presentation for visually impaired

Making Your PowerPoint Accessible for the Visually Impaired

May 1, 2015 / Blog, Rick Enrico Blog Power Point Tips, Powerpoint, visual impaired

When you’re up on the stage, you may notice that the crowd isn’t paying attention to your PowerPoint.

They might not be satisfied with your delivery style and content. But what if this disengagement is because of its design?

Though you may have used a template that appeals to you, you might unknowingly be making it harder for people look at what you’re trying to present.

To get your message across, it’s imperative to engage the audience in your discussion.

We redesign PowerPoint presentations.

Get your free quote now., there’s more of them than you think.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “[In 2015] 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide—39 million are blind and 246 have low vision, which are caused by uncorrected refractive errors.” This means that your audience might be comprised of both people with normal vision and people with visual impairments.

Just because they’re not wearing prescription glasses doesn’t mean they’ve got perfect eyesight. Some people wear contact lenses or don’t even know they have a problem with their eyes.

Regardless of what corrective wear they’re using, an audience member’s visual impairment could be the reason they struggle to understand your presentation.

Common Visual Impairments

Low vision, color blindness, and dyslexia are three of the most common vision impairments.

For people with poor vision, objects appear out of focus whether they are near or far.

Color-defective people have a decreased ability to distinguish colors from others. Red and green are the most common colors that are hard to differentiate, while and blue and yellow are the least common.

People with a reading disability or dyslexia can take longer than others to identify colors, objects, or numbers.

This is what people with clear eyesight see versus what color-deficient people see:

If you’re new to making your design accessible to more people, don’t fret. Here are few basic guidelines:

How to Make Your Design More Accessible

Choose a readable font.

Managing your content’s font and size helps your audience read your slides from a distance. The World Blind Union (WBU) highly suggests using sans serif font types such as Helvetica, Arial, and Verdana. Unlike serif typefaces, these font styles don’t have small finishing strokes, which makes them more legible and readable for people with low vision and dyslexia.

When deciding what font size to use, consider what a comfortable viewing distance would be for a person seated across you—32-point is the ideal text size to use in most room settings. This is so that near-sighted people can understand what you’re pointing to, even from a distance.

Control Brightness and Contrast

Your template may have a vibrant and powerful look, but is it readable for your viewers?

Even if you painstakingly selected appealing colors for your PowerPoint, it’ll work against you if they’re virtually identical to each other. Using appropriate brightness and contrast is a great way to improve the readability of your slides.

Try employing a light background with dark text and graphics for your slides. This combination provides enough contrast that boosts the readability of your work for anybody who might have trouble distinguishing one color from another. When deciding on your color palette, always go for clarity instead of only visually appealing colors .

Limit Animations and Effects

Animations and effects might not sit well with visually impaired people, so keep them at a minimum.

Partially-sighted audiences wait for the text to stop moving before they can start reading it. Steer clear from moving text effects such as “Fly In,” “Bounce,” “Spiral,” or “Zoom.”

When it comes to choosing the appropriate effect, “Appear” suits most presentations because it’s the simplest and quickest animation.

Any effects that show one bullet point at a time are also good effects to consider. These help your viewers focus on specific points without getting overwhelmed by too much text on the screen all at once.

Preparing an effective PowerPoint is already a challenge. Preparing one for a visually impaired audience is even tougher.

Match your delivery technique with these design tips to provide a fully accessible presentation while leaving a great impact on your viewers.

Download free PowerPoint templates now.

Get professionally designed PowerPoint slides weekly.

References:

“ How To Make Visual Presentations Accessible To Audience Members With Print Impairments .” World Blind Union , 2012. Accessed March 24, 2015. “ Comfortable Viewing Distance for Text on Presentation Visuals .” Think Outside the Slide . n.d. Accessed March 24, 2015. “ Choosing the Right Colors for Your PowerPoint Design .” SlideGenius, Inc . June 3, 2014. Accessed March 24, 2015 “ Design 101: Basic Principles for Your PowerPoint Designs .” SlideGenius, Inc . July 31, 2014. Accessed March 24, 2015 “Visual Impairment And Blindness .” World Health Organization . August 2014. Accessed March 24, 2015.

Update: There are now 1.3 billion people living with some form of visual impairment worldwide. Thirty-six million are blind while 217 million people have mild to severe vision impairment. (2018)

Featured Image: Pixabay

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Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities

This topic gives you step-by-step instructions and best practices for making your PowerPoint presentations accessible and unlock your content to everyone, including people with disabilities.

