Book Excerpt from Excel Best Practices for Business

Here is an excerpt from Excel Best Practices for Business published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This text only document has been edited with appropriate markers to facilitate readability with screen reader software.

Title: Excel Best Practices for Business
Copyright 2004, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 076454120X
Author: Loren Abdulezer

Start of Chapter Excerpt

Chapter 13: Assistive Technologies and Assistive Portals
Start of: In This Chapter End of: In this Chapter

Chapter Section: Preliminaries
Recently, I attended a conference on assistive technologies. The speaker in one of the presentations started discussing the detailed requirements and standards of various governmental regulations relating to disabilities. The speaker went on and on, citing one regulation subsection after another. I kept thinking to myself, "Why am I here?"

Actually, I knew quite well why I was there. The conference and this speaker's presentation did cover important topics. It did help to crystallize some thoughts I had been formulating.

Not long afterward, I was invited by a colleague to a smaller gathering, at which various assistive technologies were being presented and discussed. I particularly recall an older gentleman whose vision was, at best, very limited. He was accompanied by his wife and a relative or friend of the family. They had him trying out some screen magnifier software, going through the ins and outs of its various settings. He was just beginning to grasp the sheer dimensions of the world suddenly about to open up. So here I was, a total stranger to these people sitting halfway across the room. I never shared a conversation with them prior to, during that day, or even afterwards. That relatively understated but important moment was to me what the significance of Assistive Technology is all about.

One of my goals for this chapter is to shatter a preconception about Assistive Technology and the promise it holds in the business world. Clearly, as the above story indicates, overcoming disabilities and making the information world accessible is important. No one denies that. With recent amendments to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Federal government is stepping up to the plate and taking a responsible position to make information in electronic form accessible to all communities of individuals despite challenges and obstacles faced by individuals with disabilities. Many state governments and the vendors serving these communities are rallying in good faith to uphold these standards, even if not bound by the covenants the federal government has set for itself.

So, what preconception needs to be shattered?
Myth: It is not cost effective to produce and distribute the primary document for business, quantitative, and financial analysis (that is, spreadsheets) in a form that is truly accessible.

Chapter subsection: Intended audience and basic goals
I’ve directed this chapter specifically at corporations, governmental agencies, and organizations that are actively preparing or thinking about preparing accessible spreadsheets and documents. More important, this chapter is specifically directed at organizations both large and small that have counted themselves off the list of organizations and have tentatively concluded that they can forego the preparation of accessible documents. I want to show you that the economics of making 508 compliant and truly accessible documents can be made cost effective (on a level not previously considered). Doing so requires the use of Assistive Portals, a special type of Spreadsheet Portal designed to make the contents of other spreadsheets accessible.

I want to give you to a hands-on implementation guide that accomplishes the following: Chapter subsection: Chapter organization
This chapter begins with some background information about various kinds of disabilities and relevant legislation. It goes on to discuss the economics of making widely distributed documents accessible. In particular, I introduce a new concept called an "Assistive Portal" (AP). I identify the basic strategy behind Assistive Portals and show how an AP alters the economics of producing and maintaining accessible spreadsheets. For the sake of demonstration, I have focused on a specific disability. The examples chosen illustrate the use of preparing Assistive Portals designed to work with screen readers.

The rest of this chapter walks you through the specific steps and issues you will face when setting up a screen reader. After you have a screen reader set up, you’ll begin to work with the basics of organizing a spreadsheet to make its contents readily accessible. To give the spreadsheet a little more oomph, I show you how to incorporate accessible graphical components.

This will give you the basics for preparing generally accessible spreadsheets for use with screen readers. These basics should serve you well even without incorporating Assistive Portals.

The next step is to understand what Assistive Portals are, how they are structured, and how to implement one. Stated concisely, an Assistive Portal is a simple spreadsheet portal page designed for a specific disability. An Assistive Portal provides access to spreadsheets that lack the navigation aids and accessibility friendly features (a.k.a. electronic curb cuts) and makes large, complex spreadsheets accessible without having to perform surgery on them.

Though one disability is discussed in detail, the overall steps outlined apply in general to preparing an Assistive Portal regardless of the type of disability. Also, nothing precludes you from broadening the concept of an Assistive Portal beyond the use of spreadsheets.

Chapter Section: Background
Although many readers of this book may be familiar with assistive technologies and the nature of disability issues, others may not. What follows is a brief outline of these topics.

Chapter subsection: Disabilities
There's a wide range of disabilities; in fact, far too many to comprehensively address here. I will try, however, to give you representative examples so that you can begin to develop an orientation.

Before you dive into the background, I want you to have a clear understanding of what the real challenges are. Individuals with disabilities face four challenges:

  1. They have to contend with their own disabilities. A person with motor skills challenges, aside from dexterity issues and restricted range of movement, may become quickly fatigued.
  2. The assistive software or adaptive devices may not be as quick, interactive, or easy to use as the regular application software.
  3. The assistive software may not recover 100 percent of the capabilities of the operating system features and applications software. Unless you are aware of the specific gaps, you may be throwing a curve ball at some users.
  4. Sometimes spreadsheet design (and, for that matter, any document design) can mar the effectiveness of an otherwise accessible document. Specifically, data in a spreadsheet can be "orphaned." Think about a user who is visually impaired. How is such a user going to find relevant data located at the cell coordinates of AZ1024? Unless the user was specifically told that there is data in this location, or the data is adjacent to other data being used by the user, the chances are pretty slim that the user will easily find the data in the normal course of his or her work.
The challenges in numbers 3 and 4 are what you need to be concerned with and what I address in this chapter.

End of Chapter Excerpt

The rest of this chapter goes through addressing specifically how to make Excel spreadsheets accessible to individuals disabilities and special needs. Best practices and open source technologies like Assistive Portals are the facilities needed to level the playing field. What will change the hearts and minds of businesses is the realization that facilities like Assistive Portals does not require modifying spreadsheet to make them fully accessible. This radically alters the economics of making spreadsheets accessible. For many businesses, this change in the bottom line will what will sway them to adopt new practices.

Read through and try the sample files in Excel Best Practices for Business. If you need help implementing this for your company or organization then contact the Excel Best Practices Resource Center.

One final note...
I have been fortunate of having the benefit of validating my approach with the American Foundation for the Blind, Computer Center for Visually Impaired People (Baruch College), and the NYC Department of Education/Educational Vision Services.

Loren Abdulezer
URL for the Excel Best Practices Resource Center is: http://www.excelbestpractices.com.
Copyright 2004, 2005 Evolving Technologies Corporation - All rights reserved.