how to make an accessible powerpoint presentation

Your Champion for Inclusion

Creating an Accessible PowerPoint: Step-by-Step Guide

Welcome to a comprehensive guide on how to create an accessible PowerPoint presentation. In this guide, you’ll learn the best practices for making a PowerPoint accessible and how to use the built-in accessibility checker to ensure your presentations are inclusive for all audiences.

Video Guide

Best Practices for Making a PowerPoint Accessible

Before diving into the process of making your PowerPoint accessible, it’s essential to understand some best practices:

• Use a built-in theme.
• Add alternate text to all images.
• Give every slide a unique title.
• Ensure list elements are properly identified within the PowerPoint.
• Format links properly.
• Use table headers in tables.
• Set the reading order .

By following these practices, you can create a PowerPoint presentation that is more accessible and inclusive for all users.

Using the Accessibility Checker in PowerPoint

To begin, launch the accessibility checker in PowerPoint by selecting the File button, then Info, and then Check for Issues. Click on Check Accessibility, which will bring up a list of errors that need to be fixed within the document.

Go through each error, starting with missing alternate text for images. Add appropriate alt text to each image, describing what the image represents. For example, “A screenshot from Adobe Acrobat with a parent figure tag on display.”

Next, ensure that hyperlinks are properly formatted. While you may want to leave the full URL for presentational purposes, it’s better for accessibility to use descriptive link text instead.

Ensure each slide has a unique title and properly identify list elements as you go through your slides.Additionally, check that any tables are using table headers for added accessibility.

If images do not add significant information to the presentation, mark them as decorative. The accessibility checker will no longer flag them as errors.

After addressing all errors, check for warnings about the slide’s reading order from the accessibility checker. To fix this, open the reading order pane and rearrange the content for the correct reading order. For instance, make sure to read the slide number last.

With all errors and warnings resolved, your accessible PowerPoint is ready to go! Remember, while accessibility checkers are not always perfect, PowerPoint’s checker is more fine-tuned, and following its guidance will help you create more inclusive presentations.

Remember, creating accessible PowerPoint presentations not only benefits those with disabilities but also ensures your content is available to a broader audience, making your presentations more effective and inclusive.

Start from scratch

Sometimes it is easier to simply copy and paste the content from an inaccessible PowerPoint into a new accessible template. The video below shows a real-life practice of how to do just that.

I can be  your accessibility expert . I offer tailored solutions to ensure your documents meet and exceed compliance expectations. For more detailed insights, tutorials, and in-depth discussions on accessibility and related topics, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel:  The Accessibility Guy on YouTube . Subscribe for regular updates!

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Create Accessible Presentations

How to create accessible Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

Training Videos

How to Author and Test Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations for Accessibility

The Accessible Electronic Document Community of Practice (AED CoP) created this series of videos to explain and demonstrate the minimum steps needed to ensure your Microsoft PowerPoint presentation is Section 508 conformant.

Duration 43m 54s | 14-Part Video Tutorial

Creating PowerPoint Templates

Learn how to use the Microsoft PowerPoint slide master to help others create accessible presentations. Understand how presentation templates can provide users with a variety of layouts and features that can reduce common accessibility issues when utilized.

Duration: 8m 18s | 1-Part Video Tutorial

Agency-Developed Guidance

The resources in this section were developed by federal agencies and shared here for your convenience. Note, much of this guidance predates the Revised 508 Standards .

• Making a diagram screen reader friendly - ONRR.gov

Related Resources

• Create Accessible Digital Products – Section508.gov
• PowerPoint Accessibility – WebAIM
• How to Make Presentations Accessible to All – W3C WAI
• Alternate Text For Images (PDF, July 2011) – Developed by SSA
• Review WebAIM Alternative Text for appropriate use of alternative text.
• Review W3C’s Alt Decision Tree for guidance on how to describe images.
• Microsoft Accessibility – Microsoft.com

We're always working to improve the information and resources on this website. To suggest a new resource for this or another page, please contact us .

Reviewed/Updated : June 2021

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How to create accessible PowerPoint presentations

Instructions for improving the accessibility of PowerPoint presentations.

• Create accessible documents and
• GOV.WALES standards and guidance (Sub-topic)

Arrange slides correctly

Put your slide content in a proper reading order so that screen reading software can read it aloud correctly for users with a visual impairment.

Reading order

To set the reading order, click on Home > Arrange > Selection Pane.

List objects in the slide in a logical order so that any screen reading software reads them aloud in the right order.

To rearrange objects into a new reading order, either drag the object into a new location or click on it and select Bring Forward or Send Backward.

To check the reading order, select a slide and press the Tab key. Each time you press the key, the focus moves to the next object that a screen reader will read.

Improve image accessibility

How to make the charts, graphs, and images in your PowerPoint slides accessible to users with visual or cognitive disabilities.

To make images more accessible:

• use colour, text, patterns, or shapes to communicate ideas
• add descriptive Alt Text to pictures, charts, and other visual objects
• group layered images, like a picture with callout lines, into a single object
• select View > Grayscale, to get an idea how your slides might look to someone with colour vision deficiency

Add Alt Text to a chart

• Highlight the chart by clicking on it.
• Right-click the chart and select Format Chart Area.
• Select Size & Properties > Alt Text.
• Add a meaningful Title and Description.

Add Alt Text to an image

• Right-click the picture and select Format Picture.
• Select the Size & Properties panel.
• Click on the Alt Text drop-down.

Group layered images for simplicity

• Select all the images you want to group.
• Click on the Format tab and choose Group.

Use accessible colours and styles

PowerPoint is primarily visual and often displayed at a distance from the audience. However, you can make your PowerPoint slides more accessible by following a few best practice tips.

The colours and styles you use for slides, text, charts, and graphics go a long way toward improving accessibility in PowerPoint.

Start with a template

Prebuilt PowerPoint templates can help save time and improve accessibility in the content that you create. Microsoft have a range of these templates available for users to download at  office.com .

Templates from this collection have several features that support accessibility.

Tips for accessible colour and style choices

• Off-white backgrounds are better for people with perceptual differences, like dyslexia.
• Select templates and themes with sans serif fonts that are 18 points or larger.
• Use solid backgrounds with contrasting text colour. This is preferred to patterned / watermarked backgrounds and low-contrast text themes.
• To make information more accessible, differentiate it in more than one way. For example, use both colour and text to mark up different chart elements.

Design slides for people with Dyslexia

The elements that make presentations clearer and easier to follow for people with dyslexia also make them better in general.

These tips help you do both:

Use simple, sans serif fonts with adequate spacing between letters.

Use at least an 18-point font size. Good Sans Serif font examples include: Calibri, Franklin Gothic Book, Lucida Sans and Segoe UI.

Avoid compressed fonts, fonts with uneven line weights, fancy / script / display fonts and italic or underlined fonts.

To keep your text easily readable, limit the number of lines in each slide and leave plenty of space above and below each line.

Apply the “6 by 7” rule: only 6 words per line and 7 lines per slide.

Speaker notes

Use speaker notes to provide more in-depth information.

By default, speaker notes are formatted in a readable, sans serif font.

Share your slides after your presentation so your audience can refer to the slides and notes later. This will allow them to recall the verbal presentation delivery.

Bright white slide backgrounds can make text harder to read; choose an off-white or cream background instead.

Text should be dark, with lots of space around the letters.

Alternatively, a dark background with white text also works well.

Images are a great way to break up blocks of text and make your slide easier to scan.

Remember to add Alt Text to every image in your presentation.

A colourful, high-contrast graphic layout, with pictures and text creates a structured design.

Structured layouts are easier for people with dyslexia to understand.

Make use of alternative formats

To make a presentation more accessible to people with low vision, save it in an alternate format that can be read by a screen reader. Users can then open it on a personal device or port it to a Braille reader.

Create a document version of a presentation

• Open the PowerPoint presentation.
• Select File > Export > Create Handouts.
• To create a Word version, choose Create Handouts.

Formatting options for exporting slides:

• to display presentation slides first, followed by presentation notes, select Notes below slides
• to include slide images in the Word document, select Paste and then select OK

Remember to add Slide Titles using Heading Styles and add Alt Text to each image to improve accessibility in the exported Word document.

Slide titles

Add a colon (:) after each slide number in the document and then copy and paste the appropriate title from the PowerPoint presentation.

Heading styles

Highlight the slide title and then select Home > Heading 1.

To see an outline of the presentation with slide headings, select View > Navigation Pane

(Sometimes people who use screen readers or Braille review the navigation first to get an overview of the document).

• Right-click the slide image.
• Select Picture and then choose Alt Text.

Add a meaningful title and text that describes the image in the appropriate box.

Check accessibility

Use Microsoft’s built in accessibility checker to help ensure your content is easy for people of all abilities to read and navigate.

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Introduction to Web Accessibility

WebAIM Training

PowerPoint Accessibility

You are here: Home > Articles > PowerPoint Accessibility

Introduction

Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most popular tools for creating slide show presentations. It is often used to organize thoughts for a meeting or lesson, to present key points in a live presentation, and even to create handouts. This article outlines how to can make PowerPoint files more accessible on the web.

Unless noted, the steps outlined in this article apply to Office 2016 and 365, Windows and Mac. Most screenshots are from the PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Templates and Themes

The first step in creating a PowerPoint presentation is choosing a slide theme or template. The Design tab contains many built-in Themes and color Variants that can be used to change the look of a presentation, as well as the ability to create custom themes

Some of these templates have low contrast between slide text and the slide background, and a few may also have busy backgrounds that can make text even more difficult to read. Be sure to choose a theme with good contrast and with simple backgrounds. If the presentation will be viewed on a projector, the contrast and readability may need to be even more pronounced.

In addition to built-in and custom themes, there are thousands of templates available for download. You can search for a template by selecting File > New, and then describing the template in the Search field. Add the word "accessible" to the search for templates that are tagged as "accessible" by the creator. While this doesn't guarantee accessibility, it increases the likelihood of finding a good template. If in doubt, Microsoft has identified several templates that are optimized for accessibility .

Slide Layouts

The most important part of PowerPoint accessibility is the use of slide "layouts." Used correctly, these will ensure information on the slides have the correct heading structure and reading order.

Most slide layouts include a slide "title," usually at the top of the slide. They also typically contain one or more "placeholder" areas where you add content like lists, images, and tables to each slide. The title will be presented as a heading to screen reader users, and will be the first thing read on each slide. If each slide has a descriptive title, this will make it much easier for screen reader users to read and navigate the presentation.

