Creating Accessible PowerPoint Presentations
Okay. Hi everyone I'm Melissa, green a technology, accessibility, training, specialist, with the faculty, resource centers emerging, technology, and accessibility. Team. And our, unit works to ensure, that all technology users, including, those with disabilities have. A functional, and accessible, technology experience. With our web presence and our instructional. And emerging, technologies. You. Can find more information, about our efforts, on our website at accessibility. UA. Edu. A quick. Moment for housekeeping, I have muted, everyone, by default so we won't be disrupted. By late comers but. When you want to talk just click, the microphone icon in, the bottom bar to mute or unmute yourself, you, can also choose to have your camera on or off, please, do your microphone when you're not speaking. When. I'm talking or sharing my screen please, write in the chat box and let me know if you can't see or hear something and finally. You are welcome, to use that chat box throughout I may not be watching closely while, I'm talking but. I'll do my best to check in every once in a while if, I don't see your question or comment immediately don't, worry I will come, back to it at the end. This. Line includes a picture of me I have my webcam, turned off to preserve bandwidth, but, I thought you might like to see you're speaking with today I, am presenting. From home I'm home with a sick pet so I'm hoping that everything. Goes, smoothly on the tech end but, again. My apologies if we. Have any technical problems, as a result of that during. Today's webinar we'll look at creating Microsoft. PowerPoint presentations. That are accessible. To people with disabilities, the. Session will cover finding. And using accessible. PowerPoint templates. Using. The accessibility checker to, identify. And fix potential, accessibility. Issues. Accessible. Design and layout of text, images, and other content. Embedding. Captioned, video and the, saving, presentations. As accessible. PDF, documents. When. We offer this session in the classroom, it's usually as a hand on workshop, since, that's difficult to do in a webinar environment. I'm going to describe. What, I'm doing as I do it so that if. You're interested in following along with the recording, later you'll be able to do so and I, will send you a link to that recording via, email, in the next few days the, email will include additional. Resources, including links. To relevant. Microsoft. And other documentation. I'll. Also include some resources, on, accessible. Presentation. Practices. So, the focus of today's, session is really on the technology, accessibility, how. You can. Structure. And format, your content. Using. The PowerPoint, software to, ensure that it's accessible, to all users but. There are a number of different, practices. You can implement. In your presentation. Environment, whether that's a classroom or, a meaning or. Lecture, and so on, and that, can help, make that, presentation. Accessible. To all so. Again. While that Center primary focus I will follow up with, some resources to help you with that but. With that said let's go ahead and get started. So. Some of you have probably heard, me say this before but the most powerful. Weapon in your Microsoft, Office accessibility. Arsenal, is the accessibility, checker, the. Accessibility. Checker tool, finds, accessibility. Issues in your Word documents. PowerPoint. Presentations. Excel spreadsheets. And outlook on the web emails, the. Tool generates a, report, of issues, that could make your content, difficult, for people with disabilities, to understand.
It Explains. Why you should fix these issues and, walks you through how to fix them, so. We are going to use the accessibility, checker to, check the accessibility of, a presentation. That, includes, information about. Some of the traditions, at the University, of Alabama. If you, are an office 365. User you'll find it very easy to open, and use the accessibility checker in Word, Excel. And PowerPoint you. Simply navigate, to the review, tab in, the ribbon and select the. Check accessibility, button. If you. Have an older version of Word Excel or, PowerPoint and, you don't see the check accessibility button, on the review, tab of the ribbon you. Can follow these steps to open the accessibility. Checker in the, ribbon you would go to the files tab and select. Info. Select. The check for issues button and, then. Select, check, accessibility and. Whether. You initiate, that check from, the. Review tab or from. The file tab the. Following steps are the same so, after you start the check by selecting, check accessibility, the, accessibility, checker task, pane appears, next to your content, and shows, the inspection, results. If. People. With disabilities, are unable. To read content in the file the accessibility. Checker classifies. It as an error so, our inspection, results are in the right sidebar let, me see if I can make that a little bigger and easier to see and, they're. Classified. In into, groups, so the. Groups are errors, warnings. And, tips so. If people with disabilities, are unable, to read content in the file it will be classified as an error most. Of the errors in this particular, presentation involve. Missing, alternative. Text, the. Checker is telling us that contents. On slide 7. 14. 19. And 20, are missing, alt text, the. Accessibility, checker also, tells us that on slide. 12, there's, a table that does not have a header row, if. Content. In the file is, difficult. For people with disabilities, to read the, accessibility, checker gives a. Warning. And there's no warnings, indicated, in this particular, file. When. There's content that people with disabilities, can read but, that could be better organized, or you. Could present in a way that might improve. That, experienced the checker may offer additional, tips the. Tips, indicated. By the accessibility. Checker for, this file address. Duplicate. Slide titles, so. I've used the, title the. Elephant, on multiple, slides as well, as the title the million dollar band and the, rammer jammer cheer. Also. Under tips there's a reminder, to, check the reading order of my slides. Especially, on slide 19. So. My favorite thing about the accessibility checker is, that it not only indicates. Where there's a problem and why the problem, presents an accessibility, barrier, it. Also tells you how to fix it so for. Example, this. Error indicates. Table, has no header row so, the, content. Placeholder 3, on slide. 12, has. No header row so I'm going to select that error. And it, will take me to the problematic, content, and then. Here at the bottom of the, accessibility, checker pain, underneath the inspection, results I get in some. Additional information, why. Do I need to fix this and the accessibility, checker tells, us that, table headers contain, column, headings that help everyone, understand, what's in the table and provide, navigation. Information for, assistive. Software people. Can set a screen reader to repeat, headings, when they read a cell, so. After telling us why this is a problem and why should we fix, it we. Are given the steps to fix it so the, checker tells us to specify a header row we, should select the table, which.