PowerPoint has many features built-in that help people with different abilities to read and author presentations. In this topic, you learn, for example, how to work with the Accessibility Checker to tackle accessibility issues while you're creating your presentation. You'll also learn how to add alt texts to images so that people using screen readers are able to listen to what the image is all about. You can also read about how to use slide design, fonts, colors, and styles to maximize the inclusiveness of your slides before you share or present them to your audience.

In this topic

Best practices for making powerpoint presentations accessible.

Check accessibility while you work

Create accessible slides

Avoid using tables

Add alt text to visuals

Create accessible hyperlink text and add screentips, use accessible font format and color, use captions, subtitles, and alternative audio tracks in videos, save your presentation in a different format, test accessibility with a screen reader.

The following table includes key best practices for creating PowerPoint presentations that are accessible to people with disabilities.

Top of Page  

The Accessibility Checker is a tool that reviews your content and flags accessibility issues it comes across. It explains why each issue might be a potential problem for someone with a disability. The Accessibility Checker also suggests how you can resolve the issues that appear.

In PowerPoint, the Accessibility Checker runs automatically in the background when you're creating a presentation. If the Accessibility Checker detects accessibility issues, you will get a reminder in the status bar.

To manually launch the Accessibility Checker, select  Review  >  Check Accessibility . The  Accessibility  pane opens, and you can now review and fix accessibility issues. For more info, go to  Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker .

Top of Page

The following procedures describe how to make the slides in your PowerPoint presentations accessible. For more info, go to Video: Create slides with an accessible reading order and Video: Design slides for people with dyslexia .

Use an accessible presentation template

Use one of the accessible PowerPoint templates to make sure that your slide design, colors, contrast, and fonts are accessible for all audiences. They are also designed so that screen readers can more easily read the slide content.

To find an accessible template, select File > New .

In the Search for Online templates and themes text field, type accessible templates and press Enter.

In the search results, select a suitable template.

In the template preview, select Create .

Give every slide a title

One simple step towards inclusivity is having a unique, descriptive title on each slide, even if it isn't visible. A person with a visual disability that uses a screen reader relies on the slide titles to know which slide is which.

Use the Accessibility ribbon to make sure every slide has a title. For instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Use the Accessibility ribbon to title a slide" section.

Hide a slide title

You can position a title off the slide. That way, the slide has a title for accessibility, but you save space on the slide for other content. For instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Put a title on a slide, but make the title invisible" section.

If you want all or many of your slide titles to be hidden, you can modify the slide master. For instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Systematically hide slide titles" section.

Restore a slide design

If you've moved or edited a placeholder on a slide, you can reset the slide to its original design. All formatting (for example, fonts, colors, effects) go back to what has been assigned in the template. Restoring the design might also help you find title placeholders which need a unique title.

To restore all placeholders for the selected slide, on the Home tab, in the Slides group, select Reset .

Set the reading order of slide contents

Some people with visual disabilities use a screen reader to read the information on the slide. When you create slides, putting the objects in a logical reading order is crucial for screen reader users to understand the slide. 

Use the Accessibility Checker and the Reading Order pane to set the order in which the screen readers read the slide contents. When the screen reader reads the slide, it reads the objects in the order they are listed in the Reading Order pane. 

For the step-by-step instructions how to set the reading order, go to  Make slides easier to read by using the Reading Order pane .

Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more

PowerPoint has built-in, predesigned slide designs that contain placeholders for text, videos, pictures, and more. They also contain all the formatting, such as theme colors, fonts, and effects. To make sure that your slides are accessible, the built-in layouts are designed so that the reading order is the same for people who use assistive technologies such as screen readers and people who see. For more info, go to Video: Use accessible colors and styles in slides .

On the View tab, select  Normal .

On the Design tab, do one or both of the following:

Expand the Themes gallery and select the slide layout that you want. PowerPoint automatically applies this layout to the presentation.

Select Design Ideas  and select one of the predesigned designs.

In general, avoid tables if possible and present the data another way, like paragraphs with headings. Tables with fixed width might prove difficult to read for people who use Magnifier, because such tables force the content to a specific size. This makes the font very small, which forces Magnifier users to scroll horizontally, especially on mobile devices.

If you have to use tables, use the following guidelines to make sure your table is as accessible as possible:

Avoid fixed width tables.

Make sure the tables render properly on all devices, including phones and tablets.