Create a new slide

Although you can change the layout of a slide at any time, it is usually easiest to choose your layout when creating a new slide. You can add a new slide from the Home or Insert tab. If you choose the New Slide icon , PowerPoint will usually create a new slide with the same layout as the currently-selected slide.

You can also select the slide layout while creating a new slide. In Windows, select either the small arrow or the text " New Slide " right below the icon, and a menu will drop down with all the available slide layouts. Select one of these options to create a new slide with this layout.

In Mac, select the small arrow next to the New Slide icon to show a similar dropdown menu.

Change slide layout

To change the layout of an existing slide:

• Select the slide you would like to change.
• On the Home tab, select Layout .
• Choose the desired layout from the dropdown.

This new layout will be applied to the selected slide and PowerPoint will try to move the slide contents to the correct place in the new layout. If you're moving from one pre-built layout to another, this usually works fairly well. But if you apply a layout to a slide that wasn't structured correctly in the first place (e.g., pictures and text boxes added to a blank slide), it may take some work like cutting, pasting, and deleting unnecessary boxes to apply the correct layout.

Slide Master

It is possible to make changes to all slides within a presentation, like changing the text size of all slide titles. You can also make changes to a specific slide layout, or even create new custom layouts. All of these changes are possible in the Slide Master view. This view allows you to create accessible layouts that meet the needs of the presentation while maintaining a proper heading structure and reading order.

To open Slide Master, select the View tab > Slide Master .

The different layouts that are available in the presentation will be displayed in the left-hand sidebar. The first slide in this sidebar is the Master Layout . Changes made to the Master Layout will usually be applied to every slide in the presentation. Below this Master Layout are the different individual layouts. Changes made to one of these will be applied to every slide that uses this layout.

To create a new slide layout, select Insert Layout , and then Rename to give the new layout a descriptive name. You can then insert placeholder objects, change the size and position of objects on the slide, etc.

Once all the changes are complete, select Close Master View on Windows or Close Master on Mac. Changes made within this view will automatically be applied throughout the presentation.

Slide Reading Order

Although it is best to use slide layouts when possible, there may be times when you need to add content to a slide when it would be impractical to create a new slide layout. By default, a screen reader will read the slide title first, followed by other content in elements defined in the slide layout. Then it will read any additional content on the side in the order it was added to the slide. If you add content with this principle in mind, it should be presented to screen reader users in a logical order.

You can check or change this reading order by selecting Home > Arrange > Selection Pane . The Selection Pane will appear in the right-hand sidebar.

The pane will show every object on the slide. Highlighting an object in the pane will also highlight it in the slide. The reading order for the elements in this page is bottom to top . At first this may seem illogical, but it helps to think of these objects as layers on a slide. The first object on the slide will be read first. If another object is added to the page on top of the this first object, it will be read next by a screen reader (and will also cover the first object visually). To reorder an item, simply click and drag . PowerPoint for Windows also has up/down arrow buttons that can be used to reorder items.

The Arrange dropdown menus also includes options to reorder a single object. This will change the visual position on the page as well as the reading order.

If you use these options, be sure to check the Selection Pane to ensure the reading order makes sense.

Alternative Text for Images

PowerPoint presentations usually include images, and these images need equivalent alternative text .

PowerPoint 365 and 2019

The process to add alternative text is straightforward in PowerPoint 365 and 2019:

Right-click on the image and select Edit Alt text , then enter appropriate alternative text in the field that appears in the Alt Text sidebar.

If the image is decorative, leave the field blank and check Mark as decorative .

Do not select the "Generate a description for me" button. The quality of the automatically-generated descriptions is usually very poor, and a description of an image is often not the same as alternative text.

PowerPoint 2016

To add alternative text to an image in PowerPoint 2016:

• Right-click on the image and choose Format Picture .
• In the Format Picture sidebar, Select the Size & Properties icon and choose Alt Text .
• Enter appropriate alternative text in the Description field only (not the Title field).

Unless it is part of the slide background, there is no way to hide a decorative image in PowerPoint 2016 or older. If the presentation is saved to a PDF, decorative images can be hidden in Acrobat Professional .

In HTML, there are ways to identify row and column headers in a data table that make the contents of the table much more accessible to screen reader users. PowerPoint allows you to identify a single row of column headers and a single column of row headers. To identify the headers in a table:

• Click inside the table. The Table Tools options should become visible, and the Design tab (called Table Design on Mac) should be open .
• If the top row of the table contains headers for each column (most tables do), check the make sure the Header Row checkbox is checked.
• If the first column of the table contains headers for each row, check the First Column checkbox.

Most screen readers will not identify table headers in PowerPoint, but we still recommend going through this process. It is important to identify headers visually, and support for table headers in Microsoft Office is improving constantly. Plus, these headers will be identified when saving to PDF in the most up-to-date versions of PowerPoint.

PowerPoint automatically creates a link when a user pastes a full URL onto a slide and presses Enter or Space. Raw URLs may not make sense to screen reader users or others, so make the link text descriptive.

To change the link text right-click the link and select Edit Hyperlink . On Mac, right-click the link and select Hyperlink > Edit Hyperlink . A dialog will appear. Click in the Text to Display field at the top of the dialog and enter descriptive link text.

If you are creating a presentation that is intended to be displayed both electronically and in print, you may want to include the URL and a description in the link text. For example, "WebAIM Introduction to Web Accessibility (webaim.org/intro)."

Check Accessibility

PowerPoint includes a tool that will identify many common accessibility issues. The accessibility checker is basically the same in Windows and Mac, but the steps to start the check are different.

To run the accessibility checker in Windows, select File > Info . Select the Check for Issues button and choose Check Accessibility .

To start the accessibility checker in Mac, select the Review tab, then choose Check Accessibility .

In Windows and Mac, the Accessibility Checker sidebar will appear to the right. The checker presents accessibility errors (e.g., images with no alternative text), warnings (e.g., unclear link text) and tips (e.g., check slide reading order for slides with custom content). Selecting an item in the report will highlight the issue within the slide. Information about the issue, and instructions on how to repair it, will also appear at the bottom of the sidebar.

When the issue is addressed, it will disappear from the report automatically.

Other Accessibility Principles

• Make sure text is not too small, especially if the presentation will be viewed on a projector.
• Do not use color as the only way to convey information.
• Transitions and animations should be simple.
• Complex or automatic transitions and animations can be distracting.
• Use clear and simple language. If you have embedded video, ensure the video is captioned.
• If you have embedded audio, include a transcript.

Convert PowerPoint to PDF

PowerPoint is effective for face-to-face presentations, but it is usually not the best format for content on the web. The file can be large, and users must either have Microsoft Office or a plugin in order to view the file. PDF is often a better format to present PowerPoint presentations electronically. The file size is relatively small, distracting slide transitions are usually removed, and everyone has a PDF reader.

All of the accessibility features outlined in this article will be retained in a PDF file, assuming it is created correctly. (See our article on Creating PDF files from Office documents ). If your presentation has tables or decorative images, and you know how to add accessibility information in Adobe Acrobat, your PDF file could even be made more accessible than the original PowerPoint file.

Create accessible PowerPoint presentations

Introduction.

In this section we will cover how to create accessible presentations using Microsoft PowerPoint and different ways of sharing them online.

Before you get started, please read the Accessibility Fundamentals page  first. Following that, here are some additional key points specific to PowerPoint:

• Slide format (size): for the standard slide format, your main body text should aim to be 28pt or bigger. For your widescreen slides, aim for a minimum of 32 point.
• Screen size used by your audience: the fonts recommended above work well on mobile devices because they display as very large. If you are presenting in a physical space, the size of the screen will also influence how readable the font sizes are for your audience.
• Room depth / distance from the screen: fonts should all appear very large from the back of the room you are presenting in.
• Templates: use an accessible PowerPoint template to build your presentation. Doing so will automatically make your presentations more accessible for you, because the text boxes will have a set reading order. If you create your own text boxes, you will need to ensure each slide has a unique title and you will need to amend the reading order for each slide. This ensures a screen reader can read the content aloud in a logical order for someone with a visual impairment.
• Background colours: choose an off-white background colour for your slides. Some people experience glare when viewing presentations with a white background.
• Design for mobile: always design your slides for accessing on small screens. When we design for mobile, we design for all screen sizes. Doing so means your slides can be easily accessed and read on mobile devices.

Use the PowerPoint Accessibility Checker

The Accessibility Checker is available in both PowerPoint Online and on Desktop. To access all features, open your presentation on your desktop / or laptop computer. To ensure that your presentation can be read by a diverse range of people, you should run the Accessibility Checker. This inspects your presentation for elements that would potentially cause problems for accessibility tools such as a screen reader. Errors, warnings and tips are displayed in the inspection results, along with information as to why and how to fix the issue. Whilst the Accessibility Checker is a really useful tool, it does not currently check all accessibility issues that are covered by the WCAG 2.1 AA standards.

Depending on the version of Office you are using, the Accessibility Checkers can be accessed either from the Review tab or the File tab.

How to access and use the Accessibility Checker is covered in the next section.

PowerPoint accessibility tutorials

Learn how to create more accessible PowerPoint presentations with training videos and online tutorials created by Microsoft:

• Access Create More Accessible PowerPoint Presentations training (support.office.com)
• How to make your PowerPoint presentations accessible for people with disabilities (support.office.com)
• Learn about the Accessibility Checker (support.office.com)
• Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker (support.office.com)
• PowerPoint tips and tricks (support.office.com)
• PowerPoint Accessibility Guide (templates.office.com) - please note advice and use of font sizes in the template on this page are below what is considered accessible for PowerPoint in the UK

Sharing your PowerPoint presentations

PowerPoint presentations can be shared internally with staff and student audiences via:

• Office 365 (via web browsers, mobile and desktop apps)
• Minerva Portal & VLE

Providing your presentations in PowerPoint format enables your audiences to re-format and annotate the content and therefore ensures they can fully engage with it. For example, if someone with a visual impairment requires a different background colour, they can modify it to meet their own needs.

However, we cannot assume all of our external audiences have access to Microsoft PowerPoint. So it’s important to take that into account. You may also need to provide the content in more than one format, if you want to increase the accessibility of your material.

1. Office 365

Sharing your PowerPoint presentations from OneDrive provides your audiences with options:

• PowerPoint presentations open in the browser, so this means file downloads are not forced onto people’s devices.
• PowerPoint files can be downloaded in both PowerPoint and PDF formats.

