Newsletter Bakeoff: images headings

If you already have some idea about the terms "accessible documents" and "alternate formats, check out this extremely useful-looking FREE training Opportunity coming up:
Creating Accessible Documents and Providing Alternate Formats

For people wondering why bother about the opportunity above, a journey to Planet RantWoman about accessible documents.

RantWoman is not even going to touch everything she sees where acres of tiny print and impossible contrast and sometimes crummy graphics are the order of the day. Just go to the class above.

One of the vexations of needing to use a screen reader is all the little publications in one's life where one has to ask and ask and ask and keep asking and keep aking for little tiny increments of accessibility that would make a huge difference even if they did not fully meet RantWoman standards for How Things Should Be on Planet RantWoman.

This week RantWoman formed two simple opinions holding an inadvertent newsletter bakeoff with items from her faith community.

1. At least in Word, RantWoman thinks but probably should verify somehow the filenames of pictures matter. RantWoman got a Word  / PDF document which she knows has several pictures in it. Some of them have ugly names with lots of numbers. Others have something simple in the text that describes the image even if there is no alt text. Eureka! Small steps can make a such a difference. Word.

2. Even in small documents. HEADINGS MATTER. Here is what RantWoman wrote to one newsletter editor:

I read [the newsletter] with a screen reader because my eyes do not really work to read the whole thing. Other people can skim for article titles but I need help. One really simple thing that lets me skip around is for you to use Headings on every article. This creats basically like an outline or a table of contents that the software can find so I can skip around or come back to an article in the middle without having to reread the whole issue.

Have you had a chance to think about how to do that? It would really make reading [the newsletter] more enjoyable for me. If you need help figuring out what to do, I think there are a couple people we  could ask.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR HELP ABOUT THIS.

PS would it help if I also said "as a reasonable accommodation..."?

Was it cruel to say the words "reasonable accommodation?" Newsletter is dealing with a serious medical issue and RantWoman finds it easy to be forgiving  but will nage gently with the next issue.

ON THE OTHER HAND, RantWoman is finding herself severely charm-challenged around complacent retirees who just kind of think stuff like this is optional and have no thought of how useful the right nuggets of knowledge for people with working lives beyond the walls of the faith community.

Oh but wait. A life of faith is supposed to fill one's soul with zenlike calm and spiritual center needed to live with these realities. Ah, but this is RantWoman and RantWoman's faith community is WAY overachieving in the same "so much winning" way the curren administration sometimes achieves: RantWoman will fuss later about the headings only because right now she is trying to figure out what to make of someone who claims to want to invite everyone but says she is too busy planning the event to meet about accessibility until SIX WEEKS after the upcoming event.

Or at least that is how conversation looks right now to RantWoman. RantWoman feels some LIVE ON PLANET EARTH email coming on. Oh Joy! Heaven help us.