Is Powerpoints. Already done for us and then, click on the table tools design tab, so. I'll be doing that up here in the ribbon. Then. Check the header row table. Style, option, and then. The table style options group I'm selecting, header row. And. The. Visual appearance of my table changes slightly as the header row is, added and, you might have noticed that that particular error was removed, from the inspection, results, so. This accessibility, checker, can't, catch. Every, single accessibility. Issue no. Automated. Checker can but, is a great resource. Most. Of the issues that present, barriers to, access, including, those identified. By the accessibility. Checker. Excuse. Me can, be prevented, or fixed, by following, a few simple practices, that we'll look at now. You. Can enhance the accessibility of your office content, by using built in styles and, templates with. Fonts and colors that are easy to see, microsoft. Offers a collection of templates, that help, you make your content accessible to. Everyone and these, templates, use accessibility. Features provided, by windows and, office and have, things like better, color contrast. Large. Font size headings. And logical, format and more. Specifically. In the accessible, PowerPoint templates. Microsoft. Has improved, the reading order for slide content and, given. Each slide a unique title wherein. A user can enter. The title of his choice so for example instead of every, slide reading, click, to add title the. Accessible, templates say add a slide. Title, one add a slide. Title, two and so on you. Can find these accessible, templates by searching for accessible. Templates, on office.com. Or. You can get to them from within of, the office application. I'm switching back over to our traditions, PowerPoint. I'm. Going to act as if it I'm ready, to create a new PowerPoint, presentation. And I'd like to use an accessible template, for that so, I'm starting that process by going to the file tab in the ribbon. Choosing. New to. Open a new, presentation. And. Then here I could search for the word accessible. And the, collection, of online templates, and, I'll get quite, a few results I. Actually. Find, these. Results, a little overwhelming. I. Don't. Know who created them, I don't know what it is that makes them accessible there's, a lot of them to go through so, what I like to do is instead. Explore. Something, called the accessible, template, sampler. You can. Find that just by searching for accessible. Sampler. And that. Is actually a PowerPoint. That includes, several. Other powerpoints. That have been put together by Microsoft. So, I'm going to click on this one so we can see the description. Of the template sampler, unfortunately. We can't see it from this view but I'll go ahead and click create and open it up and. This. PowerPoint. Actually. Includes, a sample, of popular. Accessible, PowerPoint templates. That have been optimized, for use by people with visual disabilities and. I think it's a little more friendly to explore so there's, a slide with links to education. Related templates. Technology-related. Templates. Life style and so, on. So. Bread and clothes this. You. Can make the content. In. Your PowerPoint, presentations. Easy to navigate by, using an accessible, template but there are also some other steps you can take a, very. Important. Step. Is to ensure that slide, contents. Can be read in the order that you intend, and this. Is especially important. For screen reader users and, those who use assistive technology. Like a switch or, a mouth stick to access, and control a computer or smartphone, I'm. Going to mention a screen, reader several, times so just to make sure we all know what that's in reference to a screen, reader is, a software, program that converts, digital text, into, synthesized, speech, enabling. Users with visual disabilities to. Hear content, and navigate, with the keyboard, screen. Readers are also used by people with certain cognitive or learning disabilities. Or, users, who simply, prefer audio, over, text, or maybe, learn best by hearing, audio, along, with text. When. Someone who can see reads, a slide they usually read things such as text, or pictures in the order that the elements, appear on the slide. In contrast, a screen, reader reads, the elements, of a slide in the order in which they were added to the slide which. Might be very different from, the order in which things appear. Visually. Reading. Order is also, important, for people who have limited or no movement, in their hands and arms and use one's sticks. Or switches, to access, the computer you, want to make sure these users can scan, or tab through, all the elements, on the slide in the order that. You intended. So. Are, problematic. And accessible, PowerPoint has. Some issues, with reading, order these were caught, by. The. Accessibility. Checker so, slide 19 it, prompted. Us to check the reading, order so we'll go to that now, I'm.
