PowerPoint Accessibility

Students, faculty, and staff can create accessible Microsoft PowerPoint presentations or remediate inaccessible PowerPoint presentations.

An accessible PowerPoint draws on techniques for creating accessible media, multimedia, and documents. Please visit the Documents and Media and Multimedia sections to learn more about creating accessible documents and media.

1. Add a Title to the Presentation

   1. Click File > Info

   2. Type a meaningful Title

      Open

      

2. Add or review alt text to all images or mark them as decorative

   1. Insert the image

   2. Right mouse click the image

   3. Click View Alt Text

   4. If the image is decorative, select Mark as decorative

3. Ensure hyperlinks are descriptive

   1. Highlight the text indicating where the link is going

   2. Right mouse click the text

   3. Click Link and follow the prompts

      1. This is a descriptive hyperlink: IT Accessibility

      2. This is not a descriptive hyperlink: https://accessibility.its.uconn.edu/

4. Give each slide a unique title

   1. If a duplicate title is needed because all the content can’t fit on one slide, try something like “Slide Title 1 of 2” and Slide Title 2 of 2”

5. Ensure the slide reading order is accurate

   1. For each slide, click on Review

   2. Click drop down for Check Accessibility

   3. Click Reading Order Pane

   4. Drag and drop items into the proper reading order

   5. If an image is decorative, uncheck it and will be marked as decorative

6. Ensure there is adequate color contrast

   1. Use the Accessibility Checker in PowerPoint to check for color contrast

   2. Click Review

   3. Click Check Accessibility

   4. To learn more about color contrast go to the Adequate Color Contrast article.

7. Use True Tables

   1. Do not use tables for layout purposes; use them only for data

   2. When inserting a table, add a header row at the top or a header column at the left

   3. Once inserted, click Table Design

   4. Ensure Header Row is checked or First Column is checked

8. Insert captions when embedding a video

   1. Insert the video

   2. Click Playback

   3. Click Insert Captions

      1. PowerPoint uses VTT file format for captions. If you have captions in another format (i.e. SRT), you can use Happy Scribe to convert them.

9. Avoid animations & automatic slide transitions

10. Use the Check Accessibility tool to determine accessibility issues with your PowerPoint and follow the prompts to fix any issues.

    1. Click Review

    2. Click Check Accessibility

You can find additional information about accessible PowerPoints. Review this checklist from the Social Security Administration or read this article from Microsoft. Microsoft also provides some accessible templates for PowerPoint to help you design presentations.

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