About the Checklist

Use the Accessible Presentation Checklist to double-check your PowerPoint before publishing it and to practice inclusive presentation techniques. Please note that this checklist is not meant to be exhaustive or a fix-all for your presentation. It will remind you to include accessible best practices in your PowerPoints and help you develop inclusive presentation habits. This checklist is based off of the UMass President's Office Develop and Deliver Accessible Presentations training course.

Develop an Accessible PowerPoint

PowerPoint Template and Layouts

President's Office employees should use the Accessible PowerPoint template. If you are a campus employee, please reach out to the department that maintains your campus templates.
An accessible font is one that is familiar and readable, such as Times New Roman, Arial, and Verdana. Note that there is no official accessible font as font preference varies by individual and by disability. Leaving your presentation in the PowerPoint format rather than converting it to a PDF gives people the option to change the font to a preferred readable font.
The recommended font size for PowerPoint is 18 points or higher. In the PowerPoint template, we have set the main content of slides to 20 points with sub-bullets at 18 points.
When you use the President's Office Accessible PowerPoint Template, you should always use the built in layouts under the Home tab. These layouts under New Slide and Layout are designed with accessibility in mind.
If you do not create a new layout in the Slide Master, the content you add will not be captured in the PowerPoint Outline View, which means it won’t export correctly if you generate other formats. You can use the Edit and Re-apply a Slide Master Microsoft article to create a new layout.

Design Components to Avoid

PowerPoint transitions are animated so anyone with motion sensitivity can have seizures, vertigo, migraines, or motion sickness triggered depending on the movement the transition makes and their health condition. If you do need to use a transition effect, always avoid ones that slide in, slide out, flash, or have complex animated effects that could through off someone’s balance system.
You should always remove the animation function when sending out a presentation to attendees. PowerPoint animations that load content on a slide by mouse click create accessibility issues for anyone using assistive technology. In addition, stick to the Appear animation option and avoid the more complex options (such as Blinds and Fly In), so you avoid triggering a health condition, such as migraines, vertigo, or seizures.
Avoid content that slides in and out and any flashing content. These effects can trigger migraines, vertigo, nausea, and seizures. Avoid fast-moving, spiraling, or jarring animations as they can can trigger vertigo or be distracting for the neurodivergent and low vision community. If you need to use animated content, provide a warning. Also, test the animation with PEAT or the Online Flash Test.

Content Best Practices

Lists are more scannable and easier to understand. Note that a bulleted list should be used when the order of your list does not matter. When conveying a hierarchy or steps, use the numbered list. Reference the Add Bullets to Text Microsoft article for step by step instructions.
If you need to use any of these, define what they mean the first time you use them. For example, if you use an abbreviation such as SME, spell it out and put the abbreviation in parenthesis, “Subject Matter Expert (SME).”
Left aligned content is easier to read than centered content and justified content can create readability issues for both the dyslexic and low vision communities.
The title is the first thing a blind or low vision person using a screen reader will find in the standard layout. It is as useful as assigning heading levels in Word or on a Webpage. The title also appears in the Outline View of the PowerPoint and is an essential aspect of creating alternative formats when requested.
When designing content in your presentation, ensure you convey meaning through the content, not just through color. Use color to enhance design, but not drive it. This ensures that you are including the blind, deafblind, color blind, and low vision communities. If you decide to use color to enhance the design of your content, ensure the foreground and background you select meet color contrast guidelines by checking them with the WebAIM Contrast Checker.
Use descriptive links so that the blind, deafblind, and low vision community can scan links in your slides. When creating a descriptive link, use the following best practices: Never use “click here” or “read more;” Link names should match the title of the content you plan to point to. For example, if you are linking to the 2024 Financial Aid Report, the link name would be “2024 Financial Aid Report;" Don’t worry about length. Too long is better than too short; and Add a short description when needed to clarify the link. Reference the Add a hyperlink to a Slide Microsoft article for step-by-step instructions on adding links.
To ensure you are fully including the Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Deafblind communities in the audio content of a video or audio clip: Ensure embedded videos have captions and an accompanying transcript. A transcript is the text version of any speech and non-speech information. Non-speech audio includes sounds such as laughter or clapping; and ensure any audio files include a link to a transcript. If the video you are sharing contains visual elements not described in the video, check with your audience to see if anyone needs a video description that conveys the visuals prior to the presentation. Video descriptions provide the blind, low vision, and deafblind community with similar visual descriptions to what is contained in alt text – instead you are describing the visuals in the video itself.

Table Design

If you use any tables in your PowerPoint, please use the following checklist items to confirm accessibility.

You should always create a table using the built-in PowerPoint table feature. Reference the Add a Table to a Slide Microsoft article for step-by-step instructions.
Assigning a header row will make the table content accessible to anyone using a screen reader. Reference the Use Table Headers Microsoft article for step-by-step instructions on adding a header row to your table.
Merging cells in a table reduces the accessibility of the table for screen reader users.
For example, do not shade cells as green to indicate a complete status. Instead, Add a column with the status. If you use color along with text, confirm that the design of the background color in a cell and foreground text meet color contrast guidelines by testing them with the WebAIM Contrast Checker.
If you need to provide a large amount of tabular content, Link to an excel spreadsheet instead so the low vision community can use zoom and magnification tools.