Actually Going to close the accessibility, checker pane. Sorry. I've got a misbehaving, Mouse. Okay. I. Think. It's because I'm switching between touching. The screen and using the mouse hold, on just a second. Okie. Doke. So. To set the order in which screen, readers read the slide content you'll, use the selection, pane so on the Home tab in. The. Drawing. Group you'll. Select a range and, then. The arrange, menu select. Selection. Pane and the. Selection pane lists, the objects, on the slide in reverse order so. When a screen reader reads, this slide it will read the objects, listed in the selection pane from bottom, to top so. Right now if a screen reader user were to access, this slide in my PowerPoint, they would first hear the text starting, with, content. Placeholder, 4 so. I'm clicking on that so we can see what that is so the very first thing they would hear on arriving, to this slide is the. Text that starts with the cadence of the cheer was adapted, from the Ole Miss cheer, hotty totty, the. Next thing they would hear would be the alternative, text if any that I had supplied for this picture. Followed. By. Information, about the rammer jammer chair, the rammer jammer chair, is a traditional, chair and so on and then the very last thing, they. Would hear is the title, and this, is quite different from how a visual, user would, access, this slide a visual, user would probably. First. See, and read the title it's at the top it's in larger, font. Then. Most. English. Reading users, in our country are going to be reading from left to right so they, would read some introductory information telling, us what the rammer jammer chair is then they would get more information about the chairs cadence, then. Finally, see. That University, of Alabama logo, at the bottom. So. The. Reading, order is not what, I intended so, in order to fix that we, can do that in the selection pane we. Can't drag and drop items to, the new location so if I wanted the title to be read first remember, it reads from the bottom up I would, click on title, and drag that down to the bottom of the list, another. Way in which one can do that is by using these arrows, to, move, things around so the next thing I want to be read is content. Placeholder, 2 which. Introduces. What they were hemorrhage emerge here is to move that so that it's read after, the title I would, select it and then use the, send backward or down arrow. So. Now the, reading order matches, the visual order title. Content. Placeholder, 2 content. Placeholder, 4 and then, finally, the picture. While. The accessibility. Checker may, prompt you to check the reading order of your slides as it did for, me it. Can't determine, if the reading order is correct only. A human, can I suggest. That as one of the last steps before you save the final version of your PowerPoint that. You manually, check the reading order of every slide, that sounds pretty tedious, but it's not as bad as you might think so once you open the selection, pane as I have open here it, will remain open as you switch between slides, and normal view so I'm going to switch. Through. My slides starting, with slide 19, and going backwards so there's our selection, pane for slide 19. Selection. Paying for slide 18 selection. Paying for site 17, and so on so. Again, I usually, do this as, almost. The very last step before I publish because before. Then I'm still moving things around and adding and removing content. Another. Thing you can do to help ensure proper reading order is to, use built, in slide designs. PowerPoint. Has built in slide designs that contain placeholders. For texts, videos pictures. And more they. Also contain, all the formatting, such, as theme colors, fonts. And effects, to. Make sure that your slides are accessible, the, built-in, layouts are designed, so, that the reading order is the same for people who see and people who use technology such, as screen readers so. I'm going to add a new slide using, one of the built-in slide, designs, while.
