Category: Geeks r Us
These questions are for sighties, high partials, or just plain experts. I'm working on a project that I need to finish by the end of the week, and I've tried Googling my questions but they're a bit specific and visual. I'm wondering about accessible solutions for these problems?
1. How do you make a watermarked background and isolate it to only one page of your document?
2. How do you completely center justify text without having to press TAB and ENTER a million times? Does this kind of possibility even exist? The only reason I'm asking is because I can't see enough to know by trial and error if the text is truly in the middle of the page.
3. How do you insert WordArt if you can't see the little boxes with examples to click on them? If you're a screenreader user, does your screenreader label them? If so, how many cells from the top left is the upper arc text that looks kind of like a rainbow? I use Window-Eyes 7 and it sadly does not label these graphics.
Thanks so much!
I can answer part of this for you, but I am not sighted. Also, I am an engineer, so while I do apply visual formatting, engineers typically apply outlines (to levels that annoy most normal people) and tables to show flow.
That being said, you can apply any formatting you want to to a block of text: just select with arrow keys or use shift+f8 to turn on the extended selection mode when you're at one end - say the beginning - of the text you want, then move to that text's end. You could then apply simple formatting like center your text using the tool buttons or CTRL+letter combos, CTRL+e for center, CTRL+l for left, CTRL+r for right, etc.
What I tell my wife (who can see but still applies) is you select the text so the software knows what text you mean, then you give the instruction, center, right, etc.
Now to apply a background, You first need to select the entire document, which you can do with CTRL A. The watermarking sounds like a theme, most probably under Formatting, but I don't know how to tell you what one to choose or if the reader will give you info on the icons. That probably depends on if the Office software exposes that data to 3rd-party applications, probably through MSAA. So if your reader has an MSAA type mode, or key to read just the MSAA info, you might have to do that on the icons.
That helps. And I do know about the CTRL+E deal, but the thing is that the line I'm wanting to center is only a line or two. If I centered it, it would still hang around at the top of the page. I want it to be in the center both vertically and horizontally. That's what I'm having trouble with. Knowing me, I just dreamed it up and I can't really do that. Lol
No you're right: To do that you'll need to use the enter key above it to move it down, unless there is another way, such as applying a title theme to that page. Hopefully someone working in marketing / HR or other human services / sales field can pitch in here and help you out.
Hmm. I'll see about it. Thank you.
Okay, so for anyone who cares, lol...this is how I solved each of my problems.
1. I ixnayed the watermarked background. My screenreader finally started labeling the graphics in the WordArt dialog, but I also took a screenshot and e-mailed it to my boyfriend so he could tell me how many times to arrow down or right to get to the option I wanted. (HAving been able to see before really helps.) I made my WordArt and just pasted the picture underneath it, and it seemed to turn out fairly nicely.
2. As far as the following pages, I learned how to create a PowerPoint presentation from Word using tis helpful little article, and the text seemed to turn out much more nicely. I'm sure the printing was much bigger than what I'd originally intended, but hey, what can you do?