How to Create an Accessible PowerPoint Presentation
Here is a Microsoft PowerPoint guide to help walk you through how to create accessible presentations.
The Outline View
- Make sure all of the slide text content appears in the outline view. Students with visual disabilities may prefer not to bother with the more visual slide view.
- Recommended best practice: Compose your outline in the outline view, and then move to the slide view to add images and design.
The Slide View
- Use the slide layouts (not the blank one though) provided on the Home tab. This will help to ensure your slide’s reading order remains intact.
- The order the text and objects are inserted into the slide, will be the default reading order unless you manually change it.
- Don’t use animations or slide transitions on the PowerPoint presentation that you post online.
Quick Access Guide
Here is a guide when working with PowerPoint.
Check the following elements
For each item that you have in your presentation, click on the accessibility guideline(s) that corresponds to it in order to learn how to make the element accessible.
- Text.
- Headings.
- Lists.
- Images and Graphics (including Graphs, Maps & Shapes).
- Links.
- Tables.
- Color and Flashing/Blinking Content.
- Audio & Video.
- Slide Reading Order.
Run the built in Accessibility checker.
This is a great tool to begin checking the accessibility of your PowerPoint presentations (only available on 2010 & 2013 versions).
Please note: The accessibility checker only checks .pptx files.
- Go to the File tab.
- Select Info from the sidebar menu.
- Click on the Check for Issues button.
- Select Check Accessibility from the drop-down menu.
The Accessibility Checker panel will open to the right of the document. The accessibility checker provides you with a list of errors, warnings and tips. When you click on an error or warning, instructions on how to fix it appear below in ” Additional Information”.