2. Minerva Portal & VLE

If you are involved in student education, you can upload your PowerPoint presentations directly to Minerva modules and organisations, for your students to access. PowerPoint presentations uploaded to Minerva, open in the browser.

• Learn more about uploading content to Minerva in A-Z staff guides (Minerva Support site)

Learn more about Microsoft PowerPoint

The IT Training Unit offer:

• Microsoft Office training for staff (IT website)
• Microsoft Office training for researchers (IT website)

Online courses are also available:

• E-learning from Microsoft (IT website)

Written by Kirsten Thompson and Jane Hetherington | Last updated 08/02/21

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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Understanding PowerPoint Accessibility

Introduction to powerpoint and accessibility.

Accessibility is fundamentally about making sure people can access the content you create. As a presenter, ensuring your PowerPoint is accessible means that your entire audience is going to be able to fully engage with and learn from the content you are creating.

Any recipient of your presentation should be able to perceive and understand the information within it. Your audience and users may include individuals with visual, auditory, motor, and/or cognitive disabilities. 

Visual information is a significant component of most slideshows, but people will not always be able to see the content on your slides. This includes people who are blind or low vision, as well as individuals with processing disorders that make it difficult to understand and integrate visual information. Ensure that meaningful visual content is also provided in a way that someone could access without vision, either textually or audibly. Visual information doesn’t just mean images or text; if you are using colors, font size, or animations to convey meaning, that information should also be provided in a non-visual format like a written description. 

Some people will have difficulty accessing the auditory component of your slides and presentation. This could be due to deafness, being hard of hearing, having a disability that interferes with auditory information processing, or even being in a noisy environment or not having an amplification system at the presentation venue. You’ll need to provide captions and transcripts for videos and audio files respectively, and make sure you know how to request an ASL interpreter, live captionist, or hearing assistive devices for your presentation if an audience member requests any of those services.

This doesn’t mean you can’t have purely visual or auditory elements in a presentation. As long as you provide the same information in a different format in the same part of your presentation, your slideshow can be accessible as a whole even if specific elements are not. Additionally, not all content needs an accessible alternative; if an animation, image, or audio is purely decorative and conveys no meaning (like a decorative image border on your slide), it doesn’t require description in an alternate format.

PowerPoint Accessibility in Context

To make an accessible PowerPoint, you should consider not just the types of information in the file, but also the ways in which users will access the content. Sometimes people will access your PowerPoint as a file on their computer; other times it will be shown in a live presentation or in a presentation over a conferencing app like Zoom. 

If the PowerPoint will be displayed visually in a live or pre-recorded presentation…

• Verbally describe all meaningful visual content.
• Ensure there is adequate color contrast on all slides, and that color alone is not used to convey meaning. 
• If the presentation is accessed as a pre-recorded video, provide closed captions.
• For live presentations, be prepared to arrange for live captions, an ASL interpreter, or hearing assistive devices if an accommodation request is received.
• If an amplification system is available for an in-person event, always use it and repeat questions from the audience into the microphone.
• If the presentation is at an in-person event, review our Guidelines for Accessible Events .
• Review our Guidelines for Accessible Presentations .
• It is a best practice to provide the audience with digital access to your file so they can follow along with your presentation in the way that works best for them. This can benefit individuals with vision impairments, attention disorders, and more. 
• You may be required to share your content digitally if someone has requested an accommodation for a disability. 
• A good way to share the file is to provide a short link to the presentation on the title slide that you read out loud at the beginning of your presentation. 

If the audience will have digital access to the file….

• Follow all guidelines listed in the Components of an Accessible PowerPoint section below. 

Components of an Accessible PowerPoint File

Template selection.

Before starting to create your PowerPoint, set yourself up for success by choosing an accessible template. Ensure the template has readable fonts and adequate color contrast between text and the slide background.

Basic Content

The content of your slideshow should be well-structured and logical. For specific instructions on how to accomplish each item in this list on your particular operating system, consult the Microsoft PowerPoint accessibility documentation . 

• ​If multiple slides in a row have the same title, add a number at the end to distinguish them.
• Use the Selection Pane to adjust the slide reading order . In older versions of PowerPoint, you may not have this option. Update to a newer version of PowerPoint or utilize the Reorder Objects function to accomplish the same outcome.
• The item at the bottom of the Selection Pane list will be the first one read by assistive technology; this should typically be the slide title. The item at the top of the list is the last item read. 
• This is particularly important in live presentations where not all audience members may be seated close to the projector. 
• Use a simple, standard, and readable font (sans serif fonts are best) in at least 18 point font. Minimize the use of italics and underlining.
• Provide enough white space to improve your audience’s experience.
• ​ Measure color contrast with the WebAIM checker or Colour Contrast Analyzer .
• Do not use color, font style, font face, visual arrangement, animation, or any other visual attribute as the only method of conveying meaning.
• For example, do not say “the item in red is the most important” or “define all the underlined words below”. 
• Don’t just use “*” or “-” to manually make a 'fake list'.
• Check that you're in a 'real list': hitting Enter should cause a new bullet point or number to appear on the new line.
• ​ Avoid pasting the full URL for a website in your slides unless it is intended to be memorized.
• Use hyperlink text  that provides a meaningful description of the destination.
• “Click Here” is not a meaningful label out of context. A label like “Giraffe Social Behavior” tells someone exactly what they will find if they click on it.
• If a link takes the user to a file type besides an HTML web page, indicate the file type at the end of the link, like “CU Boulder Org Chart [pdf]”.
• Alt text should be shorter than a sentence and describe the meaningful content of the image.
• Some versions of PowerPoint have a “Title” and “Description” field. If so, ignore the “Title” field and add alt text to the “Description” field.
• If a graphic is entirely decorative, such as an image used as a slide border or content divider, it should be marked as decorative . This tells screen readers to ignore the image. 
• Some versions of PowerPoint don’t allow you to mark an image as decorative. If so, type “decorative” in the alt text field.
• If a complex graphic requires more than a sentence to describe, add a short description in the alt text field and insert a longer description in a content placeholder on the slide.
• You can position the long description off-screen so it won’t appear during a presentation but will be available to screen reader users.

Specialized Content

• “Header Row” should be selected if the header cells describe the columns below them. “First Column” should be selected if the header cells describe the rows to the right of themselves. 
• If animations convey meaning, that information needs to also appear in written form.
• This can happen either on or off-screen; see " Insert long descriptions for complex graphics " above for an example of off-screen content.
• If an animation does not convey meaning, consider not using it, since it may be distracting or induce nausea or disorientation in individuals with vestibular disorders .
• If possible, provide the graph data in a table.
• Describe the shape and layout of the graph in text (either on- or off-screen).
• Provide caption files for videos . Some versions of PowerPoint allow you to add caption files within PowerPoint; others may require you to burn in or encode the caption files into the video file in advance. For assistance with captioning, please contact the CU Boulder captioning service .
• Ensure the video has sufficient description of any visual content in the video. If the video does not adequately describe its visual content, consider adding any missing visual descriptions into an offscreen text box for screen reader users. 
• ​ Avoid using the Notes field to convey important information.
• If you want to use Notes, consider duplicating that text in an offscreen content placeholder so screen reader users are more likely to encounter it.
• The narrator should describe all visual content audibly as they would in a normal presentation.
• Provide an annotated transcript for the narration that contains all spoken content and note when each slide appears or when an animation activates.

Accessibility Checker

The accessibility checker in Office products like PowerPoint will identify some of the accessibility problems listed above. The accessibility checker may also offer options for a way to fix the problem. 

However, there are many accessibility problems an automated checker will fail to identify, which is why it is important to learn to identify them or to ask an expert to look over the slides. For example, the accessibility checker will not identify if the reading order is inaccurate, if text color is exclusively used to convey a piece of information, or if there are inaccuracies in captions. In short, always run the accessibility checker to see if it identifies anything, but do not assume it will catch all or even most accessibility problems.

WebAIM PowerPoint Accessibility article Microsoft Office PowerPoint Accessibility documentation

Want Additional Support?

If you would like to consult with someone from the Digital Accessibility Office on PowerPoint accessibility, please contact [email protected]

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Accessible PowerPoint Templates

• Kayleen Holt
• July 26, 2021

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Introduction.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, providing your slides and other materials in advance of a meeting or presentation will help assistive technology users access the information. However, this is only helpful if the materials you provide electronically are accessible. In this post, I’ll walk you through creating accessible PowerPoint templates.

I’ll continue this topic next week to discuss the finishing touches you’ll need for making sure your completed PowerPoint files are accessible. I had hoped to do that this week, but this post is already longer than usual.

Making an Accessible PowerPoint Template

Accessibility should be baked in from the beginning, which means using an accessible template. You could build a PowerPoint template from scratch or start with a pre-designed template. Don’t assume that a template is already accessible; even Microsoft’s built-in templates have issues.

For this walkthrough, I used a free template from Slides Carnival . It’s a nice-looking template with a clean design, but it will need modification for accessibility.

NOTE: I am using PowerPoint for Mac, version 16.51, as part of Microsoft 365. Your version might look different and may have different features. (Microsoft tends to update the Windows versions of their software first. It's almost like they have a preference.)

Step 1: View the Master Slides

The number one rule of making accessible PowerPoint files is to use master slides.

Master slides are made up of two types of templates:

• Layout masters
• The Slide Master

The layout masters are the templates you can choose from when you add a new slide to your presentation. The Slide Master is the first slide in a group of layout masters. Changes made to the Slide Master affect all the layout masters associated with it.

You can have multiple Slide Masters. For example, if you want a different background image for activity instructions, you could create a new Slide Master with that background on it, with its own set of layout masters under it.

SIDEBAR: Whenever I choose the Slide Master, I always imagine Donkey from Shrek saying, “Don’t mess with me. I’m the Slide Master. I’ve mastered the slides.” (If you don’t know the reference, here’s a clip of the “Stair Master” scene from Shrek .) So now you can imagine that too. You’re welcome.

Why Use Slide Masters?

Using slide masters has several benefits:

• It gives everyone access. Screen readers may skip manually inserted text boxes, so using content placeholders on the layout masters will ensure that people who use screen readers can read the content.
• It prevents rework. Setting a logical reading order on the layout masters means you won’t have to reorder individual slides. (More on reading order later.) In addition, if you put globally used images (such as a logo or background image) on the Slide Master, you will only have to set the alternative text once.
• It helps ensure consistency. Once you establish fonts and styles on the Slide Master, they will repeat on all the slides below that are governed by that master. If you also set the text placeholders to “do not autofit,” then your text size will also be consistent.