If you have hyperlinks in your table, edit the link texts, so they make sense and don't break mid-sentence.

Make sure the slide content is easily read with Magnifier. View it on a mobile device to make sure people won’t need to horizontally scroll the slide on a phone, for example.

Use table headers.

Test accessibility with Immersive Reader.

Use table headers

Screen readers keep track of their location in a table by counting table cells. If a table is nested within another table or if a cell is merged or split, the screen reader loses count and can’t provide helpful information about the table after that point. Blank cells in a table could also mislead someone using a screen reader into thinking that there is nothing more in the table. Use a simple table structure for data only and specify column header information. Screen readers also use header information to identify rows and columns.

To ensure that tables don't contain split cells, merged cells, or nested tables, use the  Accessibility Checker .

Place the cursor anywhere in a table.

On the  Table Design  tab, in the  Table Styles Options group, select the  Header Row  checkbox.

Type your column headings.

Alt text helps people who use screen readers to understand what’s important in the visuals in your slides. Visual content includes pictures, SmartArt graphics, shapes, groups, charts, embedded objects, ink, and videos.

In alt text, briefly describe the image, its intent, and what is important about the image. Screen readers read the description to users who can’t see the content.

Tip:  To write a good alt text, make sure to convey the content and the purpose of the image in a concise and unambiguous manner. The alt text shouldn’t be longer than a short sentence or two—most of the time a few thoughtfully selected words will do. Do not repeat the surrounding textual content as alt text or use phrases referring to images, such as, "a graphic of" or "an image of." For more info on how to write alt text, go to  Everything you need to know to write effective alt text .

Avoid using text in images as the sole method of conveying important information. If you use images with text in them, repeat the text in the slide. In alt text of such images, mention the existence of the text and its intent. 

PowerPoint for PC in Microsoft 365 automatically generates alt texts for photos, stock images, and the PowerPoint icons by using intelligent services in the cloud. Always check the autogenerated alt texts to make sure they convey the right message. If necessary, edit the text. For charts, SmartArt, screenshots, or shapes, you need to add the alt texts manually.

For the step-by-step instructions on how to add or edit alt text, go to  Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object  and Video: Improve image accessibility in PowerPoint .

In the Alt Text pane, spelling errors are marked with a red squiggly line under the word. To correct the spelling, right-click the word and select from the suggested alternatives.

In the Alt Text pane, you can also select Generate a description for me to have Microsoft cloud-powered intelligent services create a description for you. You see the result in the alt text field. Remember to delete any comments PowerPoint added there, for example, "Description automatically generated."

To find missing alternative text, use the Accessibility Checker.

Note:  For audio and video content, in addition to alt text, include closed captioning for people who are deaf or have limited hearing.

People who use screen readers sometimes scan a list of links. Links should convey clear and accurate information about the destination. For example, avoid using link texts such as "Click here," "See this page," "Go here," or "Learn more." Instead include the full title of the destination page. You can also add ScreenTips that appear when your cursor hovers over text or images that include a hyperlink.

Tip:   If the title on the hyperlink's destination page gives an accurate summary of what’s on the page, use it for the hyperlink text. For example, this hyperlink text matches the title on the destination page:  Create more with Microsoft templates .

For the step-by-step instructions on how to create hyperlinks and ScreenTips, go to Add a hyperlink to a slide .

An accessible font doesn't exclude or slow down the reading speed of anyone reading a slide, including people with low vision or reading disability or people who are blind. The right font improves the legibility and readability of the text in the presentation.

For the step-by-step instructions on how to change fonts in PowerPoint go to Change the fonts in a presentation or  Change the default font in PowerPoint .

Use accessible font format

To reduce the reading load, select familiar sans serif fonts such as Arial or Calibri. Avoid using all capital letters and excessive italics or underlines.

A person with a vision disability might miss out on the meaning conveyed by particular colors. For example, add an underline to color-coded hyperlink text so that people who are colorblind know that the text is linked even if they can’t see the color. For headings, consider adding bold or using a larger font.

Use accessible font color

Here are some ideas to consider:

The text in your presentation should be readable in a high contrast mode. For example, use bright colors or high-contrast color schemes on opposite ends of the color spectrum. White and black schemes make it easier for people who are colorblind to distinguish text and shapes.

Use the predesigned Office Themes to make sure that your slide design is accessible. For instructions, go to  Use an accessible presentation template  or  Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more .