In Normal, view I'm going to position the cursors, insertion. Point where I want to add the new slide, let's. Just keep it simple and add the new slide at the very end so now. I can, right-click and, select, new, slide or. Go, to the insert, tab in, the ribbon and, choose, new slide. No. Matter which way you do it several layouts are available. With. This particular, theme office, theme some, of the available layouts, are title slide title. And content, section. Header to, content, and so on. I'll. Select the slide layout I want let's do two. Content. And. PowerPoint. Will automatically. Apply this layout, to the new slide I would. Go to the slide and then add the. Title and content that I want so. Check out the reading order here, in the selection pane on the right sidebar remember, screen readers read from bottom to top because. I used a built in slide design the. Reading order is correct it, will read title, first, then. The content placeholder to then, content, placeholder, three. You. Aren't limited to the layouts that come with each theme you know perhaps you already have a college or department theme that uses layouts that are, here, that's, okay you can add, a custom, slide, layouts, through the slide master so. You don't have to manually fix the reading order for every slide I'll, include, some how to choose for that when I email, you the recording, of this session you, know if you're thinking about quick action, steps to apply, immediately. Following today's webinar that would be one find. Out if there is a department. Or. College or. Organizational. Template, and assess. The accessibility of, that if you, fix issues, in the template that everyone's using you know that's going to increase the likelihood that the. Material is being produced, across, your unit are accessible. Another. Thing you can do to improve the navigability, of your PowerPoint presentations. Is to, give every slide a unique, title. Many. Assistive, technology, users rely on slide, titles, to navigate, for. Example by skimming, or using a screen reader they, can quickly scan, through a list of slide titles, and go right to the slide that they want, the. Accessibility, checker will, help identify duplicate. Slide titles, so, I'll bring that up again just, by going to review. Check. Accessibility. Remember. I've used, some duplicate slide titles, here the accessibility, checker is, telling me that I've, used. The, elephant, for example multiple times, starting. With slide 6 and continuing, on slide 7. I'm. Going to navigate to slide, 6 now. And. Slide. 6 actually isn't the first place I used, that title that's just where the duplication, occurs, so I actually used the elephant, for the first time in slide 5 then.
Slide 6 then slide 7, so in. Order to be accessible, each of these slides needs to have a unique title so. I, know because I put this together that this. Slide. Really outlines, the early history so. I might change the title to something like the elephant, early, history. The. Next. Slide something. Like, later. History. And this, slide is really about, big owl so, a, more, descriptive title, might be big. Owl. The. Accessibility, checker called, our attention to the duplicate titles but this. Is something else that I like to manually, check before, I publish the final version of my presentation. I do. That by going to the View tab and selecting. The outline view and. Reviewing. And. Editing the, slide titles, here in the outline, in the left sidebar to. Me this, view just makes it a little more likely that I'll be able to see those. Duplicate, titles and edit them all in one spot. Every. Slide does need a title, some, presenters don't, wish to have a title visible, on their slide for aesthetic, reasons in. That, case you can put a title on the slide but make the title invisible. Using. The selection, pane in PowerPoint. I'll, do that now I'm just going to quickly add a new. Slide. I'll. Insert, a slide, that has. A title and, content. And. For. My content, I'm gonna add. Picture. Of the kitty I'm hanging out with today. You. Know aesthetically, I kind of like this look of having a. Full-screen. Picture but. It's not accessible, because I don't have a title, so. I'm gonna go back to my outline view and. For. Slide 22, and. A. Title. In this case I'm typing, a kitty. Assistant. Because, he's here helping with me with my presentation, today. This isn't visible. The contrast is not sufficient, we'll talk about that in just a second but, again maybe aesthetically, I like the look of just a full-screen, image I don't want this text to be there I can, modify, that by going to that, selection. Pane. Closing. The accessibility, checker. The. Home tab I'm going to arrange, and. Then selection, pay and, there's. A little I icon. Next. To each element. Placeholder. Indicating, its visibility so in this case for the title I could. Click on the I to. Turn off the visibility of, the, title so, that title is not going to be there for a sighted user but.
It Will be present in my outline view and it will be present for an assistive technology user, some, other changes I would need to make again. Reordering. Things so that title is read first. And so on. So. Every slide does need a title but it's okay to hide that, using. The. Selection. Pane you, can also systematically, hide, all of your slide titles, by editing, the slide master and I'll send you some information about that. Another. Basic, principle, of digital, accessibility is. Ensuring. Links make sense out of context. By, avoiding. Phrases, like click, here and more. As link, text this. Is especially important. Because screen, reader users often navigate, from link to link skipping. The text in between or. Use a keyboard, shortcut to view, a list of all of the links present, on the page. Turning. To our PowerPoint. This. Line, slide. 17. Presents. Information, about the yey Alabama. School, song and includes a link labeled. Yay Alabama. So. If you, saw this link out of context. You probably, wouldn't understand, what it's for or what clicking it would do and. We can assume that it has something to do with yay Alabama but, we don't know if clicking it will skip, to a different slide open. A web page start. Playing an audio or video file, open, a PDF and so on so. We need to edit this link text so it's more descriptive, to. Do that we will right, click on, the hyperlink. Choose. Edit link and. In. The text, to display field, change. The hyperlink, text so it's more descriptive, so, right now the text, currently reads yay Alabama. This, link actually leads to a YouTube video of, the million dollar band playing, and singing, yay, Alabama, so. I might call it something like. Million. Dollar. Band. Performs. Yay. Alabama, I also. Like to alert the user when, clicking. On a link is going to open up a file like a PDF or, video or audio and, that's very important, for assistive technology users, but it's also just kind of a considerate, thing to do so, I'll either include, that information in. Parenthesis. As part of the link text, or. Maybe. Preface, the link with something like YouTube. Video. Million. Dollar band performs, yay Alabama. So. Now someone, who sees that link completely, out of context, knows what it is it's a link to a YouTube video of the, million dollar band performing. Yay Alabama. This. Slide presents information about, the alma mater and, also. Includes a link to a YouTube video of the million dollar band singing.
