PowerPoint Presentations (PPT) generally have a lot of visual content and people with visual impairment or those using screen readers often miss out the context of the PPT. Planning and structuring your PPT correctly from the start, will maximize the accessibility of your document and ensure they are available to a wider range of audience.
Do check out this Accessible Word PowerPoint checklist before you create your presentation:
Layout and content
- PowerPoint contains various built-in layouts that are already accessible. Select a layout that is appropriate for your content.
- Keep content crisp and use bulleted points
- Be consistent with the font size and type used in your presentation
- Avoid putting lot of content in a slide
- Give unique title to each slide.
- Ensure meaningful hyperlink text. Avoid full URL and phrases like ‘Click Here’ or ‘This’
- Avoid using any extra space, tabs or paragraphs
- Use sufficient colour contrast and check for colour contrast using GrayScale. To check for color contrast:
- Select the ‘View’ tab.
- In ‘Color/GrayScale’ click on ‘GrayScale’.
- If you find it difficult to view properly, it means your colour contrast is not sufficient
- Click ‘Back to Color View’ in ‘Close’ to exit grayscale.
Images, Graphs and Pictures
- Provide alternative description for all images, graphs, smart arts, pictures and charts in the presentation.
- Right click on the image and select ‘Format’ type.
- Select ‘Size and Properties’.
- Click on ‘Alt Text’.
- Write title (optional) and provide description.
- Avoid including phrases like “image of…,” “table of…,” or “link to…” while writing alternative text for images.
- Include captions when required.
- Avoid using flashy images and animations.
Tables
- Use table tools to create table and not the ‘Draw Table’ option.
- Keep the table structure simple. For complex tables try to split into simpler ones.
- Do not use blank cells.
- Minimize merging and splitting cells.
- Include captions for table where appropriate.
- Test your table by selecting the first cell of your table and then pressing the tab key. The focus should move across the row and then to the first cell next row down.
Multimedia
- Include transcript or captions for audio/video files.
- Transcripts are the minimum requirement for audio or video files and ensure every audio and video file in your document have transcript
Reading Order
- Set the right reading order using the Selection Pane
Slide Transitions
- Use simple slide transitions
- Avoid using automatic slide transition
Accessibility Checker
Run accessibility checker on finished document and repair identified errors, warnings and tips.
If you need additional support to make your PowerPoint Presentations accessible, do sign up and try our cloud based service at 247 Accessible Documents for free.
