Create Accessible PowerPoints

Start here to create accessible PowerPoints

Hi, my name is Rhonda. I have been teaching for decades, before computers were used at all in the classroom. I was never trained how to create PowerPoints. I just kinda figured it out. Recently, I’ve been reading about digital accessibility and wanted to learn how I could make PowerPoints accessible. Accessible learning material enhances student satisfaction, democratic access to information, and inclusion.

PowerPoint is a presentation program that allows users to:

  • Create slides with text, images, media, and other graphic elements.
  • Present a slideshow of content.
  • Share the slideshow with others.
  • View a slideshow asynchronously.

Reflect

Have you ever received formal training on creating PowerPoint presentations? Or did you simply figure it out as you went?

If you have received training, how long ago was it?

PowerPoint tools and features were designed to create accessible presentations by default. When used as intended, PowerPoint creates presentations that are accessible with no additional steps, hacks, or workarounds required. Depending on your answers to the above, creating accessible PowerPoints may require some unlearning, check-ins, and reworking of your current workflow.

The best way to solve an issue is to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Key considerations

Select from the following links to learn about specific tools and features you should be using to create accessible PowerPoints:

Plan

Templates and Themes

Slide Masters

Slide Content

Accessible Fonts and Colour

Titles

Lists

Accessible Links

Images and Graphics

Closed captions and Transcripts

Tables

Best Practices for Sharing

Going Forward

Next

In addition to the above links, you can move through this module in a linear fashion by selecting Next: Plan in the bottom right of this window.

License

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Digital Accessibility On-demand Copyright © by Luke McKnight is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.