To access the master slides, choose the View tab, and then select Slide Master.

Step 2: Adjust Fonts If Needed

If you want to change the font, select the Slide Master and make your changes.

Be sure to choose a legible style. Users with low vision or learning disabilities will have a harder time reading ornate fonts.

Step 3: Verify Color Contrast

WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.4.3 requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for text (with a few exceptions), so you will need to determine whether your text styles pass that requirement. There are many free color contrast checkers available, including this web-based tool from WebAIM . In the examples below, I’m using TPGi’s free color contrast checker . I like that it includes an eyedropper tool for selecting colors. It’s a free download for both Windows and Mac.

The Salerio template I chose from Slides Carnival uses a pleasing blue and orange color palette. For most slides, the title appears in white text over a dark blue background, and body text appears in very dark gray (near-black) text over a white background.

Both these combinations easily pass a color contrast check. You might even say they pass with flying colors . (Please don’t unfollow me.)

Some of the text in the template, however, is problematic. For example, on the slide layout below, the subtitle appears in orange text over a dark blue background. In addition, the slide number appears in white text over an orange background.

Let’s look at the results of the color contrast check for those two combinations.

Technically, the orange text on the blue shape passes because it uses a 20-point font. However, I’d rather use color combinations I know are safe for all text sizes.

There are color contrast tools that suggest alternative colors for you, such as the tanaguru contrast finder . I didn’t like the options they gave me, so I experimented with some different combinations until I landed on one I liked. For the subtitle text, I replaced the orange with a light peach and darkened the blue a bit. This combination passes WCAG 2.1 levels AA and AAA with a contrast ratio of 7.5:1.

White on orange fails across the board, so I changed the page number formatting to black text, which gives me a contrast ratio of 9.7:1.

TIP: After you adjust the colors, close the Slide Master view, and then select the “Design” tab to customize the color palette for the template.

Step 4: Add Alt Text

Add alternative text to any images on your slide master that convey meaning. If images are purely decorative, such as the shapes used in this template, mark them as decorative.

For grouped objects, select the entire group, NOT the individual parts, and add the alternative text there (or mark as decorative). For example, the house icon shown here is made up of seven shapes. Grouping it and adding alt text to the grouped image allows screen reader users to view it as a house rather than three rectangles, a triangle, a trapezoid, a small circle, and a plus sign.

Step 5: Create Layout Masters

Remember, a screen reader user may not be able to access text that’s not in a placeholder layout on a slide master. This means you’ll need to create a layout master for every type of slide you’ll use. To do this, follow these steps:

• If preferred, you can duplicate an existing layout to modify. Select CTRL (or Command + D on a Mac), or right-click on the slide thumbnail and choose “Duplicate layout.”
• Rename the duplicate layout (choose “Rename” from the Slide Master tab, or right-click and choose “Rename”).
• For topics that span multiple slides, I add parentheses with numbers like “(1 of 3).” I avoid “Continued” because sometimes a topic continues for more than one additional slide.
• If a slide contains only an image that fills the screen, I put the title behind the image so it’s still accessible to screen readers. To be honest, I’m not sure whether this is a good or bad practice, so I’d love some input.
• Select the “Insert Placeholder” button on the Slide Master tab and choose the type of placeholder you’d like. I use the “Content” placeholder almost exclusively because it provides the most flexibility.

When I’m setting up a template, I first make a list of all the slide types I think I’ll use. Then I create a layout master for each one. Even so, I almost always end up creating a few new layout masters as I’m developing.

For example, let’s say I’m using the three-column format included in the template, but I want to add a source note across the bottom. Instead of inserting a text box, I’ll duplicate the three-column layout master and then add a fourth text placeholder across the bottom, naming that new layout master something like “Title + 3 columns with footnote.” Next, I’ll close the slide master view and choose the new layout from the “layout” dropdown menu on the Home tab. Then I type the source note into the placeholder.

Introduction to Ents

Column 1: Origins

• Created upon request from Yavanna
• Taught to speak by Elves

Column 2: Characteristics

• Tree-like appearance
• Very strong

Column 3: Notable Ents

Source: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Ents

Let’s say I want to include a graphic organizer that lists the titles of the lessons in my course. I’ll reuse the slide in each lesson and add a car icon to indicate the current lesson (with alt text like “car stopped at Lesson 4: Facilitating an Entmoot”).

Lesson Roadmap

Road illustration with six numbered locations marked:

• An Onodrim by Any Other Name
• Shepherds of the Trees
• Fundamentals of Old Entish
• Facilitating an Entmoot
• Where Have All the Entwives Gone?
• Is Groot a Lost Ent?

There are three ways I could build this slide:

• Option 1: Use textboxes to add the lesson titles. This is not an accessible option, because screen reader users will not be able to read the titles.
• Option 2: Make a graphic with the lesson titles on it and include those titles on the alt text. This is a better option for screen reader users, but it for screen magnifier users, the text may become pixelated when enlarged so it’s unreadable.
• Option 3: Add text placeholders on the layout masters for the lesson titles. This is the best option for everyone.

How to Build the Roadmap Slide Template

• Normally, a graphic that’s used once wouldn’t go on the master, but since I’d use the graphic organizer in every lesson, it makes sense to create a layout master for it.
• Also, placing the image on the master will help me make sure the text placeholder boxes are in the right place.
• Choose “Insert Placeholder” from the Slide Master tab and select “Text.”
• Adjust the fonts as needed. By default, PowerPoint lists five levels of bulleted text. For the roadmap graphic, I only need lesson titles, so I’ll remove levels 2 through 5 and then set bullets to “none.”
• Copy and paste the text placeholder box as needed and adjust placement.

You might wonder why I don’t just use textboxes on the layout master, since the text will be the same every time I use this slide. Unfortunately, text entered on the master may not be viewable to screen readers.

The Outline view, available from the View tab, will show you a plain text version of your slides. The text you see in the outline pane is the text a screen reader will see. Here’s a comparison of my roadmap slide using textboxes vs. text placeholders.

(Some assistive technology might be able to read text boxes that aren’t visible in the Outline view; however, “some” and “might” are not the same as “accessible to all.”)

Make sure you don’t type text into the text placeholders on the slide master. It might look fine while you’re working in PowerPoint, but switch over to presentation mode and *poof* your text will disappear. Text has to be typed on the regular slide (into content placeholders), not on the layout master.

Step 6: Set the Reading Order

After creating layout masters, check the reading order to ensure that screen reader users can access the content and keyboard users can tab to items in the intended order.

From the Slide Master view, select the Home tab, and then select Arrange. At the bottom of the dropdown menu, select Selection Pane. Then drag the items into the correct order.

The order in which objects in the list are read by screen readers may vary depending on your version of PowerPoint. In my Mac version, objects are read from bottom to top in the list. However, I believe this is reversed for newer versions of PowerPoint for Windows. Follow these steps to find out:

• From the Review tab, select “Check Accessibility.”
• Read the “Steps To Fix” text in the accessibility pane. They will specify the reading order of the items in the list. This only appears if problems are found—so you might have to intentionally create a bad slide to get this information.

Some versions of PowerPoint allow you to mark objects as decorative from the reading pane by deselecting a checkmark next to the item. Sadly, my version only allows me to remove the item from both the reading order and the visual view, by selecting an eyeball icon. This is about as useful as you’d imagine. (It’s not.)

If you are using a pre-made template, check the reading order right away, so you can see what you’re dealing with early in the process (and possibly decide to use a different template). The Salerio template uses a great deal of Google Shapes, which are cumbersome to decipher in the selection pane. Because I marked the shapes as decorative, they don’t pose a problem for screen readers; however, they’re messy and make it hard for me to work with as a developer.

For example, on the title slide, the title is named “Google Shape; 22;p2.” I can’t tell from looking at the selection pane what order things should be in. To clean it up, I saved the background shapes as one image and replaced the shapes with that image (which I marked as decorative).

Following the steps presented here will help you create an accessible PowerPoint template, which is the first (and most important) step to creating accessible PowerPoint files.

• View the master slides.
• Adjust fonts if needed.
• Verify color contrast.
• Add alt text.
• Create layout masters.
• Set the reading order.

I’ll continue this topic next week with instructions for making sure your finished PowerPoint is accessible. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it.

Want to Learn More?

Check out these resources:

• Download TPGi’s free color contrast checker tool here .
• Learn more about choosing accessible fonts here .
• Learn more about using the reading pane.

Related Posts

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• 6 Takeaways from TLDC’s Accessible & Inclusive Design Conference
• Applying the POUR Principles to Create Accessible Documents and Presentations
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Thanks, Stephanie! I hadn’t thought of contacting the creator of the templates.

Wow, Kayleen, this has been extremely helpful! Thank you for describing, step by step, how to make the fun, free templates from Slides Carnival accessible. Have you ever considered sharing your posts with Jimena Catalina, creator of these templates? All of their users – and their users’ audiences – could benefit from your knowledge!

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Blog Accessibility 7 Tips On How To Make Accessible Presentations

7 Tips On How To Make Accessible Presentations

Written by: Aditya Rana Aug 18, 2023

Once upon a time, presentations were limited to lecture halls and boardrooms. 

Remember Microsoft PowerPoint? Everyone used it to create slides or pitch decks to share knowledge and exchange ideas with an audience.  

But those times are long gone. 

Today, Canva and Adobe Express have become the gold standard for creating presentations with a global audience online. 

And while these tools offer plenty of templates and customization options to make creating presentations easy, none of them prioritizes accessibility. 

This means presentations made on Canva exclude people with visual impairments or other disabilities because the design does not focus on their needs. 

To prevent that, you need graphic design software that prioritizes accessibility, like Venngage. 

In this post, I’ll show you how Venngage can help anyone create accessible presentations with a WCAG-compliant Accessible Design Tool .

Some of our accessible presentation templates are free and some require a small monthly fee. Sign-up is always free, as is access to Venngage’s drag-and-drop editor 

Click to jump ahead:

• What is an accessible presentation?

7 tips to make accessible presentations

• 4 examples of accessible presentations

What is an accessible presentation?  

An accessible presentation is a type of content that can be understood by everyone, including people with disabilities such as color blindness or dyslexia.

An accessible presentation is different from a normal presentation as there is a greater emphasis on ensuring design (slides, images, charts, and text) can be understood by all types of people.

Here’s an example of an accessible presentation: 

Why should you make your presentations accessible?

