Minimum Expectations of CACUSS Presenters

Supported by the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and issued by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), there are guidelines that ensure accessibility features are built into public content information. To this end, the application of these features toPowerPoint presentations helps ensure that the greatest number of audience members has access to information. Following these guidelines will help you efficiently and effectively accommodate varying disabilities.

Minimum Standard of Expectations

  • Use the presentation templates offered in PowerPoint as they are already pre-formatted for screen readers. If you use text boxes or create your own template, screen readers will read in the order in which they were created. Check the reading order to make sure content reads in the proper order.
  • Make sure there is a high contrast between the background and the text. If your presentation will be viewed via projector, the contrast often needs to be more pronounced than on printed material.
  • If you use colours, use ones that are highly contrasting. Black and white are most commonly used.
  • Use titles on each slide, so the flow of the presentation is easy to navigate.
  • If you embed a video, make sure it is captioned and that the player controls — start, pause, and stop — are accessible. Make sure the video does not begin as soon as the slide comes on the screen.
  • If you embed audio, make sure a transcript is available.
  • Use Alt Text to explain pictures, images, graphics, graphs, tables, and flowcharts, so that a screen reader can access them.

General Tips

  • Ensure the font type is large enough to read easily. If your presentation will be viewed via projector, the type should be larger than on printed handouts; 30-point type is recommended.
  • Use simple slide transitions or avoid animation-like effects altogether. Complex transitions, such as checkerboards, can be distracting during presentations; they may also cause problems with screen readers or other assistive technologies if someone views the presentation electronically.
  • Do not overcrowd slides with text. Three to seven bullet points per slide is a good rule of thumb.
  • The most important text in the slides, with additional text in the notes section.
  • If your slides contain animations, make sure they are brief and do not distract from the most important content on the page.

Taken from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

HOW TO MAKE YOUR POWERPOINT PRESENTATION ACCESSIBLE

Using the Accessibility Checker

The Accessibility Checker helps you find and fix accessibility issues, just like Spell Checker informs you about spelling/grammatical errors. An Accessibility Checker button has been built right into the review tab of newer versions of PowerPoint and in MAC 2016. The Accessibility Checker shows you: 1) reports of the issues it finds, 2) why each issue might create a problem for someone with a disability, and 3) how to fix the issue. For full support with finding and/or using the Accessibility Checker, online guidance can be found here:

  • Accessibility Checker for Office 365 Users

Accessibility Checker for Mac Users

Taken from the Microsoft Office Support article entitled Use the Accessibility Checker on your Windows desktop to find accessibility issues.

Adding Alt Text

Alternative Text (Alt Text) describes images so that a user’s assistive technology conveys the information presented with apicture, shape, chart, SmartArt, graphic, or table.Alt Text appears when a cursor moves over a picture. In situations where a screen reader is used, Alt Text ensures that the user does not lose information.

To learn how to add Alt Text, see the Microsoft Office article entitled Add alternative text to a picture, shape, chart, SmartArt, graphic, or, table.For a greater understanding of when to use Alt Text, see Alternative Text from WebAIM.

CheckingColour Contrast and Font Size

WebAIMhas a Colour Contrast Checkerand information on accessible font sizing. Further, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) offers information about developing accessible media. To view the CNIB’s resources, see their Clear Print Guidelines.

Organizing Slide Reading Order

When reading order is set correctly, people using assistive technology can read the information on a slide in the order in which it is meant to be read. Screen readers may have difficulty identifying complex layouts in the proper sequence if the reading order is not correct, users of assistive technology might misinterpret content. Checking your reading order allows the user to read the content in its proper order.

Creating Hyperlinks

You can add hyperlinks to your presentation in order to do a wide variety of things. You can use links to quickly get to a different place in your presentation, open a different presentation, access the web, open a new file, or begin a message to an email address. In the case of accessibility, when you wish to include a video on a slide, it is important to include the hyperlink because assistive technology will not know that there is a video embedded in your slide.

Note: When hyperlinking a video, playing audio automatically when landing on a page may affect the ability of a screen-readeruser to find the mechanism to stop it because they navigate by listening and so automatically started sounds might interfere with that navigation.

Captioning Videos

No matter the source of the video, accessible guidelines encourage all videos be captioned soall audiencescan experience the same information from a video. Whether you are hyperlinking to a video, embedding a video, or using a DVD as part of your presentation, please ensure that the video is captioned and that you familiarize yourself with how to turn on the feature before the presentation.

If the captioning feature is unavailable for a video, you can caption a video once it is embedded inside PowerPoint. In this case, youwill need to download the Subtitling Text Add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint (STAMP). For a helpful video on how to caption, watch theSTAMP Tutorial.