The Alma mater. Generally. Speaking it's, best to avoid using, the actual, URL, as link text and to use human, readable, text instead, so. A more appropriate link, text here, instead of the full URL which. Is pretty unwieldy, particularly. For a screen reader user might. Be something like. Million. Dollar band sings. Alma mater, so. Avoid using the text of the link the URL. Itself. As hyperlinked, text unless it's relevant so let's say you were, I don't. Know recording, meeting, minutes where there was a debate or a discussion, about, what. The address of a new webpage should be in, that case it would be relevant you. Know the URL was a point of discussion. All. Content in your Word documents. Excel spreadsheets outlook. Emails and PowerPoint, presentations. Should have alt text and this, includes pictures, clipart. SmartArt. Graphics, shapes, groups, charts. Embedded, objects. Ink and videos anything, visual. Alternative. Text or alt text. Helps, users understand. What's important, in images, and other visuals, screen. Readers speak the alternative, text and place of images, allowing. The content, and the function of the image to be accessible, to those with visual or certain cognitive disabilities. Also. If. The. Content. Is provided online that. Alt text will, be displayed in place of the image and browsers, if the image file isn't loaded, or. If the users chosen not to view images and for, online content that, can also be read by search engines. Again. You, might hear the Thunder in the background I am presenting, from home so my apologies, for any. Interruptions. Related, to that. So. All of the images, in my terrible, presentation. Are lacking alternative. Text, including. Our. Photograph, of big owl which I'm returning to now. To. Add alt text to an image in PowerPoint, you can right click the image. Choose. Format, picture. Select. Layout and properties and. Select. Alt text. You'll. Then need to enter a description, of, the images, content, or function, in the description, field not the title, field, putting. Alt text in the description field, will provide the best experience with. Most major screen, readers, content. In the description, field is converted, to alt text, when a PDF, is exported, from PowerPoint, so. Again. Put that alt text put, that description, of the images, content, and function in the description. Field. Alt. Text, is highly, contextual. In. Some instances, the function, of this image might, be purely decorative. If a, mascot. Costume, sales representative. Were, delivering, a presentation that. Included a slide with this image in, their alt text they might describe, the. Features that would lead someone to purchase this, costume, so the plushness of the fur the size, of the head or, the. Fact that it has openings, foresight and ventilation, in. The context, of my presentation. In. Order to convey to the reader that, big owl is a costumed. Mascot and, not a live elephant, I would, probably describe the image as something, like a, costumed. Elephant. Mascot. Wearing. A, red. Sari. Crimson. Football. Jersey. With the. Letter A on. It. So. Alt text is highly contextual. Depending. On what, the purpose of including the image is you might choose to write that alt text in a different way.
