PowerPoint Accessibility Guide

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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.

Impact

Several problems regularly arise in MS PowerPoints that prevent slides from being accessible:

  1. When slides are designed without the default templates, the resulting reading order might not generate coherent content.
  2. Images not only need to have alt text, but that text needs to be descriptive enough to convey to every learner what purpose the image serves.
  3. Additional information about charts, tables, or graphics should be placed in the Speaker’s Notes pane to provide additional context.
  4. Failure to have significant color contrast between text and background can make the text impossible to read.

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.

Headings

When Possible Use Default Slides

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.

Use Slide titles that are Descriptive and Unique

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.

Use the Reading Order Pane

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.

Additional Information

ListsIn order to create lists accessibly, they need to be created using list formatting tools. Use bulleted or numbered lists to emphasize, group, or represent information where appropriate, but keep the length and number of bullet points to a minimum on any given slide.
  • Avoid presenting more than six points per slide at default font size.
  • Use one line text, ideally, and no more than two per bullet point.

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.

Additional Information

Links

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.

How to Create an Accessible Link

  1. Highlight the text you want to use as hyperlink text.
  2. Select the Insert tab.
  3. Select the Link icon from the Links section of the ribbon.
  4. Verify that your desired hyperlink text is correct in the Text to Display field at the top of the popup window.
  5. Add the desired URL to the Address field.
  6. Click OK.

Additional Information

Alternative Text Description

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.”

How to Create Alt Text in PowerPoint

  1. Right-click on the intended image to bring up the Mini toolbar.
  2. Select View Alt Text to bring up the Alt Text window on the right side of the screen.
  3. Write/edit alt text that describes the content and context of the image.

Making Charts and Graphics Accessible

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.

Additional Information

Tables

General guidelines

  1. To ensure proper reading order, organize information left to right and top to bottom.
  2. Avoid merging cells. Merged cells can disrupt logical reading order.
  3. Provide a text summary of the content if the table contains complex data. The Speaker’s Notes Pane can be used to for more complete explanations of table content (as screen readers can access these notes).
  4. Don’t use tables for content layout. Only use tables for tabular data.
  5. In the Table Styles section, select a style where the table headers are clearly visible and there is good color contrast between the different elements on the table and the font within.

Identifying Headers in a Table

PowerPoint allows you to identify single row of column headers and a single row of row headers. To identify headers in a table.

  1. Click on a cell in the table. The Table Tools option should become visible and the Design tab (which is called Table Design on Mac) should be open.
  2. If the top row of the table contains headers (an option which the majority of tables should include), make sure the Header Row checkbox is selected. Likewise, if the first column contains headers for each row select the First Column checkbox. 

Additional Information

Using Color to Convey Information

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.

Ensuring Color is not the Only Means 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:

  1. Go to the Accessibility tab
  2. Select Inspect without color
View without color is highlighted here in the Accessibility tab in PowerPoint 

Video Demo

Under Construction

Additional Information

Color Contrast

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.

How to Use WebAIM’s Color Contrast Checker

  1. Open WebAIM’s Color Contrast Checker.
  2. Use the tools under the Foreground section to enter your text color. You can use a hex code, RGB value, or use the eye dropper tool to sample your text color.
  3. Use the tools under the Background section to enter the background color.
  4. Check the report below to ensure that your document content meets WCAG AA guidelines.

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.

Additional Information

Language

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.

How to Update the Language Settings

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

  1. Choose Language Preferences.
  2. Under Office authoring languages and proofing select Add a language.
  3. Choose the language from the menu and click Add.
  4. Then select the new language and select Set as preferred.

To define a short passage in another language:

  1. Highlight the selected passage.
  2. Under Review select Language and then click Set Proofing Language.
  3. Choose the language from the menu and select OK.

Additional Information

Video and Audio

Video

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

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.

Accessibility Checker

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.

Limitations to the Accessibility Checker

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:

  • It cannot identify what content should be formatted as a list, or advise on whether to use an ordered or unordered list.
  • It is unable to check if color alone is used to convey information.
  • It cannot determine if appropriate link text was used.

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.

Accessing the Accessibility Checker

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.

Using the Accessibility 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.

Using the Selection pane, Alt text pane, and Speaker’s Notes pane for Accessibility

  1. The Selection Pane can be used to review the order in which screen readers will approach information on the slide. The order is listed bottom to top. Each element can be dragged to reorder the list.
  2. The Alt Text pane displays image alt texts and allows for alt text to be edited.
  3. The Speaker’s Notes pane should be used to display any additional information about charts, graphs, or images that cannot be easily contained in concise alt text. Screen readers can access this text.

Video Demo

Under Construction