Use the Accessibility Checker to analyze the presentation and find insufficient color contrast. It finds insufficient color contrast in text with or without highlights or hyperlinks in shapes, tables, or SmartArt with solid opaque colors. It does not find insufficient color contrast in other cases such as text in a transparent text box or placeholder on top of the slide background, or color contrast issues in non-textual content.

PowerPoint supports the playback of video with multiple audio tracks. It also supports closed captions and subtitles that are embedded in video files.

Currently, only PowerPoint for Windows supports insertion and playback of closed captions or subtitles that are stored in files separate from the video. For all other editions of PowerPoint (such as PowerPoint for macOS or the mobile editions), closed captions or subtitles must be encoded into the video before they are inserted into PowerPoint.

Supported video formats for captions and subtitles vary depending on the operating system that you're using. Each operating system has settings to adjust how the closed captions or subtitles are displayed. For more information, go to Closed Caption file types supported by PowerPoint .

Closed captions, subtitles, and alternative audio tracks are not preserved when you use the Compress Media or Optimize Media Compatibility features. Also, when turning your presentation into a video , closed captions, subtitles, or alternative audio tracks in the embedded videos are not included in the video that is saved.

When you use the Save Media as command on a selected video, closed captions, subtitles, and multiple audio tracks embedded in the video are preserved in the video file that is saved.

To make your PowerPoint presentations with videos accessible, ensure the following:

Videos include an audio track with video descriptions, if needed, for users who are blind or have low vision.

Videos that include dialogue also include closed captions, in-band closed captions, open captions, or subtitles in a supported format for users that are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

For more information, refer to  Add closed captions or subtitles to media in PowerPoint . 

You can save your presentation in a format that can be easily read by a screen reader or be ported to a Braille reader. For instructions, go to  Video: Save a presentation in a different format or  Create accessible PDFs . Before converting a presentation into another format, make sure you run the Accessibility Checker and fix all reported issues.

When your presentation is ready and you've run the Accessibility Checker to make sure it is inclusive, you can try navigating the slides using a screen reader, for example, Narrator. Narrator comes with Windows, so there's no need to install anything. This is one additional way to spot issues in the navigation order, for example.

Start the screen reader. For example, to start Narrator, press Ctrl+Windows logo key+Enter.

Press F6 until the focus, the blue rectangle, is on the slide content area.

Press the Tab key to navigate the elements within the slide and fix the navigation order if needed. To move the focus away from the slide content, press Esc or F6.

Exit the screen reader. For example, to exit Narrator, press Ctrl+Windows logo key+Enter.

Rules for the Accessibility Checker

Everything you need to know to write effective alt text

Use a screen reader to attend a PowerPoint Live session in Microsoft Teams  

Make your Word documents accessible to people with disabilities

Make your Excel documents accessible to people with disabilities

Make your Outlook email accessible to people with disabilities

Closed Caption file types supported by PowerPoint

Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more

Use accessible hyperlink texts and screentips.

Use accessible text alignment and spacing

Create accessible lists

Test the accessibility of your slides with a screen reader.

The Accessibility Checker is a tool that reviews your content and flags accessibility issues it comes across. It explains why each issue might be a potential problem for someone with a disability. The Accessibility Checker also suggests how you can resolve the issues that appear.

PowerPoint has built-in slide designs that contain placeholders for text, videos, pictures, and more. They also contain all the formatting, such as theme colors, fonts, and effects. To make sure that your slides are accessible, the built-in layouts are designed so that the reading order is the same for people who see and people who use technology such as screen readers.

Tip:  For more info on what to consider when you're creating slides for people with dyslexia, go to  Design slides for people with dyslexia .

To find an accessible template, select File > New from Template .

In the Search  text field, type accessible templates , and then press Return.

Off-white backgrounds are better for people with perceptual disabilities, like dyslexia.

Select templates and themes with sans serif fonts that are 18 points or larger.

Look for solid backgrounds with contrasting text color.

Use the  Accessibility  ribbon to make sure every slide has a title. For the step-by-step instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Use the Accessibility ribbon to title a slide" section.

Tip:  If you've moved or edited a placeholder on a slide, you can reset the slide to its original design. All formatting (for example, fonts, colors, effects) go back to what has been assigned in the template. Restoring the original design might also help you find title placeholders which need a unique title. To restore all placeholders for the selected slide, on the Home tab, select Reset .

You can position a title off the slide. That way, the slide has a title for accessibility, but you save space on the slide for other content. For the step-by-step instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Put a title on a slide, but make the title invisible" section.

