This chapter contains the following information:

• Overview

This chapter will give a brief overview on configuring Microsoft Office 2003 for maximum accessibility.

Overview

At this point in time, Microsoft Office 2003 is highly accessible. While there are some caveats to consider in menu access and with the Speech recognition engine, for the most part, Microsoft has developed a provided a product that is highly compatible with AT out of the box. There are, of course, other features and caveats to consider to provide the greatest amount of accessibility to individuals with disabilities, but this guide will help provide a significant amount of accessibility without too much complexity.

First things first, it is important to install Microsoft Office with the Speech Recognition plug-in. This is especially important for installations that do not have Dragon NaturallySpeaking installed, for whatever reason. Due to the broad range of disabilities that speech recognition software supports, having at least some voice-to-text compatibility is necessary on each machine.

It is also recommended that you install the Speech Recognition Profile Manager Tool, allowing users to backup and restore their speech profile from a network location or USB thumb drive. Due to the fact that most public lab facilities are re-imaged, ghosted, or erased on a regular basis, this will allow users to backup their speech files and use them on other computers. The tool is a free download from Microsoft, available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cd72250f-2e02-430e-8f99-e1acae760564&DisplayLang=en. Again, as before, it is much more recommended that you simply provide Dragon NaturallySpeaking, as it not only handles the creation and management of the speech profiles, but is also more compatible with a wider range of software.

It is also highly recommended that you deactivate the delay for the full menus. This option is under the menu choice “Tools”, followed by “Customize” in any Microsoft Office program. The menu will look like the following:

In the option window that comes up, select the “Options” tab, followed by the option “Always show full menus” to deactivate the customized menu display. This will ensure that all menus are available at all times.