Creating Accessible Power Point Presentations

Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular way to make presentation for traditional face-to-face slide shows and it is also the basis for many other applications to create recorded narrated online presentations. Course Content presented through Power Point needs to be accessible by all students. There are a number of things that a professor can do to make their Power Point presentation accessible.

Designing A Presentation

Layout

Using preset layouts will help ensure new content is added to the presentation correctly and displayed in the Outline tab.

  1. On the Home tab, click on Layout.
  2. Select a preset layout that fits your needs instead of drawing custom text boxes on the slide. This will make a consistent design for all of your slides and make it far easier for users of assistive technologies to navigate your presentation.

Outline Pane

In Normal View, the left pane consists of two tabs: the Slides tab and the Outline tab. Text on a slide is accessible if it can be viewed in the Outline tab. You can even type the content of your slides in this tab.

Notes Pane

Use the Notes pane to describe all non-decorative images such as graphics and logos. Pay particular attention to informational images such as charts, graphs and diagrams.

Add Alt-Text to Images

An alt-text description should be provided for all non-decorative images.

  1. Right-click the selected image and then click Format Picture.
  2. Click the Alt Text tab
  3. In the Alt Text box, type a title and description and then click OK.

Provide Accessible Electronic Copy of Presentation

Another way to increase accessibility is to create an electronic copy of the presentation in a tagged and accessible PDF format.

  1. Click the File tab, then click Save As.
  2. Click the drop down arrow at the Save as Type field and select PDF.
  3. Click Options.
  4. Make sure that the Document structure tags for accessibility check box is selected, then click OK.
  5. Click Save.