Presentation Slides

Titles, Layouts, Reading Order & More

The video playlist below demonstrates how to apply accessibility best practices to slide presentations. Note that these demonstrations were created using PowerPoint on a Mac computer, but it will be a helpful introduction to the principles. Additional how-to instructions for PowerPoint on Windows and Google Slides are below. Follow along with the text transcripts.

Best Practices

Those with a high volume of presentations may find this topic overwhelming.
- Start somewhere - accessibility is a process and each small step makes a difference
- Stay tuned for upcoming conversations, recommendations, and support options coming specifically related to instruction.
Review accessible templates that might be helpful to use or modify for your own use

How To Create Accessible Presentations

Preset Slide Layouts

Using the built-in slide layouts with the text placeholders can help avoid issues such as having an identifiable slide title and the reading order. Click in each placeholder to add content.

Microsoft PowerPoint

Slide layout options expanded from the menu on the Home ribbon

See more at Apply a slide layout on Microsoft.com

Google Slides

Layout menu expanded from the Google Slides toolbar

Each Slide Has a Title

Slide titles that are unique are important for accessibility to help distinguish between slides.

When creating a new slide, select a layout that offers a title placeholder. Entering text into the text placeholder ensures there is an identifiable title.

For existing slides, an accessibility checker for assistance in identifying slides that:

do not have a title
have a title in a text box instead of a 'title' field
repeat titles

Microsoft

See more about how to title a slide in Microsoft Powerpoint.
Run the Accessibility checker. For title slide errors, options to correct the issue will be provided:

Google Slides

Use the title placeholder
Install and launch the Grackle accessibility checker that will assist in identifying slides without titles (as well as other accessibility issues).

Hyperlinks and Short urls

Similar to other document types, full urls should not be used on presentation slides as assistive technology would read these aloud beginning with https-colon-slash...

Consider hyperlinking using:

familiar urls that are easy to read such as sph.umich.edu. While some accessibility checkers may flag this as inaccessible, there are situations where learning a url may be helpful.
descriptive text: learn more about descriptive hyperlinks
a url shortener, such as the U-M url shortener is a good option particularly if you are making slides available in print where descriptive text links wouldn't work.

Color Considerations

Since items such as charts and graphs are often used in presentations, considering color and contrast barriers is important.

See the Color and Contrast topic to see examples and recommendations.

Alternative Text

Alternative text allows assistive technology to provide an equivalent for visual items that some users may not be able to see.

Visit the Alternative text topic for details on how to apply it to images in your presentation.

Check 'Reading Order'

Reading order is unique to presentations and PDFs, and requires reviewing the document to make sure it will be read in the order intended. Proper reading order is important for assistive technology and navigating by keyboard.

As you add more items - text boxes, images, shapes - to a slide, you'll need to tell the software what order they should be announced. The first ~ 55 seconds of the video below provides an example of this:

Microsoft PowerPoint

As of May 2025, Microsoft has updated PowerPoint for Mac so that both Windows and Mac versions verify reading order in the same way.

Navigate to the 'Review' tab in the ribbon.
Click the drop-down item next to 'Check Accessibility' to choose to look at only the 'Reading Order Pane'
The pane will open in a panel on the right-hand side of the screen. Items on the slide will be displayed in a numbered list. Click through the list and re-order items using drag-and-drop or the 'Move' buttons at the bottom of the panel.

The Reading Order pane with a drag-and-drop move in progress

Save your Powerpoint file to save changes.

Google Slides

To check and verify the reading order of Google slides,

Install and launch the Grackle accessibility checker.
Click the 'Slide Structure' tab
Click through the item order on each slide, and drag-and-drop items in the list to reorder.