The very nature of PowerPoint is to add visual components to a live presentation or speech, including animation, graphs, charts, pictures, colors and more. But to make the information accessible to everyone, it is important that PowerPoint presentations are readable, navigable, and understandable.
Common Accessibility Problems
- Graphics, figures, logos, and flow-charts are not accessible for many people using assistive technologies. Anything important to the course, should be described in text format, such as what a chart is representing.
- Text is not available for screen reader users if the information is not structured within auto layouts provided by PowerPoint program. For example, any moving text will not be readable.
- Poor contrast between background and text makes the information difficult to read on the screen.
- Multimedia (i.e. streaming video) could present a real challenge for deaf people and for people with visual impairments. If your video or audio within your PowerPoint is not captioned, you may be excluding students from materials.
PowerPoint is a good format for face to face presentations, but it is usually not the best format for content on the web. Online problems include large file sizes, and audio or video not working. You may want to consider saving your PowerPoint as a PDF document, and then work towards making the PDF accessible. However, if you insist on having the actual PowerPoint online, there are a variety of tasks to complete in order to make it accessible.
Please keep in mind that there is no single solution to make PowerPoint presentations completely accessible, so explore the different options listed below to help fit your needs.
References
- Software Assistance for UVic instructors
- Authoring Techniques PowerPoint 2010: Accessible Digital Office Document (ADOD) Project
- Check Accessibility of a PowerPoint (Video): Microsoft
