TheAccessPond.com

I recently came across a site that gave guidance about formatting a Microsoft Word 2003 document for accessibility. Yes, I know that Office 2007 is the most recent version but there are still a lot of Office 2003 users in the World and most of the advice can be transferred to the newer versions.

The guidance on this site seemed very detailed and in depth so I thought I would review it in case I could pick up something new.

The Problem

As I read through the site I came across a statement that said the style for Header 1 (that is heading level 1) should only be used once in a document and that it should be used as a title. I am not sure why this advice was being given because Word provides a style for the title of a document. The style is called, oddly enough, ‘Title’. In fact, using the ‘Header 1′ style for a title is going to cause problems with your table of contents, if you choose to use a TOC.

The site went on to describe how to remove the Header 1 style from the TOC outline. I thought to myself, “Hmmm. Why would they do that? Maybe they don’t like the way the Title style is formatted. If that is the case why don’t they just modify the style to look the way they want?”

As I continued to read it was mentioned that there is a bug with the TOC in Word 2003 and that a after the TOC is created in a document the user should cut and paste the TOC into Notepad. Then after that they should copy the TOC from Notepad and paste it back into the Word document. What?!

All the advice this site had given was pretty accurate so far. This business about using Heading 1 as a title was a bit odd but now this TOC stuff was just plain ridiculous. If I follow the advice on the TOC all I have done is negated the benefit of having a TOC in the document! For example the bookmark links were automatically generated are now gone. Any formatting that the TOC had is now gone. I also no longer have the ability to update the TOC should I make changes to my document. If I do make changes to the document I have to recreate the TOC, paste it into Notepad and then back into Word and manually reformat the entire TOC. Why would they give such crazy advice?

The “Ah-Ha!” Moment

Now at this moment I would usually just close my browser and say, “What is wrong with the people who created that site?” But something was nagging at me to look further into what they really were trying to accomplish. The site mentioned that this TOC workaround needed to be done because there was a bug in Word 2003 and the way it handled the table of contents. It also said that this issue had been fixed in Word 2007. The site didn’t go into detail about this mysterious issue that caused them give such nonsensical advice.

So I decided to break out my install of Office 2003 and poke around a little to see what I could figure out. As I tried different things I quickly discovered an issue with the TOC. Some of the heading levels were not showing up in the TOC! I tried the same steps in Office 2007 and found that this behavior was not happening in that version. Could this be the reason for the strange advice being given?

I am not sure if this is the reason, but it does tie the header and TOC advice together or at least places them both at the scene of the crime. I am going to assume this must be the apparent ‘bug’ that was referenced.

The Fix!

As I contemplated why the TOC in Word 2003 was not including all the headers in the document I discovered the reason by showing the formatting marks in the document. This is done using the Show/Hide command button while in the Normal (Print Layout in Word 2007), Web Layout or Draft Layout views.

To turn this feature on and off you select the button with the paragraph mark on it  or use the keyboard shortcut which is Alt+Shift+*. When it is on your document will include the various formatting marks demonstrated in this screen shot:

What I noticed is if a page break was used and there was no carriage return just before the break then the heading that followed on the next page would not show up in the TOC.

How could this happen? An example would be that you are typing in Print Layout view and you have inserted a page break. You notice that there appears to be an extra line below the last paragraph on the page. It looks this way because the cursor is sitting there flashing at you (this is due to the carriage return).

So you use the backspace key to remove that apparent extra empty line. When you do this you have effectively removed the carriage return. Now the paragraph and page break no longer have a carriage return to separate the two.

Here is an image of how the document would look with the the carriage return properly located between the end of the paragraph and the page break:

When the carriage return is removed this creates the situation as demonstrated in the image below:

That carriage return is essential if you want the header style at the top of the next page to be included in the TOC.

If you are a user of Word 2003 go give it a try and see for yourself! If you find that the header does not get added back to the TOC after you re-add the carriage return, then select the header text and reapply the style.

Summary

Now I am not sure if this is in fact the issue that was being discussed on the site I mentioned earlier. If it is or is not the fact is the advice that was given on that site is just plain bad advice.

By using the proper styles and other features in Word such, as the Table of Contents, correctly your document will be better structured as an accessible document. Then if you export your document to a PDF format that structure will be exported also which again provides better accessibility.

Now I don’t want to knock the effort that was put into creating the content on the site mentioned above because the majority of it was correct. I want to encourage more effort to share this type of knowledge. This way we can help to ensure that content is accessible to all users.

That being said, I also want to encourage that any advice that is given be as accurate as possible. If you run into issues like that demonstrated in this blog post please don’t just make things up. Take the time to do your own research and post comments and questions on blogs like this one. You may find someone who can provide you the solution.

Most importantly do not assume that everything you read online as correct. Do your due dillegence! As mentioned in the title of the post, when it comes to free accessibility advice…caveat emptor!

If you disagree with my comments, have run into similar situations or have any questions on accessibility issue s please post your comments and questions here.

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