The. Way that alt text works, with charts, is a similar, process so. You can right click on the chart. Select. Format. Chart area. Size and properties and, then. Select, alt text, and provide that description, in the description field. This, chart is actually so terrible, that it's difficult to write a meaningful, description for it and it's I completely, made, up the, little bit of information it contains but, I would probably go with something like pie. Chart, depicting. Number. Of million dollar band members who play clarinet. Trombone. Trumpet, and, flute. Besides. The missing alt text I'm, interested. To see if anyone else spots, other ways in which this chart might present accessibility. Barriers feel, free to throw, out some ideas in, the chat I made it pretty bad on purpose so you won't hurt my feelings. Adding. Alt text, to a table is a similar, approach again, right-clicking, on the table and. Choosing. In this case format, shape. Then. Size and properties, then. Alt text. And. Providing. A description in the description field. Yeah. I've noticed that in the chat Jackie has indicated, color. Distinctions. Not great for colorblind, users, we'll, talk about this in a second but I've, used color alone to convey meaning it's hard to tell the difference between some, of the colors, my. Font is pretty small, the. Color contrasts. With the fun background, it's not great. There's. No sense of the, numbers involved, so, is this all of this year's million dollar band members or all of the million dollar band members throughout history, and. So on so there are several different issues. Here. That we could improve, to, enhance the accessibility. Sometimes. An image is purely, decorative and, there's, nothing, important, to say about it in that. Case you can tell the screen reader to skip, the image and you, would do that by opening the alt text dialog, as we, have done before so. I'm selecting the, University, of Alabama logo. Choosing. Format, picture. Choosing layout, and properties or. Size and properties and, in the description, field here's where I need to indicate, the. Alt text, so. All images, need alt text, even if the image is purely decorative in this case we would want to tell the screen reader to skip, the image and one of the ways that we can do this is by typing in two double. Quotes with no space between them so, quote, quote. So. That's actually a single set of double quotes two quotation, marks with no space in between them quote quote. Now. The screen reader will ignore, this picture, in. A. PDF, document such. Images, can be tagged as artifacts. Final. Example, of images. And PowerPoint, to. Ensure your presentations, are accessible, you, should also avoid, using, text, and images, wherever, possible.
This. Slide includes. An image of text, in this case the Alabama Crimson Tide's 2018. Schedule, as. Is this content, would be completely, unavailable, to a screen reader user or. To your computer search, tool to. Make it more accessible we, should repeat, the text in this image so in this case the text reads Alabama, Crimson Tide. 2018. Schedule, is then followed by the date of each game and, the information. About the opponent and where the game is played we. Would repeat. That information as, alt, text, would be one approach, another. Approach, would be to restructure. This slide, so, that we were providing, the information, as text. Itself, or. Maybe, provide, the information in an accessible, data table, with. The picture next to it so there's several different ways you can do it the underlying. Principle, though is that, text in images is, inaccessible. And you should avoid using, text. And images, as the sole means of conveying information. Another. Impactful. Practice, is ensuring. That color is not the only means of conveying important, information, and this, is primarily to ensure your content, is accessible, to people of color vision deficiency, sometimes. Called color blindness, but, it's also a principle. Of universal, design for learning by. Using more, than just, color to convey information, you're. Providing multiple means of representation. To. Find instances, of color coding, you can visually, scan your presentation. To. Make sure that people, who are blind or, have low vision or, have color vision deficiency, won't. Miss out on the meaning conveyed by particular colors, there. Is an instance, in my, presentation. Where color alone, is used. To convey meaning this. Slide lists, notable, halftime, shows with. Shows including. Signature, songs indicated. In red font. Another. Way to present this information, might. Be adding, the text. Signature. Song, instead. Of or in addition to the color. Reformatting. The content, as two separate, lists may, be one for shows with signature, songs and, one for shows without, or. Reformatting. The content, as an accessible, data table, with a column, that includes, signature, song information, so. It's okay to use color but. You don't want to use color alone, you, need to indicate that in. Some other format, along with the color you. Also, want, to be sure to use sufficient, contrast, between. Background. And foreground colors. If. Your, slides have a high level of contrast, between text, and background more. People can see and use the content, and yes that does include people, with visual disabilities, but. Also people, accessing, the content on the screen and, bright sunlight, or trying, to see a projected. Slide from, the back of a large meeting room or lecture hall. One. Way to ensure you're using sufficient, contrast and PowerPoint is to use one of the accessible, templates. Which have been designed. To ensure there, is sufficient contrast, between text, and background of, the, accessibility, checker will, look for, insufficient, color contrast. It, will check the text, on your slides against, the page color, highlights. Text. Box fills and, so on however. It's a good idea to also check this manually. Particularly. When you're setting up a template, this. Title, slide includes, some text that's particularly, hard to read due, to insufficient. Contrast, I identified. This by visually, scanning my slides but, there are also some tools to help particularly, when it may not be as evident that, the contrast, is not sufficient.
