Whether you want to include an actual PowerPoint file or a video of a PowerPoint presentation in a course, the original document should be available in an accessible format. Follow the steps below to make sure the content in your PowerPoint presentations is accessible to every student.

Creating Accessible PowerPoint Documents

Templates

When working in PowerPoint, you can select a template, also known as a theme, to add some visual flair to your presentation. Some PowerPoint themes are more accessible than others and vary in their use of color and position of slide elements. Check out the Accessible Template Sampler offered by Microsoft to find an accessible theme.

Whether or not you are using a theme, if you adjust an element like the background color, font color, or text size, apply those changes to the entire presentation by editing the Slide Master. To do this, select View and then Slide Master. You will see a layout for each slide type in the template. Here, you can edit text styles or positions of elements without the need to update them on each individual slide. When you are done editing, select Close Master.

Structure

A collection of PowerPoint slides may seem straightforward enough, but screen reader users—and everyone else—can benefit from the following tips, which will improve the structure and layout of your slides:

All slides should have a unique title entered into the designated title area, which most themes typically place at the top of the page.
Arrange elements on slides in the order they should be read by screen readers. (Click the Home tab, select Arrange, and choose Selection Pane to view and change the read order for each slide.)

screenshot of powerpoint template selection — Figure 12. PowerPoint Selection Pane

Text Formatting

No matter what else is included in your PowerPoint presentation, most slides will probably have at least some text. The following text-formatting best practices directly apply to slide creation:

Use fonts that are widely supported and clearly legible (Helvetica, Arial, Georgia, Calibri, Verdana, etc.). Other more stylish fonts are generally fine for titles as long as the text is large and the body text is easily readable.
Choose font and background colors that pass color-contrast standards (see the Color and Contrast lesson for more information).
Do not insert text boxes to add text to slides; type text into the template's predefined text area to ensure screen readers read the content.

screenshot of inaccessible text box in power point — Figure 13. PowerPoint Slide With an Inaccessible Text Box

Slide Notes

While working in PowerPoint, you may notice the Notes section below each slide. This section is useful when it comes to accessibility, especially if the slides are being offered as an alternative to a video presentation:

If the slides are a part of a presentation, the Notes section could include a transcript of the spoken content to act as captions for anyone with a hearing impairment who is watching the presentation.
The Notes section can also be used to describe content on the page, such as images, graphs, and tables. Although alt text can be added to each of these individual elements, a longer summary contextualizing the various elements on a slide could be useful, especially if they aren't adequately described by the speaker.

Other Slide Elements

For images, links, tables, lists, and other common slide elements, you should follow the same best practices that apply to Microsoft Word documents.

Updated February, 2020