J.3.6.2 Additional Programmatic Access
The following guidelines should be followed to ensure an accessible Office Open XML specification:
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The system caret (the blinking vertical bar that users see when editing text) exposes the location of the keyboard focus for assistive technology. The system caret can be placed anywhere on the
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screen and made any shape or size. It can also be made invisible and moved to indicate the keyboard focus location for the benefit of other applications without disturbing what the user sees on the screen. The system caret should be sized and positioned to cover the screen element’s bounding rectangle, so that screen magnification tools can zoom in on any part of the complete object. This helps the user look for an object’s label or judge its size, and it enables utilities to highlight the object that has the keyboard focus. The application should provide programmatic access to all textual content and all text attributes. The application associates a unique, meaningful title (and a description, if needed) with frames, objects, windows, and Web pages to facilitate identification and navigation. The description associated with a frame, object, window, or Web page gives the purpose of the item and explains how that item relates to other items. (A description is necessary only if the purpose and relationship is not clear from the title alone.) Vector drawings and elements have title and desc tags. The alternative text is reused as graphics. The application should provide a mechanism by which the user can view headers (row and column) for each cell in a table.
The help system of an Office Open XML system should also be accessible. In addition, developers should do everything possible to make access to a help system as easy possible. Advanced methods for achieving this include providing direct access to help topics via any features in the UI. Searchable help systems tend to be
When generating documents and templates based on Office Open XML, there are a set of best practices that should be followed to best make use of the structure implicit in Office Open XML. The following paragraphs describe these practices. These practices are not necessarily the only way to enhance each scenario.