The Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities is proud to host learning modules on making Microsoft Office documents accessible to people with disabilities. Accessible documents are more usable for everyone, not just people with disabilities because they work better across all web browsers, computer systems, and other devices.
Creating accessible MS Office documents ensures Texas agencies meet their legal obligation for effective communication to people with disabilities while their staff members learn new skills to improve their efficiency and productivity with common MS Office computer tasks. GCPD Executive Director Ron Lucey remarked “This interagency collaboration demonstrates once again Texas government works best when Texas agencies work together in partnership to serve all Texans. I congratulate our agency partners for producing an effective resource that will meet the accessibility training needs of our state’s workforce. We encourage widespread use of these modules by all public and private entities.”
A group of Texas state agency accessibility experts spent much of their summer creating the new tutorials, which are based on the previous MS Office 2010 videos. The loosely organized committee was made up of fifteen state employees from seven agencies). The agencies represented are the lead agency, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), Texas Workforce Commission (TWC), Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) with participation by the Department of State health Services (DSHS) and the Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS), Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI), and the Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities (GCPD).
In 2013, a similar group created a set of video tutorials to help people create more accessible documents using Microsoft Office 2010. The concept was to offer enough information for the audience to complete the task at hand, rather than a comprehensive presentation that would be time-consuming. The idea was well-received and each of the modules has been viewed thousands of times by an international audience. The Office 2010 version was awarded the Federal Communications Commission 2014 Chairman’s AAA Award for innovation.
The award-winning Accessibility Video Tutorials hosted by the Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities website are now updated for MS Office 2013 and 2016. View the training videos at the Accessible Docs page. The site includes an updated Accessibility – Productivity Toolbar that puts the most common accessibility tasks on a single ribbon.
The Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities (Committee) provides GovDelivery updates for informational purposes on a variety of disability related issues for a diverse audience. Updates may include information provided by external sources. The inclusion of this external information does not constitute an official endorsement or approval by the Committee or the Office of the Governor of any information, policy, product, or service offered by an external source.
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