Operation Manual

Creating Accessible Reports
Designing for flexibility
C
548 Crystal Reports User’s Guide
Using this parameter field, you can conditionally format objects, or
conditionally suppress sections that address different access needs. Or you
can provide different display options by using subreports.
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To create an accessibility parameter field
1. In Crystal Reports, on the View menu, click Field Explorer.
2. In the Field Explorer, right-click Parameter Fields and click New.
3. In the Create Parameter Field dialog box, type the parameter name
(
Access, for example) and the prompting text (Do you want to enable
accessible formatting for this report?).
4. Ensure that the Value type is set to
String.
5. Click Set default values.
6. In the Set Default Values dialog box, create
Yes and No values and move
them to the Default Values area using the arrow buttons.
7. Click OK.
8. Click OK in the Create Parameter Field dialog box.
Accessibility and conditional formatting
Using the accessibility parameter field in simple formulas, you can provide
multiple formats for any object in a report. If a user chooses “Yes” when
prompted by the parameter, the conditional formulas will ensure that the
objects are modified with accessible formatting conventions. If a user
chooses “No”, then the report appears without accessible formatting, perhaps
in the standard company template.
For accessible text formatting, you can follow the guidelines suggested by this
chapter and by the W3C, or you can survey your report users to determine the
formats that work best for them. After you determine the formatting options you
want to use, you can create conditional formulas that define the options. For
example, you can display all database fields in a large Arial font, in white text
on a black background, with the Can Grow option enabled.
The following procedure creates a conditional formatting formula based on
the ?Access parameter field. The formula increases the font size if the
?Access parameter field is set to “Yes”. You can use similar formulas to
change colors, add borders, or enable the Can Grow setting. For complete
instructions on conditionally formatting fields and using the Format Formula
Editor, see the Crystal Reports Online Help.
Note: If text objects are too small to accommodate the enlarged font, you can
use a similar conditional formatting formula to enable the Can Grow setting,
which appears on the Common tab of the Format Editor.