There. Are several tools you can use to check for sufficient, contrast, one, of my favorites, is the web aim color, contrast, checker which. Not only lets you check to see if your color choices meet, contrast. Ratios, specified. By web. Content, accessibility guidelines. But. Also helps, you pick color combinations, that provide sufficient, contrast. You. Enter, the hexadecimal, codes, for the background, and foreground colors and, if. Your color. Combination. Fails to pass the test you can adjust, the lightness, slider to. Modify, the colors by slight degrees, until, you get a result that has sufficient, contrast. Another. One our team likes is posse yellow groups, color contrast, analyser, which. Works on the web and with documents. And images you. Can enter hex codes to check or use an eyedropper tool, similar, to what, you find an image editing software like Photoshop to. Click, on and select colors, to check there's. Also a very, low-tech way, to check, to see if color contrast, is sufficient, and that's, to print the content, in question and greyscale, that can give you a good idea whether. Or not the contrast, is. Going. To be accessible. Just. A few additional tips before, we finish, up by talking about, how to save PowerPoint, presentations. As accessible. PDFs. When. Including, tables in your power point presentation. Use a simple, table structure, screen. Readers keep track of their location, in a table by counting, table, cells if. A table is nested. Within another table, or if, a cell is merged. Or split the. Screen reader loses, counts, and can't, provide helpful information about, the table after that point. Blank. Cells in a table can also mislead. Someone using. A screen reader into, thinking that there's nothing more in the table, so. It's best when possible to avoid, split, cells merge. Cells, nested. Tables, and completely. Blank rows, and columns, you can, also use the accessibility, checker to. Help identify and, fix, problematic. Table structure. You. Can enhance accessibility when. You're including, tables in your PowerPoint by, specifying. Column, header information. Screen. Readers use header information to identify rows. And columns we, looked at how to do this when we talked about how the accessibility. Checker worked, but, just as a reminder to. Indicate that your table has column headings you go to the design tab, table. Style options and, select. The header row checkbox. Here's. A larger font size 18. Point or larger, width, sans-serif, fonts, and sufficient, whitespace people. Who have dyslexia sometimes. Described, seeing text merge or, distort. Especially. When text is crowded, smaller. Or crowded text, is also problematic, for users with low vision and, again, back. Of the room large lecture, hall and. So, on. You. Can reduce the reading load for everyone, by using a larger font size familiar. Sans-serif. Fonts, like Arial or, Calibri and, including. Ample, whitespace, between sentences. And paragraphs. To. Enhance the accessibility of your content, you should also avoid using all, capital, letters and. Excessive. Italics, or underlined. Make. Sure any media, embedded, in or linked to from, your PowerPoint is, possible in order to ensure your audio and video content, is accessible, you, need to provide captions. Transcripts. And when necessary audio. Descriptions, I'm, not going to go into great detail about this because. Support. For. Adding. And playing back caption, files, varies. Widely across, versions. Of PowerPoint but. It will provide information about that in the, follow-up email. The. Emerging, technology, and accessibility team can help with captioning, we, can provide guidance, on how, to search for caption, videos and, how, to use the captioning, and transcribing, features, and most players. Platforms. And lecture capture, systems, our, area, also administers, grants, to caption, or, transcribed. Ua owned video, and audio that, will be shared on public, or campus-wide, websites, you, can find information about that on our website at accessibility, ua, edu. Let's. Move on to talking about how to save PowerPoint, presentations. As accessible. PDFs. The. First step in creating, an, accessible PDF, from, a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.
Is To ensure that the. Original, PowerPoint, file is accessible, the. Accessibility, of the PDF depends, on the, accessibility, of the source file, creating. A source file that's accessible. From the start, or, correcting. The accessibility, issues in the source file is much easier, than fixing, the resulting, PDF, plus. Any area errors, you fix in the source file only has to be fixed once. So. I actually. Corrected. The, accessibility, errors, in this, PowerPoint. And. Saved. It as a PDF, let, me find that now. Just. One moment. Okay. So, corrected, the accessibility errors, in our PowerPoint. And saved it as a PDF, on. My screen now is that PDF, with, the tags panel, open, in the left sidebar. So. Although there's a bit more to it than this when people talk about accessible. PDF, files they're usually referring, to PDF, files that have tags, tags. Are, the basis of an accessible PDF file they, indicate, the structure, of the document, communicate. The order in which the item should be read and, determine. Exactly which, items, will. Be read, when. Creating, a PDF from. A Microsoft, PowerPoint presentation. You want to do so in a way that preserves the, accessibility. Of the, source file and includes, these tags. So. This is the PowerPoint, presentation, we've been looking, at but with the accessibility, errors, corrected. We're. Gonna