD University)

Copyright © 2010 Inclusive Design Research Centre, OCAD University
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