Making inclusive and accessible presentations is important because they’re no longer limited to a physical presence.  

Anyone can create a presentation and share it online for the world to consume. 

And with the rise of remote work and interactions happening on platforms like Zoom and Google Meet, presentations fall under the category of accessible documents . 

Want to learn about other accessible content types? Check out our other posts:  A Guide On How To Create Accessible Newsletters How to Use Color Blind Friendly Palettes to Make Your Charts Accessible How to Create Accessible Infographics With Venngage

Imagine what happens when someone creates a presentation that isn’t accessible for a remote meeting with a disabled attendee.

It not only renders the content unusable but hinders effective communication, collaboration, and knowledge dissemination.

How do you make a presentation accessible to everyone?

The best strategy to make your presentations accessible is to follow WCAG guidelines 2.2 developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. 

If you’re in the US, you should refer to the ADA standards for accessible design . This is a federal law that was signed in 1991 to prohibit discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life. ADA standards were later amended in 2008 to ensure websites and digital content are accessible to people with disabilities after a case was settled covering the inaccessibility of Target’s website to individuals with visual impairments.  In the EU, accessibility falls under Web Accessibility Directive (Directive 2016/2102/EU) , which covers accessibility of websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies.

Regardless of the law that applies to your jurisdiction, most governments follow WCAG guidelines. 

This means to make your presentations accessible, you’ll need to set alt text to images , avoid using tables, choose accessible fonts , use accessible colors , and more. 

I’ll cover each of these factors and more in detail in the next section. 

Typography refers to how you arrange and present text in your slides. 

This covers everything from font selection, text size, and line spacing as these elements can either enhance accessibility or become a barrier. 

When it comes to fonts in presentations, make sure to select a sans-serif type.

Fonts like Arial, Helvetica, and Roboto have a clean appearance, but what makes them accessible are distinct letterforms that minimize confusion. 

This helps make text easier to read for people with dyslexia or other reading difficulties.

Here’s an example of an accessible presentation using the sans serif font Karla:

Text size 

Font size is also another crucial factor in ensuring presentation accessibility.

That’s because a large text size makes content on slides easy to read. 

I recommend at least a text size of at least 16px for digital presentations and 24px for presentations that will be delivered in person.

Why? The back row of a room is much further than the distance between you and your laptop screen. So keep in mind where and how your presentations will be consumed when selecting a text size. 

Limit the amount of text 

Slides are supposed to support a presentation and not be the central focus. 

If you include too much text on a slide, you will lose your audience as they will try to read what’s on the slide rather than pay attention to what you’re saying. 

And if someone has an attention deficiency, they will struggle even more to read a slide and listen to what is being said simultaneously. 

So, limit the amount of text in your slides. 

One method to write great slides is to use short phrases and keywords rather than whole sentences or paragraphs. 

Here’s a great example:

Skip the slide transitions

Transitions between slides used to be a cool thing to do.

I’m sure many of us spent obsessing over them while creating a presentation for a school assignment. 

It was believed that they added visual interest to a presentation, helped break up the monotony of static slides, and could engage an audience. 

But guess what?

They’re a strict no-no for accessibility. 

Slide transitions can be visually distracting for people with visual impairments and cause discomfort, confusion, or difficulty in focusing on the content.

They can also increase the load for individuals with cognitive impairments as rapid or complex transitions may make it harder for them to process the information.

Alt text (alternative text, alt tags, alt descriptions or alt attributes) is descriptive text attached to visual elements like photos, icons, and even graphics in presentations. 

Here’s an example:

If a user with visual impairments using a screen reader comes across this slide, they might not be able to see the image. 

Even assistive technology such as a screen reader cannot provide them context unless you specifically write an image alt text for it to describe the image. 

In this example, you might write: “an image of the Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheion where six maidens take the place of columns in supporting the entablature.”

To write a good alt text for graphics in your slides, follow these guidelines: 

• Describe the intent of the image
• State why the image is important

Want to learn how to write alt text that’s actually helpful? Read our guide here: 

• Write helpful alternative (alt) text for non-text content

Color contrast

A key section in WCAG guidelines 2.2 is color contrast recommendations to ensure content is visible to people with different vision capabilities. 

The minimum contrast ratio recommended is 4:5:1. 

In other words, for every 5 units of luminance (brightness) in the background, there should be at least 4 units of luminance in the foreground text.

But I recommend going a step above these recommendations. 

You don’t know what type of device users will use to view your presentation and this could affect the clarity of your slides. 

A good color contrast scheme will ensure your decks are visible in dim and bright rooms: 

Here are some tips to ensure adequate contrast in your presentations: 

• Use dark colors on a light background, or light colors on dark background
• Use solid patterns to make any elements layered over it more visible

To learn more about contrast as a design principle, read this post:  A Brief Guide to Contrast – A Design Principle

If you were creating a slide deck in Canva, Adobe, or other cloud-based design tools, you’d have no way to ensure color contrast in your slides directly. 

Instead, you would have to first create a presentation, export it, and use a third-party accessibility tool to test it. 

And if your design failed, you’d have to come back to your tool and repeat the process. 

See the issue here? It can get repetitive and waste time. 

But Venngage’s Accessible Design Tool lets you create accessible presentations from start to finish without having to leave the platform. 

Venngage integrates a WCAG-compliant Color Contrast Checker to let you test your slides as you design. 

Here’s how you can use it: 

• Select “File” from the top navigation menu, and select “Check Accessibility” to open the Accessibility panel.
• All elements are tested against WCAG contrast requirements and results will be listed under the “Color Contrast” header.

Reading order 

If you’re not familiar with screen readers, you might know about the importance of reading order. 

Reading order in accessible presentations refers to the sequence in which text and non-text elements are presented. 

A user without a disability might be able to understand the reading order of content by looking at a design, but screen readers require extra information to interpret the order in which they should present content.

If you don’t set the reading order, a screen reader might go off course and confuse users. 

Learn more about reading order in this post:

• Use Reading Order in your accessible designs and documents

Again, most graphic design tools don’t allow you to directly set the reading order of content in your presentations. 

But Venngage’s built-in Accessibility Checker does. 

• Open “Reading Order” in the Accessibility panel by clicking on “File” next to the Venngage logo above the top toolbar.
• Under “Accessibility”, select “Edit Reading Order.”
• Select the page you want to work on. This should open a list of all text elements on the page
• Click on items in the list to highlight the corresponding text box or non-text element
• Move any item in the list into its logical position with your mouse or keyboard

Save in an accessible format 

When sharing your presentation or pitch deck, most people save in the default .ppt or .pptx format. 

It’s always better to share as an accessible PDF instead. 

While PowerPoint files can be made accessible, this process requires additional effort, but a PDF already support features that enhance accessibility.

Again, if you use Venngage’s Accessible Design Tool to create your presentations, you’ll be able to export your slide deck as an accessible PDF.

Note: This feature is only available for our Business users, but anyone can share a link to their design for free without any impact on the accessibility of your design. 

4 examples of accessible presentations  

Presentations are meant to be engaging and leave a lasting impression. 

But depending on the end objective, knowing the type of presentations to help you best achieve your goal is important. 

A sales-format presentation isn’t going to work for an academic presentation, no matter how accessible you make it. 

Informative presentation

An informative presentation is one where the main goal is to provide the audience with valuable and factual information on a topic. 

The goal is to educate, enlighten, and enhance the audience’s understanding.

This type of presentation is commonly used in educational settings, professional environments, and public speaking engagements.

Here’s an example of an accessible informative presentation:

Pitch presentation

A pitch presentation helps present an idea, product, service, or project to an audience to gain their interest, support, or investment. 

Pitch decks are commonly used in business to persuade potential clients or investors. 

Here’s an example of an accessible pitch deck:

Classic presentation

A classic presentation is the traditional approach to communicating information to an audience. 

These presentations follow a structured format that includes a clear introduction, main content, and conclusion. Classic presentations can be used in various contexts, such as business meetings, academic lectures, and seminars. 

Here’s an example of a classic presentation: 

Sales presentation 

A sales presentation is a targeted communication effort aimed at persuading clients or customers to purchase a product, service, or idea. 

Sales presentations are used to showcase the features, benefits, and value. These presentations are used in various industries, from retail and technology to B2B.

Frequently Asked Questions 

How do accessible presentations benefit different audiences.

Accessible presentations benefit different audiences by ensuring information can be easily understood by everyone. Accessible presentations benefit the following groups: people with visual impairments, people with hearing impairments, people with cognitive disabilities, and people using assistive technology. 

What tools can help in creating accessible presentations?

There are many tools on the market that can help you make accessible presentations such as Canva or Adobe Express, but only Venngage offers a comprehensive accessible design tool that allows you to make and export accessible presentations without having to use a third-party tool or other software. 

Are Google Slides accessible? 

Google Slides are not automatically accessible. Though Google provides some accessibility features like setting alt text to images, other features such as an in-built color contrast checker are missing and will require you to export your design to test on a third-party tool. Therefore, I recommended you use Venngage instead of Google Slides to create fully accessible presentations from start to finish. 

In Summary: Making your presentations or slide deck inclusive is not only an ethical obligation but a necessity to reach a larger target audience

How presentations are created and shared has completely changed. 

In today’s digital world, web-based tools like Venngage are leading the way to make it for anyone to create presentations, including accessible presentations. 

Besides the legal requirements, taking a few moments to make presentations that resonate with everyone will pay off in the long run. 

And Venngage will be there with you the whole way to make it as easy as possible for you no matter the presentation type you need. 

So don’t hesitate. Make your next presentation count by making it accessible. 

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Accessibility Toolkit for Open Educational Resources (OER): PowerPoint

• Home [Updated 2024]
• Accessibility Principles
• Text/Typographical Layout
• Headings [Updated 2024]
• Link Text [Updated 2024]
• Images Alternative Text (alt-text) [Updated 2024]
• Color and Color Contrast
• Accessibility Design Dos and Don'ts
• Accessible Social Media [New 2023]
• Images [Updated 2024]
• Interactive Activities [New 2024]
• Word documents
• Math and Science Equations [New 2024]
• Brightspace (D2L) [New 2024]
• Google Sites
• LibGuides (Springshare)
• Lumen Learning
• OER Commons-ISKME
• Pressbooks [New 2024]
• Evaluation Tools [Updated 2024]
• VPATs & Accessibility Statements
• Training Tutorials
• Presentations on Accessibility
• Overview on Social Media Accessibility
• ASCII art Accessibility
• Emoji Accessibility
• Hashtag Accessibility
• Meme Accessibility
• Accessible AI [New 2024]
• Glean Notetaking Apps [New 2024]

What's on this page?

