I can only give my personal experience, but frankly I find Excel very
difficult to use.  I can use it.  In fact as far as I know there isn't
anything I've needed to do that I could not do.  It is just that it takes
me all day to do something that sighted people do in seconds.  For example,
when I get a spreadsheet, people invariably leave lots of blank lines and
blank cells as visual separators.  I can search all day for simple
information.  This isn't a problem with my screen reader except that I
really need features like hot keys to read cells in the column or row so I
can know the titles, etc.

Forgive me for a little advertising, but printing an Excel spread sheet
with Tiger is really easy and just solves all problems of reading
information, at least by people who are good braille readers.  Even though
I'm not a super braille reader, I am now using Tiger printouts for these
kinds of things in preference to the hassle of using a screen reader and
keeping track of where the devil I am.

John

At 02:54 PM 10/9/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>Hello EASI Colleagues,
>
>What are the practical considerations for ensuring that Excel files are
>screen reader accessible? Do certain screen readers deal better with Excel
>worksheets? Does the user need to customize Excel in certain ways? Are
>certain Excel features best avoided?
>
>Any hints would be greatly appreciated.
>
>Alan
>
>Alan Cantor
>Program Manager
>Strategic e-Government Implementation
>e-Government, OCCS
>416-212-1152
>[log in to unmask]

John Gardner
Professor and Director, Science Access Project
Department of Physics
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331-6507
tel: (541) 737 3278
FAX: (541) 737 1683
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://dots.physics.orst.edu