Office 2007 Professional Behind the Scenes Access

As one of the newest program managers on the PowerPoint team (and a recovering history major), I’m always fascinated to hear the stories behind features I now can’t imagine living without. And as one of the engineers responsible for Accessibility in PowerPoint, I care a tremendous amount about the accessibility of the software we build. So you can imagine how happy I was to see these two interests collide in one of the latest posts to the Office Engineering Blog—a backstage peek at the new Document Accessibility Checker built in to Excel, Word, and PowerPoint 2010,Buy Office Ultimate 2007, written by Larry Waldman from the User Experience Team. It turns out that the story behind the Document Accessibility Checker, like the story behind our new Video Triggers feature, begins with a user request. Actually,Office 2007 Professional, a lot of user requests: While user interface accessibility has been well understood for years, the accessibility of Office document content is a burgeoning new area. In particular,Buy Office Ultimate 2007, we’ve seen many requests from companies and governments who have been wondering how to help their employees create accessible content. To solve this problem in Office 2010 we created a document Accessibility Checker (like a spell checker, but for accessibility issues) as a core feature of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The rest of the post explains the Document Accessibility Checker in much greater detail, but the line “like a spell checker, but for accessibility issues” just about nails it. Incidentally, Larry also highlights an unbelievably useful feature: new keyboard shortcuts for navigating the Ribbon and adjusting shapes. In PowerPoint 2010, Ctrl + Right/Left in the Ribbon navigates through command groups Shift + Right/Left/Up/Down resizes shapes Alt + Right/Left rotates shapes. Though we built these new shortcuts with accessibility in mind, they end up making life easier for just about everyone. If you’re curious about the other keyboard shortcuts we swear by here on the PowerPoint team, you can read all about them here. Working with the Office User Experience team over the past six months, I’ve been consistently floored by their dedication to making the Office experience as accessible as possible. With the addition of the Document Accessibility Checker,Buy Office 2007, new keyboard shortcuts, and Video Triggers,Office Professional Plus 2010 Key, PowerPoint 2010 will be the most accessible version yet—thanks to the hard work of engineers and designers, and feedback from customers like you. To take the new Document Accessibility Checker for a spin, download the PowerPoint 2010 Beta—and let us know what you think! - Diana Kimball Program Manager, PowerPoint <div