Creating an accessible PowerPoint presentation ensures that your content is usable by the widest possible audience, including people with disabilities who may use assistive technologies like screen readers. Following these best practices not only helps with compliance standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) but also results in a clearer, more professional presentation for everyone.
Structure and Layout: The Foundation
- Master Pages and Built-in Layouts. Always start with PowerPoint’s built-in slide master layouts found under Home > New Slide or Home > Layout. Do this instead of creating a new blank slide and adding your own text boxes. Pre-defined layouts (e.g., “Title Slide,” “Title and Content”) contain placeholders that are correctly structured in the background. Screen readers rely on this structure to understand the hierarchy of information (titles, subtitles, lists) and to read the content in the correct order. Manually placed text boxes can lead to a chaotic and confusing reading order.
- How to Do It: Use the Slide Master (View > Slide Master) to create your own branded, accessible templates. By modifying the master layouts, you ensure that anyone creating a presentation from your template will start with an accessible foundation.
- Titles. Every slide must have a unique title. Titles act as a heading and is the primary way screen reader users navigate the presentation. Screen readers can pull up a list of all slide titles, allowing a user to quickly jump to the content they need, much like scanning a table of contents.
- How to Do It: Use the “Title” placeholder on your chosen slide layout. If you don’t want the title to be visible on the slide for design reasons, you can move it off-screen or use the Selection Pane (Home > Arrange > Selection Pane) to hide it visually by clicking the eye icon. The screen reader will still announce it.
- Reading Order determines the sequence in which a screen reader announces the content on a slide. Out of order content can change the meaning of your message or make it hard to understand.
- How to Do It: Go to Home > Arrange > Selection Pane. The pane lists all objects on the slide. The reading order is from the bottom up. Drag and drop items in the list to reorder them into a logical sequence (e.g., Title, then Subtitle, then Image, then Bulleted List).
Content and Readability
- Text Size: Use a font size of 24pt or higher for all text. Titles should be larger, such as 32pt or more. Use bold for emphasis. Never underline text unless it is a link.
- Fonts: Use simple, sans-serif fonts like Aptos, Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana. Serif fonts such as Times New Roman should be avoided. Never use cursive, highly decorative or stylized fonts.
- Notes. Keep slides simple and uncluttered. Focus on one main idea per slide. Use the Notes Section to provide a full transcript or more detailed information. Overly complex slides can be overwhelming visually and cognitively. The notes section provides an accessible alternative for screen reader users to get the full context. It’s also a great resource for your audience to review after the presentation.
- How to Do It: Below each slide, type your speaking notes or a detailed description of the slide’s content into the “Click to add notes” pane.
- Lists. Always use the built-in tools for creating bulleted and numbered lists.
- Why it Matters: When you use the list tools, PowerPoint creates a proper semantic list. A screen reader will announce “List with 5 items,” and then read each item. If you manually type a hyphen or number, the screen reader just sees it as text and doesn’t understand the relationship between the items.
- How to Do It: Use the Bulleted List or Numbered List buttons in the Home tab.
Color and Contrast
- Color Contrast. Ensure there is enough contrast between text color and background color. People with low vision or color blindness may not be able to read text if the contrast is too low. The minimum color contrast is 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (18pt bold or 24pt regular or higher).
- How to Check: Use a free tool like WebAIM’s Contrast Checker to identify the contrast between two colors (use the eyedropper tool inside the “Color Picker” to select the color on your screen). PowerPoint’s Accessibility Checker will also flag some contrast issues.
- Never rely on color alone as the only means of conveying information because users with color blindness won’t be able to distinguish the information.
- Example: In a chart, use different patterns, textures, or labels in addition to colors to differentiate data series. Instead of saying “As shown in the red bar,” say “As shown in the first bar, representing Q1 sales.”
Images and Non-Text Content
- Alternative Text (Alt Text) is a concise, textual description of an image that is read aloud by screen readers. Without alt text, a screen reader user has no way of knowing what information the image conveys. They will only hear “image.”
- How to Do It: Right-click the image and select Edit Alt Text… Be descriptive and concise. Describe the content and function of the image. What point are you making with it? Start with the most important information. There is no need to say “Image of…” or “Picture of…” as the screen reader already announces it as an image.
- Bad Alt Text: chart
- Good Alt Text: Bar chart showing a steady increase in quarterly sales from $10M in Q1 to $25M in Q4.
- Decorative Images: If an image is purely decorative and adds no informational value (e.g., a stylistic swoosh), check the “Mark as decorative” box. Screen readers skip over decorative images.
- How to Do It: Right-click the image and select Edit Alt Text… Be descriptive and concise. Describe the content and function of the image. What point are you making with it? Start with the most important information. There is no need to say “Image of…” or “Picture of…” as the screen reader already announces it as an image.
- Tables. Keep tables simple. Avoid complex tables with merged or split cells.
- Specify Header Row: In the Table Design tab, ensure the “Header Row” checkbox is ticked. If your first column also contains headers, check “First Column” as well. This allows a screen reader to associate each data cell with its corresponding row and column headers.
- Hyperlinks. Use descriptive hyperlink text describing where that link goes. Screen reader users often navigate by pulling up a list of all links on a page. “Click here” provides no context, but “Read the 2024 Annual Report” is clear.
- Bad Hyperlink: To learn more, click here.
- Good Hyperlink: You can review the full details in the 2025 Annual Report.
Checking Your Work and Sharing
- Accessibility Checker. PowerPoint has a powerful built-in tool to help you find and fix issues. Select Review > Check Accessibility. The checker will open a pane that lists errors, warnings, and tips, along with instructions on how to fix each one. Run this checker before finalizing your presentation.
- Sharing Your File. When sharing your presentation, consider providing it in multiple formats.
- PowerPoint (.pptx): The native format is often the most accessible, as it preserves all the underlying accessibility features.
- PDF: When saving as a PDF (File > Save a Copy > PDF), go into Options and ensure the box for “Document structure tags for accessibility” is checked. This exports the accessible structure you created into the PDF file. NEVER print to PDF (File > Print > Adobe PDF) as this strips the document of accessibility and structure.