Blog
Outlook Accessibility
Outlook is mostly used for emails, so what could we possibly get wrong here? To be fair, most simple text emails should be okay, but there are plenty of times that emails are anything but simple. Then we can bring in the Outlook Calendar. This is another very handy tool, that enables us to invite people to meetings and events. How can we do that in an accessible way?
Published: 18 August 2024
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PDF Accessibility
If there's one thing that will get Accessibility Specialists arguing amongst themselves, it is PDFs. There seems to be a PDF accessibility spectrum. At one end are those who condemn all PDFs as completely inaccessible, the spawn of the devil, never to be used again. At the other end are a group of accessibility people, who bombard my LinkedIn messaging system with offers to make every PDF in my organisation 100% accessible. They offer compliance with every law known to man and don't understand why I don't bite their hands off. I'm somewhere in the middle. We live in a world that includes PDFs so it makes sense to ensure that they are accessible to as many people as possible.
In this post, I want to share some tips to make your PDF as accessible as possible. To do this properly, you need Adobe Acrobat Pro(the paid for version). If you haven't got this, I would not really recommend creating PDFs but if you absolutely have to, at least follow the first two tips and that will be better than nothing.
Published: 10 August 2024
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PowerPoint Accessibility
PowerPoint is a fantastic application for displaying slides to support a presentation, whether face-to-face or online. However, it often gets used for purposes that it isn't intended for, such as creating reports and dashboards. So before I even begin, the first thing I would advise you to do, is question whether PowerPoint is the right tool for the job.
Making PowerPoint slides accessible can involve a lot of work and really knowing how to use PowerPoint well. I'm going to assume that the principles we've already looked at in Word and Excel still apply to PowerPoint. So give your images alt text, give your slides a meaningful name, and if you display data, provide the raw data as well as a graph.
Published: 4 August 2024
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Excel Accessibility
I tend to get two assumptions about Excel. The first is that it is automatically accessible because all you do is put data in cells, so what's to go wrong? The second is that Excel is not at all accessible and that we should either avoid it or not even worry about accessibility.
Neither is true. Excel, like most other applications, can be used to create accessible content but you have to know what you're doing. In this day and age, I really think we should all know how to do this, which is why I write these blogs and run my website.
Published: 21 July 2024
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Word Accessibility
Some of my earliest experiences of using a computer were for word processing. I had a ZX Spectrum +3 with a word processing programme that took ages to load. It allowed me to produce my university assignments in print, rather than having to handwrite them. In 1989, I don't think I knew anything about accessibility - physical or digital - but a lot has changed since then.
Now, in 2024, most of us have some kind of digital device and disabled people, including assistive software users, should be able to access Word documents just as easily as everyone else. This post will explain three things that you can do to make your Word document more accessible.
I'll try to explain what to do, why it matters and how to do it. I will try to give instructions for assistive software users too, as I think they get completely forgotten when teaching accessibility.
Published: 14 July 2024
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Document Series
It's a long time since I wrote blog posts on the subject of document accessibility, which is something that we should all know something about. In the workplace, I have noticed a significant shift in awareness around document accessibility but there is still a long way to go. Many people now know they should be making their documents accessible but just lack the skills and confidence to do it well.
So I thought now is the time to write a series of blog posts on different types of documents and give you three things that we can all do to make them more accessible.
Published: 7 July 2024
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Northern Ireland
As I prepare this blog post, it's a week before we leave for Northern Ireland. As usual, a lot of planning has gone into this post, which you can see on my Wanderlog Plan 
. I've also plotted out the Northern Ireland part of the trip on this map.
Published: 22 June 2024
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Liggy in the Workplace
Liggy is my assistance dog, provided by the charity, Canine Partners . When I first brought her home, I wrote a blog post called Assistance Dog Etiquette , to help explain to other people in my world, how they should behave around her. That post was great in the beginning but Liggy is older now and things change, so I thought I should update the information.
What I am going to write here applies mostly to when Liggy comes into a workplace with me, but it does transfer to other environments too, such as shops and restaurants.
Published: 19 February 2024
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Inequality and Injustice
2023 has been yet another year, dominated by news stories of war. The war in Ukraine has continued. War in Israel and Gaza has erupted. It feels like a very unsettled time for our world.
Is it coincidence that in 2024, two of our planned holidays take us to places that have been the centre of war and conflict? Our next road trip will take us to Northern Ireland, which as a child, I only knew as where The Troubles were happening. Then, later in 2024, we are planning to visit the Western Front in Ypres, Belgium and the Somme area of France, to find out more about World War 1.
As I begin to plan these two trips and learn about the history of Northern Ireland and the Western Front, I find myself asking some bigger questions around equality and injustice. What role does inequality play in war and conflict? This is an important question for me, as my work now centres around this same issue.
This blog post will explore some of my thoughts, though I expect I will have many more questions than answers at this stage.
Published: 29 December 2023
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Out of Season Road Trip
I've become quite sensitive to various discussions that have emerged on social media about motorhomes and road trips. Two themes, in particular, have caught my attention because they generate very strong views, which are often expressed with a nastiness that I don't want to be on the receiving end of.
- Motorhomes as a method of travel and touring
- Tourist routes such as the North Coast 500.
I'll explore these a little in this post, and look at the pros and cons of doing a road trip outside the main tourist season, as we just have. For context, we have just returned from a 2 week road trip of Kintyre and Islay, which was timed to coincide with our 30th wedding anniversary, but also fit the profile of 'out of season'.
Published: 23 December 2023
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