• PowerPoint presentations tend to be highly visual, and people who are blind or have low vision can understand them more easily if you create your slides with accessibility in mind.
• Use built-in templates and layouts.
• Give each slide a unique title.
• Add alternative text descriptions to images.
• Use bulleted and numbered lists.
• Avoid the use of text boxes (use content placeholders on template layouts instead).
• Tab through each slide to ensure correct reading order.

​​​​​​​​​​Getting Started with Presentation Accessibility [New 2020]

To help you remember the best practices for presentation accessibility, use the mnemonic SLIDE , which stands for:

• S lide titles are descriptive and unique.
• L inks are meaningful.
• I mages have text alternatives.
• D esign is perceivable and predictable.
• E mpathy drives design.

Creating Accessible PowerPoint

How to use powerpoint to create live subtitles and translations.

Attribution: [Wolfe, Amy] (2020, May, 13) Live Caption a Lecture [ppt]. Retrieved from https://guides.cuny.edu/ld.php?content_id=54693882

• Create Live Subtitles/Captions using PowerPoint (Slide show - starts automatically) Use the program PowerPoint to create live subtitles and translations for your lectures. FYI: The tutorial will begin automatically after download.

Evaluate your PowerPoint

The PowerPoint Accessibility Checker helps you find and fix accessibility issues. It creates a report of the issues it finds, and explains why each issue might create a problem. Finally, it tells you how to fix the issue.

To run the accessibility checker in Windows:

• Select "File"
• Select "Check for Issues: Inspect Presentation"
• Select the " Check Accessibility " in the dropdown menu

To run the accessibility checker on a Mac:

• Select Review > Check Accessibility.

Note: If you get a message saying "Unable to run the Accessibility Checker. Cannot check the current file type for accessibility issues"   it just means the file has not been saved to the newest "pptx" version.  This is easy to fix.

• Select "Save As"
• Choose "PowerPoint Presentation (*.pptx)"
• Run "Check Accessibility" again and you will now see any accessibility issues
• Instructions from Office Support Visual instructions on how to run the Accessibility Checker for Windows, macOS and Online.
• << Previous: Podcasts
• Next: Videos >>
• Last Updated: Apr 16, 2024 5:43 PM
• URL: https://guides.cuny.edu/accessibility

Home Blog Presentation Ideas Accessibility in Presentations: Making your Slides Accessible

Accessibility in Presentations: Making your Slides Accessible

Accessibility in web, print, and presentation design is of paramount importance. Approximately 2.2 billion people in the world have a near or distance vision impairment. An even larger number lives with other types of visual or cognitive dysfunctions. When delivering a presentation to an audience, you never know what type of people will attend. Some audience members may have dyslexia, color blindness, moderate or severe forms of vision impairments which can affect their ability to enjoy your presentation as much as others do. This post offers a walkthrough of web content accessibility guidelines and PowerPoint accessibility features that will help you design and deliver more inclusive presentations. 

Accessibility Definition 

Accessibility focuses on how a disabled person can access or benefit from a physical or digital object they interact with. 

Web accessibility, in particular, pertains to how people can interact with online materials, apps, and digital systems effectively. A huge body of website accessibility research is specifically dedicated to removing software usage barriers for people with different types of disabilities. 

What’s more, improving web accessibility is a global regulatory agenda. The US adopted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) back in 1990. Three decades later, it remains an important regulatory mechanism for imposing compliance on digital service providers. Last year, over 2,285 ADA class-action suits were filed against businesses, who failed to create an inclusive environment. 

Globally, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) , introduced by World Wide Web Consortium, are used to ensure a greater degree of accessibility for web content and web experience. Specifically, these include guidelines for: 

• Adding support for voice-control systems
• Using transcripts and subtitles for content 
• Prioritizing convenient navigation that does not use color 
• Incorporating descriptive captions for images (alt texts) 

To ensure compliance with the above, a lot of free web accessibility tools were created such as Section508 test , AChecker accessibility checker , and MAGENTA among others. 

ADA accessibility guidelines also extend to presentation design . Since presentations are primarily digital mediums nowadays, making them easily accessible for different user groups is highly important. 

Benefits of Making Your Presentations Accessible

Some of the benefits of making your slides accessible are:

• Inclusion of audience members with special needs
• Ability to engage people who lack language fluency
• Improved perception of you as a speaker (and as company representative) 
• Supplementary materials such as transcripts or audio can be re-distributed through other channels
• Presentation transcripts also help improve the SEO of the website where they are published

Let’s see how to create accessible PowerPoint & Google Slides presentations.

How to Make Your Presentations More Accessible: Best Practices 

Accessibility is all about making your content more inclusive to diverse people, despite their physical or mental abilities. It doesn’t take long since PowerPoint includes a number of accessibility features. You just need to be a bit more mindful about your design choices to create accessible designs. 

Fonts can easily make or break the aesthetic appeal of the presentation. But far more importantly, a non-suitable font can prevent some audience members from benefiting from your slides. 

Here are some best practices for accessible PowerPoint fonts: 

• The best font size for a PowerPoint presentation is a minimum of 24 points . It’s okay to use a bigger typeface for headings and subheads to accentuate the important information. Likewise, go for a bigger size if you anticipate presenting in a big conference room. 
• Prioritize sans serif fonts. Sans serif fonts are those without small lines (serifs) at the ends of characters. Popular examples of sans serif fonts are Palatino, Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, and Helvetica. Also, avoid handwritten and calligraphy-style fonts as these are the hardest to read for most people. 

• Do not use flickering, flashing, and animated text. Such animations may not land well with visually impaired people or those suffering from epilepsy. In most cases, flashing fonts also make your presentation look cluttered and amateurish.
• Use bold for emphasis. When you want to highlight an important idea, use bold styling over underline and/or italics . The latter change the letter shapes, making them less identifiable, and thus less readable.
• Mark the hyperlinks. A good accessibility practice is to mark all hyperlinks are marked properly with both color and underlying for color-blind people. Also, use descriptive hyperlink texts. Otherwise, people who use screen readers will struggle to understand where the link leads. 

Slide Texts 

Once you’ve settled on the fonts, you’d be itching to type some presentation texts. But before (and after) you do the writing, make sure that your accessible template has the following characteristics: 

• Use strong contrast between text and background. Contrast helps visually impaired people better distinguish the characters. Use PowerPoint accessibility checker to locate insufficient color contrasts on slides. Also, check recommended color contrast values for text by WCGA. 

• Go for simpler language. Don’t use jargon, industry-specific terms, acronyms, or catch-phrases. Most are not universally understood and some audience members may struggle to comprehend them. By using simpler language you are not “dumbing down” your copy — you make it more clear and concise. Add some more powerful words to make your texts more compelling. 
• Check your texts for logic flow. Screen readers typically stand the text elements of the slide in the order they were added to the slide. It may be different from the order in which they actually appear. So double-check that your text flow is correct. Also, try adding ScreenTips if you are using PowerPoint.
• Don’t bottom-align slide text. Why? Because that may hide some of the bottom texts from people sitting in the last rows if the seating is tiered. 
• Use captions and subtitles. Both can help audience members to better follow your delivery. Also, it’s easy to do since PowerPoint allows to automatically create real-time automatic captions for slides . 

Presentation Visuals

Finally, an accessible PowerPoint template also features images everyone can understand, interpret, relate to, and process. Remember: some of the people may not see your slides well. Hence, you may need to add some extra cues for them. 

Here are the essential accessibility practices for improving presentation visuals: 

• Limit the use of GIFs, flashy videos or, animated transitions. Likewise, avoid shifting colors, rotating icons, and moving borders. Abusing of animations, or using too many effects and flashes in your slides can create unnecessary clutter and worsen the reading experience. 
• Opt for texts over videos, when possible. If you absolutely must add a short video, ensure that the clip has good audio context for the listener to understand its content. As an alternative, add a slide note with a summary of the video clip.
• Include Alternative Texts (Alt Texts) for visuals. An ADA compliant PowerPoint presentation has to include alt texts for all images and other visual content. Alt texts can be processed by a screen reader, meaning people with visual impairments can better understand the featured information. Adding an alt text is easy. Right-click the graphic, select Format object , then click Alt Text pane, and provide a brief text description. The same approach works for Shapes. In the example below we can see how we configured the Alt Text for a human figure in the Health Check Dashboard template .

• Highlight diverse people on your slides. Our world is wonderfully diverse. So add use inclusive visuals featuring folks of different backgrounds, ethnicities, body shapes, and abilities. In fact, that’s what most people expect from you. According to a recent Getty poll , 80% of consumers believe that businesses should show more ethnic diversity in their advertising.
• Avoid complex charts or tables. These are often hard to process for screen reading software and audience members with cognitive issues. Thus, make your graphics as simple as possible. Be careful while using SVG format. SVGs are great as they give a lot of flexibility for designing the slides and including graphics in your presentations at a minimum file size, but the format lacks semantics for expressing structures like bar charts, tables, scattered plots, etc. The above makes the content difficult to parse by a screen reader. 

Presentation Delivery

When the big day of the public speech comes, don’t let your accessibility design efforts go to waste by sabotaging the delivery. Remember: accessibility is about creating an inclusive experience, not just objects. Respectively, you’ll need to adjust your delivery too. Here’s how: 

Before starting the presentation, ask if there are any people with special needs in the audience. That’s a simple gesture of courtesy that goes a long way. If you see some raised hands, ask how you could adjust your speech for the person’s comfort. 

Overall, speak slowly and distinctively. Use simpler language when you can, mimicking the terms you are using in the presentation copy. Don’t overload your slides with text and instead use voice to communicate and explain extra concepts. Give enough time for the audience to read the slides. Make timely pauses, allowing people to catch up with reading and processing your main points. 

Keep your language more inclusive overall. Use “they” as your main pronoun when making a generalization, instead of masculine pronoun (e.g., he), or the awkward “she/he” combo. Likewise, use plural noun forms (e.g. people, workers, employees) over terms marked for masculine (e.g. foreman, fireman, etc). 

When you want to introduce a hero to your story, for example, as part of a case study , go for a “gender-neutral” name such as Alex, Dana, Kim to avoid stereotyping either males or females. By all means, avoid blanket, generalistic statements in your presentation such as “Women are better cooks” or “Asians are good in STEM”. This may alienate some audience members. The Linguistic Society has a great set of guidelines for inclusive language. 

