Make your Digital Media Projects Accessible

This guide was written to support Microsoft PowerPoint 2021 and later. While the basics of creating accessible slides remain the same regardless of which version you are using, keep in mind that some of the functionality will be different for older versions of PowerPoint.

Accessibility note for screen reader users: this guide bolds actionable items in Microsoft PowerPoint. While actionable items are also accompanied by descriptive language to note the action to be taken, screen reader users may want to adjust settings if they want the bold emphasis to be read.

Accessible templates

Consider starting with a template that has been optimized for accessibility. Accessible templates avoid complex or busy backgrounds. They are also optimized to ensure sufficient colour contrast, good font choice, and proper formatting.

To find an accessible template:

1. Select File and then New
2. From Search for online templates and themes, search “accessible templates” or “accessible”
3. Select a template with accessible fonts and colour contrast 
4. From the template preview, select Create

Accessible themes

An easy way to adjust the look and feel of a presentation is to adjust the theme. To select themes:

1. Select the Design tab
2. Search through the available themes

Tips for selecting an accessible theme:

• Choose a theme with proper colour contrast
• Ensure the uses accessible fonts
• Avoid complex and distracting backgrounds

A great way to ensure the accessibility of your slides is to keep the accessibility checker running while you work. This will allow you to identify accessibility issues as you create slides and gives you easy access to the Accessibility Toolbar.

To run the Accessibility Checker and keep it running:

1. Select the Review tab
2. Use the Check Accessibility drop-down and select Check Accessibility

3. This will open the Accessibility pane
4. Select Keep accessibility checker running while I work

Whenever you run the Accessibility Checker or select the Accessibility Pane, you will also get access to the Accessibility Toolbar. This toolbar gives you easy the following accessibility menus:

• Colour and Contrast
• Screen Reader (to fix titles, reading order and alt text)
• Captions and Subtitles
• Accessibility Resources

Slide layouts are perhaps the most important way to ensure the accessibility of your slides. Using slide layouts makes sure each slide has a title and proper reading order. 

Layouts typically contain a title and content placeholders, in addition to providing prebuilt section header slides.

Content placeholders allow you to create a wide variety of content such as text, pictures, charts, tables, smart art, images, and multimedia.

To select a slide layout for a new slide:

1. From the Home tab, select the New Slide drop-down menu
2. Select the appropriate layout

To change the layout of a current slide:

1. From the Home tab, select the Layout drop-down
2. Select a new layout

Create new custom layouts with Slide Master

If you want to create a custom layout that isn’t available from the New Slide or Layout drop-down, you can create one with Slide Master. 

To access the Slide Master toolbar, select the View tab and then Slide Master.

To create a new layout using Slide Master:

1. From the Slide Master menu, select Insert Layout
2. Ensure that the Title checkbox is selected
3. Select the appropriate placeholder(s) from the Insert Placeholder drop-down
4. Your new layout will now be available from the Home tab when you want to create a new slide or adjust the layout of a slide you’ve already created

Slide titles improve accessibility by:

• Creating more efficient navigation for assistive technology users.
• Helping users better understand the content you are presenting.

To write effective slide titles, ensure each title is concise, unique, and descriptive. Unique slide titles allow users to differentiate between slides. Descriptive titles provide a brief overview of what content is contained on that slide.

As previously covered, we can use Slide Layouts to ensure each slide has a title placeholder. If you want to include a title but not have it appear on the slide then follow this guide to see options to hide a slide title.

Writing readable slides

Readability refers to how easily readers can decipher and process the content on your slides.

To ensure your slides are readable, follow these tips:

• Font size should be minimum 18-points
• Use emphasis such as bolded text sparingly and avoid italics and underlined text
• Write with proper sentence case
• Ensure sufficient spacing between lines
• Embrace white space and don’t overcrowd slides with content

To ensure your writing is readable, you can use these tips on writing content in plain language:

• Write short but logical sentences
• Present important information first
• Use a conversational tone
• Use strong verbs in the active voice
• Use words that audience knows

Creating legible slides

Legibility refers to how easily it is to distinguish characters from one another. Increasing legibility makes your slides more accessible and more readable.

Tips for ensuring slide legibility:

• Use sans serif fonts (e.g., Calibri, Verdana, or Arial)
• Fonts should have good spacing between characters
• Fonts should have good character differentiation
  • For example, can you tell the difference between similar characters such as a zero and a capital o (i.e., 0 and O)

To add or edit alt text, you first need to determine which type of image you are dealing with. We can categorize images into two primary types, functional and decorative:

• Functional Images
  • Contains important information for the reader or provides a function (e.g., a link)
  • Requires alt text
• Decorative Images
  • Primarily used for layout or aesthetic purposes only
  • Contain no important information
  • Does not require alt text but does require you to "Mark as decorative" (see below)

Images added to PowerPoint are automatically given alt text. To edit or add alt text within Word:

1. Right-click or control-click on an image
2. Select View Alt Text
3. From the Alt Text pane, edit or approve alt text, or Mark as decorative

Simple rules for alternative text:

• Should provide an equivalent experience to seeing the image
  • What would you write if the image was not there?
• Should be succinct
  • 1-2 sentences
  • For complex images use surrounding text
• Not be redundant (e.g., no phrases such as “image of…”)

Links allow users to quickly access important information outside of your PowerPoint presentation. However, they are also used to navigate documents by users of assistive technology.

Here are some tips to ensure links are accessible to all users:

• Link text should be unique and descriptive
  • This means you should avoid using the same text for links that lead to different locations
• Provide the reader with a clear understanding of the link’s purpose
  • Think why you are including this link and where will it take users
• Avoid generic use of text such as “Click here” or “Read more”
• If a link contains a download, provide the file format within the text

Here’s an example of an accessible link: to learn more about creating accessible links see WebAIM’s guide on link text and appearance.

PowerPoint’s Accessibility Checker will identify text with low contrast in many, but not all, cases. So, it’s a good idea to use a colour contrast checker such as the Colour Contrast Analyzer or WebAIM’s Contrast Checker. These tools will identify whether your contrast is sufficient while providing you with the WCAG rules for sufficient contrast.

Some other helpful tips:

• Avoid inaccessible colour combinations (e.g., red and green)
• Colour should not be the only means of communicating information
• Make charts and graphics more accessible by including data labels, high contrast colours, or strong borders

What is Reading Order?

Assistive technology uses Reading Order to ensure that content is identified and read out in the proper order. So, if you are able to identify a logical reading order visually then you need to make sure that the Reading Order matches this. This ensures that assistive technology reads your content in a logical order as you intended.

How do I check and modify Reading Order?

To check Reading Order:

1. Select Review and then Check Accessibility
2. This will open the Accessibility Checker pane
3. Under Warnings, select the Check reading order drop-down menu
4. Select Verify object order

4. This will open the Reading Order pane:

5. Items in the Reading Order pane will be read in the order they are represented, from top-to-bottom. Match the Reading Order pane to the logical reading order as presented on the slide.

To ensure multimedia content is accessible text alternatives need to be provided:

• For embedded video content, make sure that you provide captions and / or a descriptive transcript.
• For embedded audio content, make sure it is accompanied by a link to a transcript of the audio.

We have guides on how to create captions and how to create descriptive transcripts. Transcripts should be easy for user to find. It's best to link to them as close to the multimedia as possible. Microsoft has a thorough guide for adding captions to media in PowerPoint.

Always remember to double-check your work and run the Accessibility Checker one final time!

• Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities - Microsoft
• Create Accessible PowerPoint Presentations - Microsoft
• PowerPoint Accessibility - WebAIM