We were incredibly proud to host our first ever Digital Accessibility Seminar held at Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind on Thursday 11th April 2024. Primarily focused on the concepts of Digital Accessibility and Universal Design, the session offered crucial staff training in how to make the organisation’s digital and web content as friendly and accessible as possible for visually impaired end users. During the session the following areas were covered:
- How to use magnification and screen-reading software (Zoomtext and JAWS)
- The importance of the European Accessibility Directive and what will be expected of all Irish and EU organisations in terms of making digital content more universal and inclusive.
- Microsoft Office and it’s Accessibility Checking tool
- How to make electronic documents operational with a keyboard
- Making a document navigable with JAWS
- How to make Word documents digitally accessible, with emphasis on the concepts of Markup (use of appropriate headings) and Alternative Text (text added to describe images), and the use of appropriate heading levels/styles.
- How to make PowerPoint Presentations digitally accessible, with emphasis on the concept of logical reading order, screen-reader friendliness, and descriptive slide titles.
- How to make web content digitally accessible, with emphasis on understanding how a screen-reader reads a web page, using appropriate headings (Markup), using a JAWS-friendly layout, and adding descriptive link text.
The session was a great success and allowed us the opportunity to showcase some of our leading assistive technology products that are highly beneficial in the workplace, including Envision Glasses, Zoomtext Keyboards, and Orcam Read.
We would like to sincerely thank the staff at Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind for giving us their full attention and remaining fully engaged with the material. Here is what they had to say:
“The information was presented in a way that we understood and in a logical order. This demystified how to navigate through a document with JAWs, We have heard so much about the difficulties with access but now we understand it more. (of course the presenters were fab and answered all our questions).
We feel we could make a PowerPoint presentation accessible now. We understand the logic of paragraph headings and subheadings to facilitate ease of navigation. We didn’t know Microsoft Word was so useful in facilitating accessibility of documents and we intend to use it going forward.
We, as an organisation, need to do more work before the implementation of regulations regarding accessibility, and we are now fully-trained and prepared for that work.”
We highly recommend that all Irish organisations avail themselves of Digital Accessibility training in order to be best prepared for the implementation of the European Accessibility Directive.
If you are an organisation based in Ireland and you would like to receive Digital Accessibility Training from Sight and Sound Technology, please contact [email protected]