Beth Sheehan would like assistance in determining whether a spreadsheet designed by her department for student use can be modified to meet accessibility requirements. She has concerns about some elements of the spreadsheet, especially its merged cells. The document in question is a Google Sheet which students will be encouraged to download for themselves as an Excel file after filling it out. For a more complete description of the issue and to see the discussion so far, University of Illinois members can view Beth's post on Teams.
Here is the spreadsheet in question: Illinois Pre Health Planner.
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Here is Beth's original post in Teams for those who cannot access University of Illinois' Teams tenant:
Expert in Excel accessibility (not a traditional graph or chart or database)?
Hi IT Accessibility Liaisons, someone in my department has created what amounts to a fillable form template that students can use to chart their academic progress and personal experiences as they prepare to apply to a health professions school. They used Excel. It has multiple tabs, including brainstorming and reflection question sections, a Science GPA calculator, a section for their four year course plan, a section to document their volunteer hours and experiences, Links to external resources, etc. It is very detailed and comprehensive. The main accessibility problem we are having now (after they made the whole thing and are asking for my help evaluating/remediating) is that they merged a LOT of cells. I am at a loss for how to help them recreate the same or similar layout in an accessible format without taking this whole thing out of Excel (and potentially losing some of the functionality). Part of it may just be that I am not super-Excel savvy. Is there anyone here (either in DRES or one of the liaisons) who would be willing to take a look and offer some ideas? They will really really REALLY not want to redo this whole thing so preference is to remediate the existing document if at all possible, and figure out how to get rid of the merged cell problem while preserving the intent and function of the document. I'd be happy to set up a meeting between the three of us (myself, the expert, and the creator of the document) if that would be helpful! Thanks in advance!
