Web Access Centre Blog :: Reading and presenting with PowerPoint if you are a screen reader user

Reading and presenting with PowerPoint if you are a screen reader user

We talk a lot about making PDF’s accessible and how we should present them on the web but rarely do we touch on making PowerPoint accessible. As with PDF the bottom line is that if the content of the PowerPoint can not be made accessible then an accessible alternative should be given.

Accessibility is about access to information for all types of people regardless of ability or disability including people with hearing cognitive, mobility and sight impairments. For the purposes of this article however we’re looking at how people with screen readers can both access PowerPoint to read and also use when delivering presentations.

The general consensus is that PowerPoint files are not as accessible as HTML pages, and that, while there are ways to improve on the accessibility of slides, it is advisable to provide a Text or HTML alternative.

Listed below is a set of suggestions to improve on screen reader access:

1. Images

Graphics, figures, and flow-charts are not accessible for many people using assistive technologies unless they are given a caption (as you would with an image in a Word document). Treat this like a good ALT attribute and use it only when the image conveys information that isn’t made evident by adjacent text.

When captioning an image make sure the ordering is such that the caption follows directly after the image and that it makes sense within the context of adjacent text on the slide.

Always put a full stop at the end of the caption so that the text is not read as part of the next sentence. This can be coloured the same as the background colour of the presentation if you do not want the full stop to be visible.

2. Text

Text is not available for screen reader users if the information is not structured within auto layouts provided by PowerPoint program so ensure auto layouts are used. Always manually type text into the slide rather than copying from another program to avoid importing any inaccessible formatting.

3. Bullets

You may want to consider giving bullets custom animation, i.e. made to appear individually, so that they can be read one at a time. If they are not animated a screen reader will read the whole slide as a single sentence. This makes it difficult for both the reader and especially the presenter to follow the presentation.

That said showing the entire slide at once can be more helpful to the audience. If you choose to do this and use a screen reader the arrow keys can be used to arrow up and down the bullets and get them read out again.

Adding a full stop at the end of a bullet also helps with reading. While the whole slide will still be read it will be read with punctuation and not as one sentence. This should be done for sub bullets as well.

4. Ellipses

Avoid ellipses (…) where possible. If an ellipse is used the screen reader will read it out as “dot dot dot” which is not so friendly on the ear. Use a hyphen instead (-).

5. Animations

If using animations, use the options, “appear”, or “wipe down”, which don’t move too much and which follow the direction of reading. Animations to avoid include spiral, blinds, swivel, dissolve, stretch, checkerboard and zoom.

6. Alternative formats

Export the slide show to text or HTML for access technology users or to transcribe to braille.

To create a Text version copy the PowerPoint content to the clipboard and pasting into a word processor.

Go to View menu > select Outline view
Go to Edit menu > click Select All
Go to Edit menu > select Copy
Open Microsoft Notepad or a word processor like MS Word
Go to Edit menu > select Paste

You should now see the text of your slide show copied into the document. You will need to read through the text version and check the following:

That the start of each slide is numbered as PowerPoint will not do this.
Edit and correct the text, i.e. remove unnecessary line breaks if you see shortened lines, or insert paragraph breaks where this is appropriate
In Notepad, black squares indicate a line break which may need removing. You will not see these markers in Word