![]() In slide master and slide layouts you can add placeholders, which are designed to allow modifying content in a presentation slide. Remember, Accessibility Checker will raise an error when a slide doesn’t have a title element. Feel free to modify its size and position, and any other properties. ![]() It’s very important that each slide layout inherits the title element from slide master. You want the slide layouts to inherit characteristics from the slide master. You can add any of the footer elements but understand that a screen reader won’t ever read them. In fact Accessibility Checker will raise an error for each slide that doesn’t have a title (more on this later). Note that the title element is special, and you shouldn’t remove it. When text doesn’t fit, it forces me to be more concise or to spill part of the text to a new slide. I prefer to use the “Do no Autofit” option to ensure PowerPoint doesn’t shrink the font text size (it can be sneaky and do it without you even noticing). Please, turn off my least favorite text box setting, which is the “Shrink text on overflow” option. Apply generous line spacing multiples to separate paragraphs, making them much easy to identify and read. Keep font sizes as large as practical and avoid using a font size less than 18pt (for the lowest level). Ideally they should belong to the same font family and they must be easy to read-so, avoid fancy looking ones. FontsĪpply heading and body fonts to the slide master. I learned the hard way when I had to reformat every slide to conform to a new accessible-designed layout. I can’t stress enough how important it is to get the theme and layouts setup right from the very beginning. When done right, it’ll ensure consistency across the entire presentation. ![]() As it turns out, it’s where you’re going to directly address many accessibility requirements. When commencing a new PowerPoint presentation, the first thing I do is prepare the theme and layouts. Also, when your presentation embeds audio or video content, you should communicate sound in a meaningful way to people with hearing impairments. They could be totally blind, legally blind, color blind, or have low vision for several reasons-including the fact we all eventually age. No-to-low vision describes a person that doesn’t have the benefit of full sight. The main accessibility consideration, then, is to allow people with no-to-low vision to fully experience it. I want my training content to communicate to the broadest possible audience. Also, when I refer to a screen reader, I mean the screen reader built into a PDF viewer application like Acrobat Reader (remember, I distribute my PowerPoint presentations as PDF documents). Much of what I've written in this article about PowerPoint themes applies to Word also. If you adhere to good document structure by using a hierarchy of headings and follow a linear, logical layout, then you’re off to a solid start. I hope this article will inspire other content developers to create great accessible content.īy the way, this article doesn’t focus on writing accessible Word documents. Especially given many governments, education institutions, and corporations now require content be accessible. Sure, writing clear and accurate content is important, but I now understand that it’s also important to always communicate to the broadest possible audience. So, I’m writing this article to share what I’ve learned about producing accessible training content in PowerPoint. ![]() I discovered it’s not that simple (until you know how). Surely, it’s just a matter of running the tool and letting it fix any issues. After all, there’s the built-in Accessibility Checker review feature that's available for all Office applications (more on that topic later). “How difficult could that be?” I asked myself. Recently, a customer enforced a new rule requiring all training content be accessible. Usually, to protect my content from unauthorized use or modification, I export the presentation as a PDF document and distribute it instead of the source PowerPoint file. A training kit typically contains Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and Microsoft Word lab documents. When I develop a course, the deliverable-whether for my own training company or for my customers-is a training kit. I’ve been producing training content for many years now. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |