Printable PowerPoint Accessibility Checklist (PC) Printable PowerPoint Accessibility Checklist (Mac)
Here are quick how-to steps for creating accessible PowerPoint documents that allow all of your students, including those with disabilities, to engage fully with your course materials.
Several problems regularly arise in MS PowerPoints that prevent slides from being accessible:
Creating accessible MS PowerPoints ultimately provides a better learning experience to every student in your class as your slides are intentionally designed to be as easy to use as possible.
Use the Slide Layout Pane for creating new slides. Relying on default slide layouts guarantees that screen readers can correctly order the content. If possible, avoid using Text Boxes to create or arrange slide content. Screen reading programs default to reading content in Text Boxes last.
Screen readers identify slide titles first. So Slide titles are the most important element to consider when creating accessible headings. Slide titles should provide a clear navigational outline of the presentation. Use a unique title for each slide. If you have multiple slides that cover the same topic, you can label them as “[TITLE OF SLIDE], 1 of 4” etc.
To open the Reading Order Pane, select Review > Check Accessibility. Under warnings select Check reading order and then select the adjoining drop-down arrow next to the slide title. Click Verify object order. This open the Reading order pane. Reading order is listed top to bottom. Drag and drop each item to the appropriate place.
For further information on accessible PowerPoints, see WebAIM’s “PowerPoint Accessibility.”
Keep in mind that depending on the content, some list styles are more appropriate than others. For instance, if you are providing instructions that must be followed in order, you should choose an ordered list style. If the order doesn’t matter, you should use an unordered list style.
When creating links, the link text needs to give sufficient information about where the link leads. Phrases such as “click here” or “read more” do not give sufficient information about the link destination. Raw URLs pose problems for both screen reader users and voice input users because raw URLs are difficult to understand and pronounce.
To learn more about accessible links visit WebAIM’s Links and Hypertext.
For alternative text to be accessible, it must convey the content and context of the image.
If a graphic element is there simply for decorative purposes, it does not need alt text and can be marked “Decorative.” See Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object and scroll down to “Mark Images as Decorative.”
When more information needs to be included, use the Speaker’s Notes pane to include additional information and explanation. When listening to a presentation using a screen reader, users can hit a special set of keystrokes to listen to the contents of the Speaker’s Notes pane. Keep in mind that even if a detailed explanation is given in the Speaker Notes, you should still provide alt text for the graphic elements (but it can be brief).
Whenever possible avoid importing charts into PowerPoint, as this may cause PowerPoint to treat the chart as an image.
PowerPoint allows you to identify single row of column headers and a single row of row headers. To identify headers in a table.
For more information on creating accessible PowerPoints see WebAIM’s “Accessible PowerPoints.”
Color alone should not be used to convey information. For example, if you refer to "the red button," screen reader users won't be able to identify that button unless the button has additional identifying textual information. When you are designing your content, make sure you don't use color as your only method of delivering information or adding emphasis. This is not to say that color cannot be used to help convey information; rather, color-based information should always be a secondary method of conveying information.
Turning off color and examining a slide in grayscale allows each slide to be easily scanned for instances where color is inappropriately conveying too much information. To turn color off:
It’s important to check color contrast often while designing your slides so that you can fix any contrast issues as they come up. Be mindful when picking slide backgrounds and text colors. Text and background colors must have a sufficient contrast ratio to be accessible. Documents with low contrast can be difficult, if not impossible, to read for people with low vision. Insufficient color contrast also creates problems for colorblind users.
Color contrast can be manually checked with tools like WebAIM’s Color Contrast Checker. To meet WCAG 2.0 level AA requirements, the contrast ratio must be at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
If you use the Eye Dropper Tool to sample your document colors, be sure that you select a pixel from the center of the character. This will give you the best sample for the font color. Pixels near the edge of a character will not be an accurate representation of the font color.
For more information see WebAIM’s Contrast and Color Accessibility.
In order for screen readers to appropriately pronounce page content, the default language must be set in the Document Properties. Passages in another language must be defined within the document so the screen reader adjusts to the pronunciation and reading order of that language.
To define the Authoring Language:
The default authoring language is chosen on installation and if you are a native English speaker is probably set to English. If you would like to set the document’s primary authoring language to another language. Go to the Review tab and select Language.
To define a short passage in another language:
All videos require properly synced captions to be accessible. Captions must be at least 99% accessible to meet accessibility requirements.
Auto-generated captions are a great way to start the captioning process, but auto-generated captions often misspell key terminology and proper names, which greatly impedes student comprehension. After captions have been generated, you need to edit them for accuracy.
Kaltura (Media Space) automatically generates captions when a video is uploaded to your account. You can access the caption editor by selecting Caption & Enrich option under the Actions menu. After you’ve edited the captions, you must enable them by selecting Show in Player from the Captions tab.
For more detailed instructions see Kaltura Captioning Tools.
Audio-only content requires captions or a transcript to be accessible.
Audio files can be captioned by adding the file to Kaltura (Media Space) and editing the captions with the caption editor. See Kaltura Captioning Tools.
A transcript can also be provided on the slide itself.
PowerPoint comes with a very useful Check Accessibility tool that checks basic accessibility issues in titles, slide content, and alt text. Learning how to use this tool simplifies the process of creating accessible PowerPoints and provides a good basic starting point for creating accessible content.
Although the accessibility checker built into Microsoft products can check for many common accessibility issues, it is not a substitute for understanding accessibility best practices. It is important to keep in mind that the accessibility checker is limited by a specific set of checks it runs on the existing content of your document.
Current shortcomings of the Microsoft Accessibility Checker:
At this time, there is no automated substitute for a fundamental understanding of accessibility best practices. Ultimately, as a responsible content creator, you should do your best to author your content according to the accessibility resources available, then use the accessibility checker to screen for any remaining issues.
The accessibility checker is located in the Review tab of PowerPoint near the right hand side of the screen.
Once Check Accessibility is selected the Accessibility pane opens on the right of the screen. The drop down arrow next to Check Accessibility can also be used to open the Selection Pane and the Alt Text pane.
The Accessibility Pane displays known errors such as missing alt text or missing titles, shows tips for making content more accessible (for example, pointing out duplicate slide titles), and allows you to review auto-generated alt text on images. Clicking on any particular issue in the pane navigates you to the slide or issue in question.