If you want all or many of your slide titles to be hidden, you can modify the slide master. For the step-by-step instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Systematically hide slide titles" section.

When someone who can see reads a slide, they usually read things, such as text or a picture, in the order the elements appear on the slide. In contrast, a screen reader reads the elements on a slide in the order they were added to the slide, which might be very different from the order in which things appear.

Use the Selection Pane to set the order in which screen readers read the slide contents. Screen readers read the objects in the reverse of the order they are listed in the Selection Pane .

To find slides with a problematic reading order, use the Accessibility Checker .

On the Home tab, select Arrange .

In the Arrange menu, select Selection Pane .

In the Selection Pane , to change the reading order, drag and drop items to the new location.

Avoid using tables 

In general, avoid tables if possible and present the data another way, like paragraphs with headings. Tables with fixed width might prove difficult to read for people who use magnifying features or apps, because such tables force the content to a specific size. This makes the font very small, which forces magnifier users to scroll horizontally, especially on mobile devices.

Make sure the slide content is easily read with magnifying features, such as Zoom . View it on a mobile device to make sure people won’t need to horizontally scroll the slide on a phone, for example.

Use table headers .

Test the accessibility of your slides with a screen reader .

If you do need to use tables, add headers to your table to help screen readers keep track of the columns and rows. If a table is nested within another table or if a cell is merged or split, the screen reader loses count and can’t provide helpful information about the table after that point. Blank cells in a table could also mislead someone using a screen reader into thinking that there is nothing more in the table. Screen readers also use header information to identify rows and columns. 

Type the column headers.

Avoid using text in images as the sole method of conveying important information. If you use images with text in them, repeat the text in the slide. In alt text of such images, mention the existence of the text and its intent.

For the step-by-step instructions on how to add or edit alt text, go to  Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object .

For audio and video content, in addition to alt text, include closed captioning for people who are deaf or have limited hearing.

In the  Alt Text  pane, spelling errors are marked with a red squiggly line under the word. To correct the spelling, select and right-click the word, and then select an option from the suggested alternatives.

In the  Alt Text  pane, you can also select  Generate a description for me  to have Microsoft cloud-powered intelligent services create a description for you. You'll see the result in the alt text field. Remember to delete any comments PowerPoint added there, for example, "Description automatically generated."

To find missing alternative text, use the  Accessibility Checker .

People who use screen readers sometimes scan a list of links. Links should convey clear and accurate information about the destination. For example, avoid using link texts such as "Click here," "See this page," "Go here," or "Learn more." Instead include the full title of the destination page. You can also add ScreenTips that appear when your cursor hovers over text or images that include a hyperlink. 

Tip:  If the title on the hyperlink's destination page gives an accurate summary of what’s on the page, use it for the hyperlink text. For example, this hyperlink text matches the title on the destination page: Create more with Microsoft templates .

For the step-by-step instructions on how to create hyperlinks, go to  Add a hyperlink to a slide . 

Use accessible font format and color

For the step-by-step instructions on how to change fonts in PowerPoint, go to  Change the fonts in a presentation . 

Use the predesigned themes to make sure that your slide design is accessible. For instructions, go to  Use an accessible presentation template  or  Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more .

Use the Accessibility Checker to analyze the presentation and find insufficient color contrast. It finds insufficient color contrast in text with or without highlights or hyperlinks in shapes, tables, or SmartArt with solid opaque colors. It does not find insufficient color contrast in other cases such as text in a transparent text box or placeholder on top of the slide background, or color contrast issues in non-textual content.

Use accessible text alignment and spacing 

People with dyslexia perceive text in a way that can make it difficult to distinguish letters and words. For example, they might perceive a line of text compressing into the line below, or adjacent letters seeming to merge. Also, having multiple blank lines or consecutive spaces can make keyboard navigation slow and screen reader usage more cumbersome.

Align your paragraph to the left to avoid uneven gaps between words, and increase or decrease the white space between lines to improve readability. Include sufficient white space between lines and paragraphs but avoid more than two spaces between words and two blank lines between paragraphs.

Select the piece of text you want to modify.

To make it easier for screen readers to read your slides, organize the information into small chunks such as bulleted or numbered lists.

Design lists so that you do not need to add a plain paragraph without a bullet or number to the middle of a list. If your list is broken up by a plain paragraph, some screen readers might announce the number of list items wrong. Also, the user might hear in the middle of the list that they are leaving the list.

