PowerPoint Accessibility Best Practices

Overview

Best practices for making PowerPoint (.ppt) files ADA compliant.

Always keep in mind Adobe's advice:

Whenever possible, accessibility should be incorporated directly into the document using the application that created it. When accessibility is incorporated directly into the source document, less repair work will be required in Adobe Acrobat. This is very important when the PDF must be regenerated based on changes in the source file. If changes are only made in the PDF and not in the source file, accessibility work will need to be done each time the document is updated.

Resources

• Creating Accessible PowerPoint Presentations (Office.com)
• Creating Accessible Presentations by Glenna Shaw (Office.com)
• The PowerPoint help pages are vague and unhelpful, along the lines of “making a PowerPoint document accessible is the best way of making a accessible PowerPoint document”.
• Some universities, non-profits, and government agencies have pages detailing their own best practices for PowerPoint accessibility.
  • Creating Accessible Documents with Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 (US Dept of Veterans Affairs)

PowerPoint's built-in accessibility checker

PowerPoint provides an Accessibility Checker when the presentation is saved in version PowerPoint 2013 or greater. (File > Save As… > Save As Type: PowerPoint Presentation (*.pptx))

File > Info > Inspect Presentation > Check for Issues > Check Accessibility

The Accessibility Checker pane will be displayed next to the presentation with a list of Errors, Warnings, and Tips.

Reading order

Reading order as applied to PowerPoint presentations can be interpreted differently by different screen readers, i.e. there is no ultimate control over how it comes out.

Some things that influence reading order:

• If a slide does not contain any custom elements, it won’t show up under Check Reading Order. Taking this into consideration in the design phase will save the compliance operator this task while making the document compliant.
• Slide placeholder text boxes. PowerPoint recommends slide templates over adding text directly into a slide. This way the text will be visible in the Outline View and reading order can be confirmed there.
• It appears that the slide title will always be read out first, regardless of where that text is placed within the Selection Pane stack.
• Order in which elements are added to a slide. By default the elements added first are also read first. (They are also the furthest back in front-to-back reading order (have the lowest z-index) which also corresponds to reading order.)
• Z-index. Safest assumption is that a screen reader will read elements furthest back first, and then read elements in ascending order towards the front. (E.g. if one element is layered on top of another, the element underneath is read first followed by the element on top.)
• Tab order. With no elements selected the Tab key can be used to select successive elements on a slide. This Tab order corresponds to reading order. Tab order of slide elements should correspond with their Z-index arrangement.
• Order within the Selection pane.
  • Home tab > Arrange > Selection Pane
  • All of the elements in a slide will be displayed in the Selection Pane. The elements at the bottom of the list are read off first.
  • The order within the Selection Pane corresponds to Z-index.
• The arrangement of elements on the slide can have an influence on screen readers also if the screen reader attempts to read the elements from left to right and from top to bottom.

Basic reading order confirmation

1. Slides that use a custom layout that deviates from the slide template placeholders will appear under Check Reading Order. The fact that they appear under Check Reading Order doesn’t necessarily mean that their reading order is incorrect; just that they require manual review. There is no way of marking a slide’s reading order as having been “confirmed”.
2. Arrange the elements appropriately in the Selection Pane, keeping in mind that the screen reader will read from the bottom of the stack to the top.
   1. Navigate to a slide.
   2. Home tab > Select > Select All
   3. Drawing Tools: Format tab > Arrange > Selection Pane