By Charlotte Gregory-Ellis, Learning Technologist (Curriculum Development)
PowerPoint presentations are a staple within our teaching materials, offering a dynamic way to deliver complex information. However, for students with disabilities, these presentations can sometimes present significant barriers to learning. Ensuring that PowerPoint content is accessible is essential to creating an inclusive academic environment where all students have equal opportunities to engage and succeed. We will explore practical steps and best practices for making PowerPoint presentations more accessible. From adding alternative text (alt text) to enhancing slide readability, this checklist will help you create content that is accessible to all your students and complies with accessibility standards. By taking small but impactful actions, we can transform our educational materials into resources that truly support every student.
Checklist for staff to self-review their materials
PowerPoint document
- Have you used an appropriate template? E.g. University of Derby are expected to use a set template designed to be accessible (Download UoD PowerPoint Template (UoD staff only)).
- Do your slides have titles?
- Most slide layouts include a slide title. The title is usually the first thing that is read out on each slide by a screen reader and helps users easily navigate the presentation.
- Students may rely on slide titles, particularly in the outline view, to help them scan through a presentation quickly, enabling them to go straight to the slide they want. It’s like a table of contents for your presentation.
- Guide to adding slide titles.
- Have you checked the reading order?
- It’s important that when you create slides you ensure there’s a logical reading order so screen reader users can understand the slide.
- Content is usually read out in the order that it is added to the slide, which may not reflect the order you intended.
- Guide to checking the reading order.
- Are there images, charts or graphs?
- Ensure all informative images, charts, graphs and tables have descriptive alt text.
- Check our previous blog post on adding alt text to images.
- Guide to adding alt text in PowerPoint.
- Have you checked the colour contrast?
- To check the colour contrast you can use the WebAIM colour contrast checker or another colour app checker.
- Is any information only identified by its position, colour, sound?
- Avoid purely visual references. Change ‘above’ and ‘below’ to ‘previously’ and ‘following’ respectively.
- Adjust ‘left’ and ‘right’ to something not exclusively visual (e.g. ‘data in the Results column’ not ‘right-hand column’).
- Don’t identify something by colour alone (e.g. use ‘green submit button’ not ‘green button’).
- Are there any lists? Should there be?
- If there’s a list, it must be set using the bulleted or numbered list buttons. They should not be copied in from elsewhere, such as Word.
- If you are using a list in a paragraph, would it be easier to understand in a bulleted or numbered list?
- Do you have descriptive links?
- Ensure link text (the highlighted words that become the link) is descriptive enough so people can know where the link leads when it’s heard without the surrounding content.
- Are you using video and audio?
- Ensure captions are available in all embedded audio and video.
- Are there tables in your presentation?
- Only use tables for data and only where necessary.
- Create tables in PowerPoint. Tables should not be inserted as an image because screen readers won’t read out the data.
- Ensure tables don’t contain blank cells, split cells, merged cells, or nested tables.
- All tables in your presentation need to be formatted. Check ‘header rows’, ‘banded rows’ and ‘first column’ are selected on your table and add alt text.
- Video guide on adding a table to a PowerPoint slide (0:56).
- Are there links to third-party content?
- You don’t need to recreate all inaccessible third-party content, however we are required to provide learning opportunities that are accessible to all students. If essential third-party content is not fully accessible then it should be supplemented with one or more other resources, so that in combination they meet the needs of all students.
- Have you completed a final accessibility check?
- PowerPoint has an in-built Microsoft Accessibility Checker that can help you check your presentations accessibility.
- If you are working on teaching materials in Blackboard Ultra, you can use Blackboard Ally to check the accessibility of files.
Tips!
- Keep Microsoft Accessibility Checker turned on while you work.
- Create descriptive links, don’t just put ‘click here’ / ‘more information’ / ‘details’ / ‘learn more’.
- Add slide titles to provide navigation options.
- Contrast – Don’t only use colour to signify something:
- Use patterns instead of colour.
- WebAIM Checker.
- For pie charts also provide as text/captions.
- Use inclusive language:
- Instead of ‘see xyz’, use ‘xyz is included’.
- Instead of ‘watch the video’, use ‘watch the video or listen to the audio transcript of the video’.
- Upload a fixed file through Blackboard Ally Instructor Feedback Panel to improve the accessibility score.
- While ideally all materials should have 100% accessibility, any and all improvements are positive progress!
- Let your students know about the Alternative Formats available through Ally.