Making Your Slides Accessible In PowerPoint (Web App)

Updated on Jan 14, 2025

Why should you make PowerPoints Accessible?

Making PowerPoint presentations accessible is important because it ensures everyone fully engages with the content. This includes people with disabilities, different learning preferences, people who cannot see the visual elements, or people using assistive technology.

Tips for making presentations accessible

Use alternative formats: Provide text transcripts or captions for multimedia.
Use accessible fonts and colors: Avoid colors that are hard to distinguish, like red and green. Choose a San-Serif font such as Verdana that is larger than 18 point
Use simple language: Keep text on-screen to a minimum.
Use meaningful alternative text: Provide descriptions for images, especially functional images that are links.
Use accessible slide layouts: Consider using prebuilt templates that support accessibility.
Test accessibility: Use the Accessibility Checker built into PowerPoint to ensure your presentation is accessible to everyone.
Avoid all capital (uppercase) letters.
Learn more about How to change the reading order in PowerPoint.
Remember to add a unique title to each slide: People who use a screen reader skim slide titles to navigate; they can quickly scan through a list of slide titles and go right to the slide they want. People with disabilities or who are using assistive technology use slide titles to clearly identify and understand which slide they are on.
Include ample white space between sentences.
Use bold font to emphasize rather than using excessive italics and underlines.
Use accessible templates.

How to Run the Accessibility Checker in PowerPoint.

Select the "Review" button.
From the review ribbon, select "Check Accessibility."

The PowerPoint home ribbon with the "Review" section selected.

Describe all visual objects with an Alternative Text (Alt Text).

Explain “why” the image relates to the content. The Alt Text is read aloud by screen reading software.

Below are steps to Add Alternative Text (Alt. Text) to Images that will make your PowerPoint more accessible

Right-click on the image.

The menu after right clicking the image.

Select "Edit Alt. Text."

Right Click menu with the "Alt Text" option boxed in.

Type in what the photo is of. For this example of the logo, you could put "Southern New Hampshire University logo."
If it is decorative, you can select the box. For this one it could be marked as decorative due to possible no relevance to the Power Point depending on what it is on.

The box to add the alt. text for the image.

Remember to check the Reading Order of the PowerPoint

Reading order is essential for people with no movement or limited movements in their hands or who use wands, switches, or sticks to access their computer and screenreader users. Screen readers can read the elements of a slide in the order they were added; this may be very different from the order in which things appear visually on screen.

Here is how to rearrange the reading order from the Home ribbon:

Select the three dots
Select "Arrange."
Select "Selection Pane."

The "more" menu, with the "Arrange" option selected, then the "Selection Pane" option.

Go to the Home Tab in the "Drawing Group."

You are going to select "Arrange," and you are going to press the “Selection Pane." Remember that the Selection Pane will stay open as you navigate from slide to slide to make your corrections.

The selection pane lists the objects on the slide lists the objects in the REVERSE ORDER, so when a screen reader reads this slide.
It will read the objects listed in the Selection Pane from BOTTOM to TOP.
For example, if a screen reader were to read and access this slide, the user would hear the text starting with the content placeholder, the picture, the content place text, and the title.
This differs from how a sighted user would see the slide's layout.
The goal is to give all the users the same experience right from the selection pane.
You can drag and drop items to the new location (remember it reads from the bottom up) and click and drag the title to the bottom of the Selection Pane.
Another way to do this is by using s the ARROWS “Send backward arrows on the Selection Pane menu bar:

The selection pane with the reading order of the slide. With selection icon boxed in.

The reading order option with the reading order of the slide. With reading order icon boxed in.

Remember to manually check for Color Contrast Issues

Avoid using color as the only means of representing information.
Use sufficient contrast for text and background colors. Review the following articles to learn more about:
Review the articles listed below for additional support:
- What is Color Contrast?
- Color Contrast Information and Tools
- Avoid Flashing Content
- How to Check Color Contrast with Colour Contrast Analyser (CCA): This free software will require you to download the application to your device.
- How to Create Accessible Content for Color Vision Deficiency
  - Use a web-based Color Blind Vision Simulator such as Coblis: Color Blindness Simulator and look at what the content would look like through the eyes of people with different types of color blindness.

Additional Resources

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Southern New Hampshire University