Finally, consider making your slides available in other formats. While accessibility in PowerPoint is rather great, converting your slides to another format such as PDF, HTML, mp3 audio, or another type of word processing document is another great step for ensuring that more people can access your content after a live delivery.

To Conclude: Go for an ADA Compliant PowerPoint Template 

Designing accessible presentations requires some effort. Making your presentations accessible means you’re considering all disabilities. If you are not sure that you’ve got all the aspects of PowerPoint ADA compliance right, consider using a premade accessible template. Accessible PowerPoint templates are fully optimized for use by people with visual impairments and other types of special needs. By opting for such a solution, you won’t have to worry about the design intricacies and have more time to hone your delivery! 

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Creating Accessible Powerpoint Presentations

This guide outlines best practice for creating accessible PowerPoint presentations. In the UK around 2 million people have sight loss. A visual impairment could be sensitivity to light, blurred vision or blindness. So please don’t think that because you don’t have a colleague with a guide dog that this isn’t relevant to you. It is! Video calling and webinars are the new norm so accessibility should be a priority rather than an afterthought.

Imagine presenting to an audience, or at a job interview only to discover those you need to impress can’t understand your slides. It’s not a good first impression, especially if equality and inclusion are values your employer actively promotes.

Good Practice

Lots of people who are visually impaired will be able to read your slides without using any specialist software IF you make some subtle and simple changes.  Use these points when creating accessible PowerPoint presentations.

• Use PowerPoint’s inbuilt accessibility checker. It’s super easy to use and will quickly highlight accessibility issues.
• Have a sufficient colour contrast between the text and the background so that people with low vision can see the content. A dark font on a light background often works best and avoid a pure white background.
• Choose your fonts carefully. Sans Serif typeface is best and should be font size 24 or above (larger for titles).

• Some people will find reading italic and underlined text difficult so keep these to a minimum if you must use them.
• Make sure that you are not using colour alone to convey information. It can be useful to select greyscale from the view tab and scan your slides for occurrences of colour coding.
• Avoid busy backgrounds and keep ample ‘white space’ between sentences and paragraphs.
• Avoid using animations and sounds if it’s not vital to the presentation because they are distracting.

More Insights

Whilst not exhaustive these tips are a good starting point. Every month we add new articles to this site ranging from ‘How To’ practical instructions to insightful interviews.

Please contact us if you’d like to chat about working together to make your organisation accessible for all. We offer accessibility audits, disability awareness training, British Sign Language Lessons and much more.

You may also enjoy these articles:

12 Tips for Accessible Video Calls

Video Conferencing with Deaf Colleagues

What is A Hidden Disability

Join us on twitter @EnhanceTheUK for more practical tips on disability awareness and making your working environment inclusive for all.

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How-To Geek

6 ways to create more interactive powerpoint presentations.

Engage your audience with cool, actionable features.

Quick Links

• Add a QR code
• Embed Microsoft Forms (Education or Business Only)
• Embed a Live Web Page
• Add Links and Menus
• Add Clickable Images to Give More Info
• Add a Countdown Timer

We've all been to a presentation where the speaker bores you to death with a mundane PowerPoint presentation. Actually, the speaker could have kept you much more engaged by adding some interactive features to their slideshow. Let's look into some of these options.

1. Add a QR code

Adding a QR code can be particularly useful if you want to direct your audience to an online form, website, or video.

Some websites have in-built ways to create a QR code. For example, on Microsoft Forms , when you click "Collect Responses," you'll see the QR code option via the icon highlighted in the screenshot below. You can either right-click the QR code to copy and paste it into your presentation, or click "Download" to add it to your device gallery to insert the QR code as a picture.

In fact, you can easily add a QR code to take your viewer to any website. On Microsoft Edge, right-click anywhere on a web page where there isn't already a link, and left-click "Create QR Code For This Page."

You can also create QR codes in other browsers, such as Chrome.

You can then copy or download the QR code to use wherever you like in your presentation.

2. Embed Microsoft Forms (Education or Business Only)

If you plan to send your PPT presentation to others—for example, if you're a trainer sending step-by-step instruction presentation, a teacher sending an independent learning task to your students, or a campaigner for your local councilor sending a persuasive PPT to constituents—you might want to embed a quiz, questionnaire, pole, or feedback survey in your presentation.

In PowerPoint, open the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, and in the Forms group, click "Forms". If you cannot see this option, you can add new buttons to the ribbon .

As at April 2024, this feature is only available for those using their work or school account. We're using a Microsoft 365 Personal account in the screenshot below, which is why the Forms icon is grayed out.

Then, a sidebar will appear on the right-hand side of your screen, where you can either choose a form you have already created or opt to craft a new form.

Now, you can share your PPT presentation with others , who can click the fields and submit their responses when they view the presentation.

3. Embed a Live Web Page

You could always screenshot a web page and paste that into your PPT, but that's not a very interactive addition to your presentation. Instead, you can embed a live web page into your PPT so that people with access to your presentation can interact actively with its contents.

To do this, we will need to add an add-in to our PPT account .

Add-ins are not always reliable or secure. Before installing an add-in to your Microsoft account, check that the author is a reputable company, and type the add-in's name into a search engine to read reviews and other users' experiences.

To embed a web page, add the Web Viewer add-in ( this is an add-in created by Microsoft ).

Go to the relevant slide and open the Web Viewer add-in. Then, copy and paste the secure URL into the field box, and remove https:// from the start of the address. In our example, we will add a selector wheel to our slide. Click "Preview" to see a sample of the web page's appearance in your presentation.

This is how ours will look.

When you or someone with access to your presentation views the slideshow, this web page will be live and interactive.

4. Add Links and Menus

As well as moving from one slide to the next through a keyboard action or mouse click, you can create links within your presentation to direct the audience to specific locations.

To create a link, right-click the outline of the clickable object, and click "Link."

In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, click "Place In This Document," choose the landing destination, and click "OK."

What's more, to make it clear that an object is clickable, you can use action buttons. Open the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, click "Shape," and then choose an appropriate action button. Usefully, PPT will automatically prompt you to add a link to these shapes.

You might also want a menu that displays on every slide. Once you have created the menu, add the links using the method outlined above. Then, select all the items, press Ctrl+C (copy), and then use Ctrl+V to paste them in your other slides.

5. Add Clickable Images to Give More Info

Through PowerPoint's animations, you can give your viewer the power to choose what they see and when they see it. This works nicely whether you're planning to send your presentation to others to run through independently or whether you're presenting in front of a group and want your audience to decide which action they want to take.

Start by creating the objects that will be clickable (trigger) and the items that will appear (pop-up).

Then, select all the pop-ups together. When you click "Animations" on the ribbon and choose an appropriate animation for the effect you want to achieve, this will be applied to all objects you have selected.

The next step is to rename the triggers in your presentation. To do this, open the "Home" tab, and in the Editing group, click "Select", and then "Selection Pane."

With the Selection Pane open, select each trigger on your slide individually, and rename them in the Selection Pane, so that they can be easily linked to in the next step.

Finally, go back to the first pop-up. Open the "Animations" tab, and in the Advanced Animation group, click the "Trigger" drop-down arrow. Then, you can set the item to appear when a trigger is clicked in your presentation.

If you want your item to disappear when the trigger is clicked again, select the pop-up, click "Add Animation" in the Advanced Animation group, choose an Exit animation, and follow the same step to link that animation to the trigger button.

6. Add a Countdown Timer

A great way to get your audience to engage with your PPT presentation is to keep them on edge by adding a countdown timer. Whether you're leading a presentation and want to let your audience stop to discuss a topic, or running an online quiz with time-limit questions, having a countdown timer means your audience will keep their eye on your slide throughout.

To do this, you need to animate text boxes or shapes containing your countdown numbers. Choose and format a shape and type the highest number that your countdown clock will need. In our case, we're creating a 10-second timer.

Now, with your shape selected, open the "Animations" tab on the ribbon and click the animation drop-down arrow. Then, in the Exit menu, click "Disappear."

Open the Animation Pane, and click the drop-down arrow next to the animation you've just added. From there, choose "Timing."

Make sure "On Click" is selected in the Start menu, and change the Delay option to "1 second," before clicking "OK."

Then, with this shape still selected, press Ctrl+C (copy), and then Ctrl+V (paste). In the second box, type 9 . With the Animation Pane still open and this second shape selected, click the drop-down arrow and choose "Timing" again. Change the Start option to "After Previous," and make sure the Delay option is 1 second. Then, click "OK."

We can now use this second shape as our template, as when we copy and paste it again, the animations will also duplicate. With this second shape selected, press Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, type 8 into the box, and continue to do the same until you get to 0 .

Next, remove the animations from the "0" box, as you don't want this to disappear. To do this, click the shape, and in the Animation Pane drop-down, click "Remove."

You now need to layer them in order. Right-click the box containing number 1, and click "Bring To Front." You will now see that box on the top. Do the same with the other numbers in ascending order.

Finally, you need to align the objects together. Click anywhere on your slide and press Ctrl+A. Then, in the Home tab on the ribbon, click "Arrange." First click "Align Center," and then bring the menu up again, so that you can click "Align Middle."

Press Ctrl+A again to select your timer, and you can then move your timer or copy and paste it elsewhere.

Press F5 to see the presentation in action, and when you get to the slide containing the timer, click anywhere on the slide to see your countdown timer in action!

Now that your PPT presentation is more interactive, make sure you've avoided these eight common presentational mistakes before you present your slides.

May 16, 2024

Create accessible PDFs with Microsoft 365 apps

• Add our blog to your RSS feed reader" href="/rss/blog.xml" data-bi-name="RSS Subscription" data-bi-id="rss_feed" data-bi-bhvr="120" data-bi-socchn="RSSSubscription" title="Microsoft 365 Insider Blog RSS" target="blank" class="d-inline-block">

Howdy, Microsoft 365 insiders! My name is Peter Wu, and I’m a Principal Engineer on the PowerPoint team. I’m here to explain how to use several Microsoft 365 apps to create accessible PDFs, so that everyone can access and enjoy the content of your creations.

Create accessible PDFs with Microsoft 365

Global Accessibility Awareness Day occurs every May, and this year we’re reminding you to make sure that your documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and other content remains accessible by the more than 1 billion people in the world with disabilities.

Many people who you communicate with could have disabilities that you are not aware of (studies show more than 70% of disabilities are invisible). Making your content accessible can help empower them to understand your message and fully participate in whatever activity or concept you are communicating. Practice and make it a habit ! 

