Email Attachment Handling for the Visually Impaired

I want to credit Karen McCall for the following information. She's a Microsoft Word MVP in Canada and her contributions to Microsoft accessibility are invaluable. I will include her information at the end of this blog.

A note if you're using adaptive technology:

First go into Word and turn off Screen Reading Layout or Reading Layout as this is an inaccessible view of documents when using adaptive technology.

In both Outlook 2007 & 2010 if you press Alt + F for the File Menu, Office Button or File/Backstage area (it has changed over the past iterations of Office but can be accessed using the same keyboard command) you’ll see “Save Attachments.”

If you are saving Office documents through Outlook 2010, once you open them they are in Preview mode so you need to press Alt + F, letter I for File/Backstage area, Info and then turn on editing by then pressing E.

Here are the steps for Outlook 2010 from when an email arrives:

1. Press Enter to open an e-mail with an attachment.
2. Your cursor will be on the first line of the message.
3. Press Shift + Tab to move to the attachments area of the e-mail.
4. You can then use the Arrow keys to move among attachments.
5. Press Enter on an attachment you want to open.
6. If it is an Office document, you’ll then have to press Alt + F, letter I, E once the document opens as it will be in Protected view.
7. Press Escape on the e-mail post to close the post and return to Outlook.

You can choose to press the AppKey (located to the immediate left of the Ctrl key on the right side of the main keyboard area…has two little square applications on it) or Shift + F10 would also work I think. This gives you the option to open or save as without going through the Office Button/File menu in Outlook 2007 or the File/Backstage area of 2010.

You can use Shift + Tab when a post is open to move to the BCC, CC or To field, press the AppKey/right mouse button and perform actions on addresses in those fields. Tab would move you forward through these fields.

You can choose to go to the File Menu, Office button or File/Backstage area (depending on your version of Outlook) and choose Save Attachments. This will let you save all attachments to a location on your computer or storage device. As with the other method of saving attachments, if it is an Office document you’ll have to turn off Preview mode.

I haven’t found a way to open or work with attachments in the Reading Pane (this happens in emails received in Rich Text Format). At one time F6 and Shift + F6 would move you forward or backward through the larger pieces of Outlook like the list of messages to the Reading Pane to the To Do Bar to the Status Bar and so forth and using Tab or Shift + Tab would move you forward or backward through the pieces of each larger chunk….the Reading Pane for example. This would let you navigate to the reading Pane using F6 and then use Shift + Tab to move to the Attachments area and work with attachments but this does not work consistently so working with attachments in the Reading Pane is not possible, you have to open the message or use the Save Attachments tool.

If someone is blind and using the JAWS  screen reader, JAWS 13 announces it when you come across an attachment in Outlook 2010.

 A person using JAWS will hear that there is an attachment as long as the Attachments Colum in the mail folder is visible. This is the little paper clip next to a message. Pressing the JAWS command for listing objects, Ctrl + Shift + letter O will give you a list of the attachments which in this case are objects.

I used the ability to create random text in Word/Outlook to create the surrounding text as many people just plunk objects into e-mail. The keyboard  command is =rand(3). This will put three paragraphs of text from the \Office Help files into a document. Each paragraph will have a default number of 3 sentences. If you type (4, 5) and press Enter you’ll get 4 paragraphs each with 5 sentences. I include this in case you didn’t know…

Anyway, I can either use the Up and Down Arrow keys on their own or with the screen reader and the objects can also be found.

Even if the attachment is indented on a line….is not at the left margin which is where most adaptive technology recognizes objects, JAWS 13 in Outlook 2010 found it and told me it was there. So once I knew it was there, or if you actually can see the attachment, select it by placing your cursor just before it and press the Shift key + right Arrow.

You can then press the AppKey/right mouse button to access the context menu.

There are lots of clues that the post contains an attachment and using the keyboard you can choose which ones to open or save, even print. If you need all attachments, it is still better to go through the Alt + F, Save Attachments method.

In case you might need these, I have a page for Office 2007 accessibility including an Excel workbook with all the Ribbon, Sub-Ribbon and Non-Ribbon commands for Office 2007.

http://karlencommunications.com/MicrosoftOfficeAccessibility.html

And a page for Office 2010 with some resources:

http://karlencommunications.com/MicrosoftOfficeAccessibility2010.html

There is a book on each page about how to use OneNote from the Keyboard.

Karen McCall, M.Ed.

Microsoft MVP/Most Valued Professional for Word (2009-2011)
Canadian delegate to the ISO/TC 171 committee
Member of PDF/UA Universal Access working group
Member of G3ICT
Karlen Communications
Paris ON Canada