Creating Accessible PowerPoint Presentations

Welcome to PowerPoint 2016: Accessibility, part of the Microassist Accessibility Series. Microassist’s goal with this series of courses is to enable content creators to reach the broadest possible audience by helping authors create content that is accessible, perceivable, and useable by all users, regardless of level of ability or impairment.

PowerPoint is a standard program in today’s office software suite, and your audience is likely familiar with it.

Multiple versions of PowerPoint are currently in use. In today’s class, we’ll use PowerPoint 2016. You may find that some of the accessibility options and features are in different locations on earlier versions of the program.

During this course, we’ll explore how to enable users, including those with disabilities, to perceive and use the PowerPoint 2016 presentations that you create.

NOTE: Objectives and topics are subject to change based on new information and technologies.

This course is designed for students who will be creating or modifying PowerPoint presentations that comply with accessibility standards.

To ensure your success in this course, students should have a basic functional understanding of how to create a presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint.

After completing this class, you will be able to:

• Define what it means to make a PowerPoint presentation accessible.
• Create content that is perceivable by those using assistive technologies.
• Provide alternative text for otherwise inaccessible content.
• Ensure that the presentation has a logical structure.
• Make content usable in other contexts.
• Test a presentation for accessibility issues.
• Prepare a presentation for sharing with its audience.

• Defining Accessibility
  • What is Accessibility?
  • Accessibility Standards and Laws
  • Accessibility Principles
  • Remediation Resources
• Making Content Perceivable
  • Color contrast
  • Fonts
  • Charts
  • Multimedia
• Providing Alternative Text
  • What is alternative text?
  • Complex Visual Content
  • Slide Notes
• Setting a Logical Structure
  • Document Properties
  • Slide Layout
  • Lists
  • Reading Order
• Making Content Usable
  • Timing
  • Titles
  • Hyperlinks
• Testing for Accessibility
  • Test with PowerPoint Accessibility Checker
  • Screen Reader
• Sharing the Presentation
  • Build with the End in Mind
  • Print Distribution
  • Electronic Distribution