Accessible PowerPoints

PowerPoint has really strong accessibility as a tool. There's a lot of ways that you as a content creator of PowerPoint presentations can think about accessibility. One thing to keep in mind is that saving a PowerPoint to a PDF may drastically decrease the accessibility. We recommend sharing native PowerPoint files that have been made accessible.

A few tips before we get started:

• Use slide templates where possible, they have defined reading order for screen readers (the video will discuss reading order).
• Use the accessibility checker as you go. It isn't perfect, but gives a good sense of where you need to make adjustments.
• Caption media that you use in PowerPoint or that you link to.

There's a few things to consider when wanting to design an accessible PowerPoint.

You're going to want to make sure that your slideshow has good color accessibility. Color accessibility involves making sure that you have good color contrast in your PowerPoint. In general, use light text on a dark background, or dark text on a light background. You may also want to take into account the quality of any anticipated projection system if you are presenting your slideshow in person. If you are wanting to check your color contrast, the Colour Contrast Analyser Links to an external site. is a great tool for doing that. You will also want to avoid using color alone to indicate difference. For example, don't just use green text to indicate a good practice and red text to indicate a poor practice. Consider adding text or a checkmark and X, or some other indicators.

We've talked about alt text some in this course. In PowerPoint, having alt text is essential. Alt text is a text substitute for any image. To write good alt text, consider how you might describe an image if you were presenting over Zoom and your screenshare wasn't working. It's important to capture context and anything that is needed for a user to be able to follow along. Additionally, if you are presenting a PowerPoint in person, try to describe visuals that appear in your slides. If you catch yourself saying "As you can see here", try to add a brief description of what you are referring to.

Link text is similar. Just copying and pasting the URL from your address bar does not make it clear to anyone where your link is taking them. Instead, use descriptive link text to describe the destination of a link. This helps all users, including screen reader users who may be navigating by links through your presentation. Each link should have unique link text.

Titles for slides are similar. Making sure each title has unique text makes it easy for users to refer to different slides, and navigate between your slides. If you have multiple slides with the same title, consider adding "(1 of 3)" "Part 1" or "continued" "cont'd".

The PowerPoint accessibility video below goes into all of these tips and more.  Video is currently being updated.