We know many of you distribute your content in PDF format, which is why we’ve been continually making improvements to the way Microsoft 365 apps preserve the accessibility of content when exporting to PDF. In most cases, you can do all your accessibility work within your favorite Microsoft 365 apps, without costly add-ins or other remediation steps.

How it works

• Start with a template or theme that has good semantics and color palette, such as the new default theme in Office . All six of the accent colors in this theme contrast well with the default text color and font size in PowerPoint, and three of the six accent colors contrast well when using smaller font sizes.
• By default, the Accessibility Checker runs while you work. A notification is displayed in the Status Bar. If any accessibility issues are detected, simply click the notification to open the Accessibility Assistant pane and review the list of issues found.

• In  PowerPoint , Excel , and Outlook for Windows , after you have the Accessibility Checker open, the Accessibility ribbon tab also appears at the top of the window providing the tools that help you make your content accessible all in one place. 
• Beta Channel users can also access a preview of the new Accessibility Assistant in Word and Outlook for Windows by selecting Review > Check Accessibility . This tool makes it even easier to create accessible documents in those apps.
• Tip: Don’t use Print as PDF , since that command doesn’t produce an accessible PDF.
• If there are accessibility issues in the content, a notification appears when saving or exporting it as a PDF in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Windows, reminding you to make it accessible.

PDF accessibility improvements in Microsoft 365  

Recent improvements to PDF accessibility in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint include:

• Exporting accessible PDF on iOS and Mac (when using the Best for electronic distribution and accessibility option) in Excel as well as Word. This feature is also available in PowerPoint to all Current Channel (Preview) users.
• Bookmarks for sections and slides in PowerPoint and headings or bookmarks in Word to help people more easily navigate PDF content.
• Over 100 improvements to PDF/UA tags, which provide essential information for people who rely on a screen reader to read and understand PDF content.
• The most suitable tags for Shapes with text, Alt Text, and Equations
• <Formula> with Alt Text for Equations in Excel and PowerPoint
• <Figure> with Alt Text for every other type of graphical object
• Flat <Figure> (no nesting) for SmartArts and Groups in PowerPoint
• WordArt preserved as text
• Hyperlinks aren’t nested in <Figure> in PowerPoint
• Artifact and no tags for Decorative objects, objects on slide master, headers, footers, cell borders, and more
• Removed unnecessary <Span> and <P> tags
• <Span> tags for different languages and no Actual Text
• <THead> and <TH> for table headers
• Merged table cells have rowspan and colspan in PowerPoint
• Lists have proper nesting and <Lbl> for the bullet
• Footnote and Endnote <Link>s
• <BlockQuote> for Word Paragraph Quote and Intense Quote styles
• <Quote> for Word Quote style
• <Title> for Word Title style
• Heading levels beyond <H6>

Availability

These features are generally available in the latest releases of Microsoft 365, except where noted above. Availability may vary by product. 

We want to hear from you! Please click Help  >  Feedback in any Microsoft 365 product to submit your thoughts about a PDF accessibility feature. 

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How To Get Free Access To Microsoft PowerPoint

E very time you need to present an overview of a plan or a report to a whole room of people, chances are you turn to Microsoft PowerPoint. And who doesn't? It's popular for its wide array of features that make creating effective presentations a walk in the park. PowerPoint comes with a host of keyboard shortcuts for easy navigation, subtitles and video recordings for your audience's benefit, and a variety of transitions, animations, and designs for better engagement.

But with these nifty features comes a hefty price tag. At the moment, the personal plan — which includes other Office apps — is at $69.99 a year. This might be the most budget-friendly option, especially if you plan to use the other Microsoft Office apps, too. Unfortunately, you can't buy PowerPoint alone, but there are a few workarounds you can use to get access to PowerPoint at no cost to you at all.

Read more: The 20 Best Mac Apps That Will Improve Your Apple Experience

Method #1: Sign Up For A Free Microsoft Account On The Office Website

Microsoft offers a web-based version of PowerPoint completely free of charge to all users. Here's how you can access it:

• Visit the Microsoft 365 page .
• If you already have a free account with Microsoft, click Sign in. Otherwise, press "Sign up for the free version of Microsoft 365" to create a new account at no cost.
• On the Office home page, select PowerPoint from the side panel on the left.
• Click on "Blank presentation" to create your presentation from scratch, or pick your preferred free PowerPoint template from the options at the top (there's also a host of editable templates you can find on the Microsoft 365 Create site ).
• Create your presentation as normal. Your edits will be saved automatically to your Microsoft OneDrive as long as you're connected to the internet.

It's important to keep in mind, though, that while you're free to use this web version of PowerPoint to create your slides and edit templates, there are certain features it doesn't have that you can find on the paid version. For instance, you can access only a handful of font styles and stock elements like images, videos, icons, and stickers. Designer is also available for use on up to three presentations per month only (it's unlimited for premium subscribers). When presenting, you won't find the Present Live and Always Use Subtitles options present in the paid plans. The biggest caveat of the free version is that it won't get any newly released features, unlike its premium counterparts.

Method #2: Install Microsoft 365 (Office) To Your Windows

Don't fancy working on your presentation in a browser? If you have a Windows computer with the Office 365 apps pre-installed or downloaded from a previous Office 365 trial, you can use the Microsoft 365 (Office) app instead. Unlike the individual Microsoft apps that you need to buy from the Microsoft Store, this one is free to download and use. Here's how to get free PowerPoint on the Microsoft 365 (Office) app:

• Search for Microsoft 365 (Office) on the Microsoft Store app.
• Install and open it.
• Sign in with your Microsoft account. Alternatively, press "Create free account" if you don't have one yet.
• Click on Create on the left side panel.
• Select Presentation.
• In the PowerPoint window that opens, log in using your account.
• Press Accept on the "Free 5-day pass" section. This lets you use PowerPoint (and Word and Excel) for five days — free of charge and without having to input any payment information.
• Create your presentation as usual. As you're using the desktop version, you can access the full features of PowerPoint, including the ability to present in Teams, export the presentation as a video file, translate the slides' content to a different language, and even work offline.

The only downside of this method is the time limit. Once the five days are up, you can no longer open the PowerPoint desktop app. However, all your files will still be accessible to you. If you saved them to OneDrive, you can continue editing them on the web app. If you saved them to your computer, you can upload them to OneDrive and edit them from there.

Method #3: Download The Microsoft PowerPoint App On Your Android Or iOS Device

If you're always on the move and need the flexibility of creating and editing presentations on your Android or iOS device, you'll be glad to know that PowerPoint is free and available for offline use on your mobile phones. But — of course, there's a but — you can only access the free version if your device is under 10.1 inches. Anything bigger than that requires a premium subscription. If your phone fits the bill, then follow these steps to get free PowerPoint on your device:

• Install Microsoft PowerPoint from the App Store or Google Play Store .
• Log in using your existing Microsoft email or enter a new email address to create one if you don't already have an account.
• On the "Get Microsoft 365 Personal Plan" screen, press Skip For Now.
• If you're offered a free trial, select Try later (or enjoy the free 30-day trial if you're interested).
• To make a new presentation, tap the plus sign in the upper right corner.
• Change the "Create in" option from OneDrive - Personal to a folder on your device. This allows you to save the presentation to your local storage and make offline edits.
• Press "Set as default" to set your local folder as the default file storage location.
• Choose your template from the selection or use a blank presentation.
• Edit your presentation as needed.

Do note that PowerPoint mobile comes with some restrictions. There's no option to insert stock elements, change the slide size to a custom size, use the Designer feature, or display the presentation in Immersive Reader mode. However, you can use font styles considered premium on the web app.

Method #4: Use Your School Email Address

Office 365 Education is free for students and teachers, provided they have an email address from an eligible school. To check for your eligibility, here's what you need to do:

• Go to the Office 365 Education page .
• Type in your school email address in the empty text field.
• Press "Get Started."
• On the next screen, verify your eligibility. If you're eligible, you'll be asked to select whether you're a student or a teacher. If your school isn't recognized, however, you'll get a message telling you so.
• For those who are eligible, proceed with creating your Office 365 Education account. Make sure your school email can receive external mail, as Microsoft will send you a verification code for your account.
• Once you're done filling out the form, press "Start." This will open your Office 365 account page.

You can then start making your PowerPoint presentation using the web app. If your school's plan supports it, you can also install the Office 365 apps to your computer by clicking the "Install Office" button on your Office 365 account page and running the downloaded installation file. What sets the Office 365 Education account apart from the regular free account is that you have unlimited personal cloud storage and access to other Office apps like Word, Excel, and Outlook.

Read the original article on SlashGear .

• Create slides with an accessible reading order Video
• Improve image accessibility in PowerPoint Video
• Use accessible colors and styles in slides Video
• Design slides for people with dyslexia Video
• Save a presentation in a different format Video
• Present inclusively Video

Improve image accessibility in PowerPoint

Use these techniques to make the charts, graphs, and images in your PowerPoint slides accessible to users with a vision or reading disability.

Tips for improving image accessibility

In addition to color, use text, patterns, or shapes to communicate ideas.

Add descriptive alt text to pictures, charts, and other visual objects.

Group layered images, like a picture with callout lines, into a single object.

To get an idea how your slides might look to someone who’s colorblind, use the color filters feature in the operating system.

Add alt text to a chart, picture, or other visuals

Right-click a chart, picture, or other visual object, and select Edit Alt Text .

In the Alt Text pane, type a description for the object.

Add information about the slide and its visual content to the presentation notes underneath the slide.

Note:  To display the Notes field, select View > Notes .

Group layered images

To make sure that the screen readers can make sense of layered images, group them into one single image.

To select the images you want to group, press and hold Shift and then click each image.

Select Format > Group > Group .

Add alt text to the grouped image.

Use color filters

Windows: Enable the grayscale color filter in the Windows settings:

Select (Start) >  (Settings) > Ease of Access > Color filters .

Switch on the Turn on color filters  option.

In the  Select a color filter to see elements on the screen better list, select Grayscale .

Visually scan each slide in your presentation for instances of color-coding.

Mac: Enable the grayscale color filter in the Mac settings:

Select   System Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Color Filters .

Select Enable Color Filters .

In the Filter type list, select Grayscale .

 Visually scan the slides in your presentation.

In older versions of MacOS, select  System Preferences > Accessibility > Display . 

Everything you need to know to write effective alt text

Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities

Create a new Office file using a template

Save a file

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