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PowerPoint Accessibility

Accessibility Assistant

Use PowerPoint’s Accessibility Assistant, a built-in accessibility checker to check for common issues. Note, these tools may not catch all possible accessibility issues.

To use the Accessibility Assistant:

  1. Select Review tab.
  2. Choose Check Accessibility button.
    1. The Accessibility Assistant panel will open and show issues.
  3. Select each issue to see it highlighted in the document.
    1. Select the arrow next to each warning to see further information (Windows only).

To see real time accessibility status:

  1. At the bottom of the Accessibility Assistant panel select the Settings button.
  2. In the Settings window, check the Show accessibility status for the Accessibility Assistant in the Status Bar checkbox.
  3. Click Accessibility: Investigate in the status bar at the bottom of the window to open the Accessibility Assistant pane. Accessibility: Good to go indicates no violations of the automated checker’s rules.
  4. Additionally, check Show accessibility status for each slide to toggle on a real-time, inline accessibility checker. When content is added that violates the PowerPoint accessibility checker rules, a small human form icon will appear beside the slide thumbnail.

Checker Results

Like any automated tool, PowerPoint’s Accessibility Assistant will not catch all accessibility issues. Here is a summary of what it does look for and how well it catches those issues:

Element checked Effectiveness of check
Check reading order Strong
Evaluates the order of all objects on each slide to ensure correct reading order for assistive technology. Possible false positives based on rigid Z pattern (top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom, right) assumption.
Missing alt text Moderate
Flags images that do not have alt text or where the alt text is the image file name.
Cannot identify if alt text is appropriate or meaningful.
The built-in image description generator is poor and should not be used.
Hard-to-read text contrast Moderate
Can evaluate the contrast of text against the background inside shapes or shaded textboxes (including tables), but not text against slide background.
Missing audio or video subtitles Moderate
Evaluates inserted video files for attached caption file. May produce false positive as the tool is unable to check if embedded or linked videos have captions.
Missing slide title/Duplicate slide title Strong
Automatically flags slides that do not have properly coded titles. Assists users to convert uncoded titles.
Flags slides with duplicate titles.
Missing table header Strong
Flags tables that do not have properly marked up table header cells.
Use of merged or split cells Strong
Flags tables that include merged or split cells.
Default section name Strong
Flags sections named “Default” and includes a shortcut to rename Sections.
Duplicate section names Strong
Flags sections with duplicate names and includes a shortcut to rename Sections.

Additional elements not automatically checked:

The PowerPoint Accessibility Assistant does not assess links, font size and style, or proper use of lists and SmartArt.

Read more about checking for accessibility issues with the Office Accessibility Checker and learn about Office Accessibility Checker rules and messages.

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License

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Accessibility Handbook for Teaching and Learning Copyright © 2023 by Briana Fraser and Luke McKnight is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.