Accessible Slide Decks

Design for Accessibility Guide

accessibility

Accessible Canvas Pages

Checking Canvas Pages To ensure your course content is accessible to all students, it is best to use the accessibility

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Design for Accessibility Guide Checking Slide Decks Use Microsoft Office PowerPoint’s Accessibility Checker as you create or edit a slide

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Accessible Text and Documents

Checking Word Documents Use Microsoft Office Word’s Accessibility Checker during or after you create or edit a document. This tool

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Accessible Video and Multimedia

Design for Accessibility Guide Check Video Whether it’s a video you made yourself or one someone else made, it is

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Creating Accessible Content

Keep in Mind During Design The easiest way to make sure your course content is accessible is by keeping multiple

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accessibility

Design for Course Accessibility

Accessibility Best Practices For each resource type, this guide provides information about the benchmarks for accessibility. Keep these general best

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Checking Slide Decks

Use Microsoft Office PowerPoint’s Accessibility Checker as you create or edit a slide deck. This tool will guide you on which elements of your presentation need attention and offer solutions to accessibility issues. Here are some things to keep in mind as you create or edit your slides:

Use accessible fonts (Sans-serif like Arial or Verdana) and size 18pt or higher.
Ensure a high color contrast between foreground elements (like text and images) and their background.
Use built-in layouts to structure content in a logical reading order and use proper slide headings.
Include alt-text for all images.

View UCR’s Creating Accessible PowerPoint Documents page for more complete information.

How to Use PowerPoint’s Accessibility Checker

You can manually launch the Accessibility Checker using the navigation buttons at the top. With your PowerPoint slides open, navigate to the top of the page and click the Review tab.

Click the “Check Accessibility:” option, then “Check Accessibility” in the dropdown options. If you just want to check the alt-text of images, you can select the “Alt Text” option instead.

From here, a window will open to the right displaying the current Accessibility score and a breakdown of any and all issues that need attention. Once all issues are addressed, your presentation is accessible and ready to be added to your course!

Options for Posting Slide Decks to Canvas

With PowerPoint, there are several options for posting your presentations to Canvas:

Record the PowerPoint as a video presentation, then use Canvas Studio to add closed captions. You can also upload the video to YouTube which will auto-generate captions. It is advisable to also post the slides themselves to Canvas.
Post the PowerPoint as a PDF, and use Equidox to run a more extensive accessibility scan.
Post the PowerPoint as a .pptx file, but be sure to give every slide a unique title and check the reading order for each slide’s content.

View the How to create accessible PowerPoint presentations YouTube video from Microsoft Helps for a tutorial on creating accessible slide decks with PowerPoint.