save it as a PDF now, so. If you have Adobe, Acrobat on, your, computer, you'll, want to use the PDF maker to create PDFs. For Microsoft, Office files when. The PDF maker add-in, is enabled, a tab labeled Acrobat. Will appear, in the ribbon alongside. Other tabs like, home insert. Design, and, so on and this is what you want to use when generating a PDF document from, your source file I'm. Selecting, that Acrobat, tab now. When. You click on the tab it shows you all of the options available within. The PDF maker I'm selecting. The Preferences, button. These. Are the settings that are going to be used to generate the, PDF file and there's a lot of options here I'm, even more under, Advanced Settings I'm. Not going to go into any, more detail about, this except, to point out this check box right here, enable. Accessibility and, reflow with. Tagged, Adobe PDF. You. Want this to be checked once. You've done that you can click OK and that now. Defines, the preferences, for the PDF files going, to be created. This, is not something that you should have to do each time you create a PDF it is, something as an action step to check, if. You do have this PDF maker add-in, enabled, make. Sure that the, enable, accessibility, and, reflow with, tagged PDF, option, is checked and then click, OK, to. Actually make the PDF file I'm going to click on the create PDF, button and. If. You don't have, the. PDF maker add an installed, on your machine don't, worry. Using. This add-on add-in. Typically, yields the most accessible, results, but, there are other ways to create PDF, from, office documents, let me save this one really quick so I'm just gonna put on my desktop as. Traditions. After. Okay. See you later clay. So. This is the PDF, that I just generated, out of PowerPoint I mentioned. That if you don't have that add-in, don't, worry there are some other ways, that you can generate an accessible, PDF one. Of those is by going to file save as, Adobe PDF. Another. Is by going to file save. As and. Choosing. PDF as the file type, if. You. Do that you'll want to go to more, options and. Then. Options. And. Make. Sure that. Document. Structure, tags for, accessibility is. Checked, again. You shouldn't have to do this every single time and it should be enabled by default but that's something just to check on your machine so. Whether. You're clicking, on the create PDF button in the, ribbon or, going, to file save as Adobe PDF. Are going to file save as PDF, all. Of, those enable, you to output, a, PowerPoint. Presentation as a PDF that has tags. What. You do not want to do is go. To file and then choose print. When. You print as PDF. Or even. Print as Adobe, PDF. Those. Tags, and, other important, accessibility, information may. Not be transferred over to the exulting, resulting, PDF, so. Avoid. Print, PDF. And this is true across, office. Not just PowerPoint, but also Word, Excel. And so on I'm. Going to open up that PDF, that I created. Once. You've created. There's, typically, a few touch-ups that need to be done to make it fully accessible, I'm, not going to outline all of those I'll send you some information about, that and, if you'd like to learn more we, are offering PDF, workshops, and webinars later, this month one. Thing I will point out is that Acrobat.
Has Two built-in tools to help you create accessible. PDFs the, accessibility. Checker and, the make accessible. Action. I'm. Gonna go to tools. Accessibility. I have, already added the accessibility, tools to my install. Of Acrobat, if this, didn't show up in the list you can search for the, tool here by searching for accessibility, and, then. Adding that to your list of tools. I'm. Gonna go to accessibility. The. Full check feature, in Acrobat, checks a PDF for, many of the characteristics, of, accessible, PDFs, you can, choose which problems, to look for and how you want the results reported, and this. Is the tool that I would use in today's scenario, where, I've, taken. Steps to ensure that my source file is accessible, and, I just need to do some light touching, up after, saving from, that accessible, search source, file II. Other. Option. Is the accessible, action. Wizard make accessible. Action, you, access that through the action wizard. Choosing. Make accessible. From the actions, list, and. This. Action wizard walks you through the steps required, to make a PDF accessible, it, prompts, you to address accessibility issues. Such as missioning, document, description or title it. Looks for common elements, that need further action, like scanned, text, form. Fields, tables, images. This. Is what I would use if I was working to remediate an, inaccessible. Document, for, which I did not have the source file or, if there were quite. A few accessibility. Issues that needed to be addressed. In. Conclusion the. University, is committed to providing technology. Users, including. Those with disabilities a functional. And accessible technology, experience. With our web presence and our, instructional. And emerging, technologies, we. Create accessibility. And disability through. Our design choices. Let's. Create accessibility, applying. The. Knowledge and skills through you that you hopefully, have gained through today's, session. We. Are here to help, visit. Us at accessibility, ua. Edu. You can also reach out to us at accessibility. At, UA. Edu. Feel. Free to contact me directly as well that's. All I have we. Do have a few minutes so if you have questions or thoughts to share please. Feel free to unmute your mic and share them now or type them in the chat box I will stop the recording.
2018-07-16 20:34