Equal Access to Images and Graphs

Alternative text provides equal access to your images for the blind, deafblind, and low vision community. The following count as images in PowerPoint and should have alt text: Charts and Graphs, Clip Art, Icons, Pictures, and Shapes. Reference the Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object Microsoft article for step-by-step instructions on adding alt text to your images.
While alt text will benefit the blind and deafblind community, a chart description can benefit anyone having a hard time reading a complex chart, including the neurodivergent community (e.g., Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, ADHD, Autism, etc.). Alt text also cannot convey semantics such as bulleted content or headings. When a graph is too complex and requires the accompanying content to be structured in an easy to digest way, it’s best to add the overall chart description below the graph or chart.
The low vision and colorblind community often run into issues with poor contrast on graphs and charts. The best way to design graphs and charts is by using gradient colors (i.e., shades of the same blue or shades of the same green). You can also use patterns for more complex graphs with over 8 data points but keep your patterns simple and easy to decipher. Two great tools to use to define your chart colors are: Chroma.js Color Palette – you can define your gradients here by entering in your darkest color first and letting the gradients be generated; and Viz Palette – you can use this tool to test out how the Chroma.js color palette would work on graphs and even test what the colors would look like in grayscale.
Depending on how much data you are showing, you may want to link to an accompanying table with the source data in an accessible excel spreadsheet.
Use both visual cues and text labels to convey the values represented by each point on the graph. This practice assists users who are color blind, chronically ill, neurodivergent, or anyone that is stressed and overtired. Reference the Add or remove data labels in a chart Microsoft article for step-by-step instructions on how to add data labels to your charts and graphs.
The smaller the text, the harder it will be to read. Always stick with a familiar and readable font such as Arial, Times New Roman, or Verdana.
While complex data visualizations can be visually appealing and attention-grabbing, they can be hard for your audience to understand.
SmartArt is not accessible by default, which means that screen readers will not be able to read it in its default format. Once you have created your SmartArt and added all the relevant content, you’ll need to convert it to shapes by navigating to the SmartArt Design tab in PowerPoint, selecting the Convert menu dropdown, and then selecting Convert to Shapes.

Running the Accessibility Checker and Saving Your PowerPoint

While the Accessibility Checker won’t catch everything, it can catch several accessibility issues you may have missed, including: any images that are missing alt text; auto-generated alt text that hasn’t been updated; missing table headers; and warnings about merged cells. Reference Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker for step-by-step instructions.
The File Properties behind the scenes stores metadata that is read to screen reader users and is also used for website searches. As people tend to use a previous file to create a new file rather than start from scratch with a template each time, when you do not update the file properties, you run into either a file name that does not match the current file, or if you have never added a file name behind the scenes, a blank file name instead. Neither option is a great experience for screen reader users and can definitely impact people finding your content through a website search. Reference View or change the properties for an Office file for step-by-step instructions.
Unless the content is proprietary, there is no reason to save it as a PDF. If you do save the file to PDF, further remediation will be required using Adobe Acrobat for the file to be formatted correctly. Previously, PDFs were used to ensure content could not be changed. However, PDFs can actually be switched back to their native format through the export feature so PDFs are not as secure as they appear. There is a way to lock down PDFs entirely as read only, but that function actually prevents PDFs from being accessed by assistive technology and should not be used.

Deliver an Accessible Presentation

Prior to Your Presentation

You can use the following language at the bottom of a meeting invitation: The University of Massachusetts President's Office is committed to making our events accessible to everyone. If you require an accommodation to fully participate, please contact at least 5 days prior to the event.
Auto-captions can be used at all meetings to help any attendee follow along. Auto-captions can benefit anyone that is chronically ill that is dealing with brain fog, the neurodivergent community, as well as anyone experiencing audio issues. Auto-captions are not perfect so issues could arise with name spellings and complex words. When publishing a recording with auto-captions, ensure that you edit the accuracy of the captions. Also note that auto-captions should not be used when an accommodation request is received for accurate human-transcribed captions. In that case, you should reach out to HR to book a real-time captioner.

During the Presentation

You can communicate the following best practices to attendees:

  • Use the raise hand feature or chat to ask a question so that you do not accidentally speak at the same time as another colleague. Two people speaking at once can create captioning issues.
  • Say your name before speaking. When attendees provide their name before speaking, the captions and transcript for the meeting will be easier to follow both during the live presentation and when the recording is distributed.
  • If the presentation is in-person, use a microphone to ask your question. Using a microphone ensures that the question is picked up by a captioning and transcription service.
If you open your presentation in PowerPoint Online (you will need to open PowerPoint Online through Outlook, OneDrive, or Teams - note that PowerPoint Live is not available on Dropbox), you can use the PowerPoint live option to share the presentation live with attendees. This allows attendees to follow along on their own device, which benefits assistive technology users. You can reference the Present inclusively with PowerPoint article for step-by-step instructions on how to use PowerPoint Live. 
Speaking too fast can prevent captioners and sign language interpreters from keeping up with your spoken content.
Providing which slide number you are on during a presentation helps the disability community follow along if they are using a copy of the PowerPoint to follow your presentation.
Describing your images provides equal access to the blind, low vision, and deafblind community. It also can provide equal access to anyone in the Deaf community that is using an interpreter as it may be hard to focus on both the slide and the interpreter. Finally, if anyone in the vestibular community is listening along and cannot look at a Zoom screen that day, they also are provided equal access to the images.
Pause between topics and after you ask for questions.

After the Presentation

The University currently uses Qualtrics for surveys. Use the Qualtrics Best Practices knowledge article to ensure your survey is accessible.

Optional: Send Yourself a Copy of Your Checklist

Note that your submission will not be saved in a database. The only copy will be the copy you receive via email.