Place the cursor where you want to create a list.

Type the text you want for each bullet or numbered item in the list.

Closed captions or subtitles must be encoded into the video before it is inserted into PowerPoint. PowerPoint does not support closed captions or subtitles that are stored in a separate file from the video file.

Supported video formats for captions and subtitles vary depending on the operating system that you're using. Each operating system has settings to adjust how the closed captions or subtitles are displayed. For more information, go to  Closed Caption file types supported by PowerPoint.

Closed captions, subtitles, and alternative audio tracks are not preserved when you use the Compress Media or Optimize Media Compatibility features. To learn more about optimizing media for compatibility, go to the section "Optimize media in your presentation for compatibility" in  Are you having video or audio playback issues?  Also, when turning your presentation into a video , closed captions, subtitles, or alternative audio tracks in the embedded videos are not included in the video that is saved.

When you use the Save Media as command on a selected video, closed captions, subtitles, and multiple audio tracks embedded in the video are preserved in the video file that is saved. For more info, go to  Save embedded media from a presentation (audio or video) .

Videos include an audio track with video descriptions, if needed, for users that are blind or have low vision.

Videos that include dialogue also include closed captions, in-band closed captions, open captions, or subtitles in a supported format for users that are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

When your presentation is ready and you've run the Accessibility Checker to make sure it is inclusive, you can try navigating the slides using a screen reader, for example, VoiceOver. VoiceOver comes with macOS, so there's no need to install anything. This is one additional way to spot issues in the navigation order, for example.

Start the screen reader. For example, to start VoiceOver, press Command+F5.

Press F6 until the focus, the black rectangle, is on the slide content area.

Exit the screen reader. For example, to exit VoiceOver, press Command+F5.

Best practices for making PowerPoint presentations accessible

Use accessible hyperlink texts

Use accessible text format and color

Test the accessibility of your slides

PowerPoint has built-in, predesigned slide designs that contain placeholders for text, videos, pictures, and more. They also contain all the formatting, such as theme colors, fonts, and effects. To make sure that your slides are accessible, the built-in layouts are designed so that the reading order is the same for people who use assistive technologies such as screen readers and people who see.

Select  Home > Design .

Select  Themes , and then select the theme you want.

One simple step towards inclusivity is having a unique, descriptive title on each slide, even if it isn't visible. A person with a visual disability that uses a screen reader relies on the slide titles to know which slide is which. With descriptive titles on each slide, everyone can quickly scan through a list of slide titles and go right to the slide they want.

On a slide, select the title placeholder, and then type the title.

Go through each slide in your presentation to make sure they all have titles.

Hide a slide title 

You can position a title off the slide. That way, the slide has a title for accessibility, but you save space on the slide for other content.

On a slide, tap and hold the title element.

Drag the title element outside the slide boundary and then lift your finger off the screen to drop the element off the slide.

Test the accessibility of your slides .

Screen readers keep track of their location in a table by counting table cells. If a table is nested within another table or if a cell is merged or split, the screen reader loses count and can’t provide helpful information about the table after that point. Blank cells in a table could also mislead someone using a screen reader into thinking that there is nothing more in the table. Use a simple table structure for data only and specify column header information. Screen readers also use header information to identify rows and columns. 

Select  Style Options and then select Header Row .

In your table, type the column headings.

Select the visual, for example, an image.

Select  Alt Text , and then type a description for the visual.

Mark visuals as decorative

If your visuals are purely decorative and add visual interest but aren't informative, you can mark them as such without needing to write any alt text. Examples of objects that should be marked as decorative are stylistic borders. People using screen readers will hear that these objects are decorative, so they know they aren’t missing any important information. 

Select the visual, for example, a picture or chart.

Select Alt Text .

Turn on the Mark as decorative switch, and then select Done .

Use accessible hyperlink texts 

People who use screen readers sometimes scan a list of links. Links should convey clear and accurate information about the destination. For example, avoid using link texts such as "Click here," "See this page," "Go here," or "Learn more." Instead include the full title of the destination page.

Tip:  If the title on the hyperlink's destination page gives an accurate summary of what’s on the page, use it for the hyperlink text. For example, this hyperlink text matches the title on the destination page:  Create more with Microsoft templates .

Select the piece of text you want to turn into a hyperlink. The context menu opens.

In the context menu, select Link . The Insert Hyperlink dialog box opens.

Type or paste the hyperlink URL to the ADDRESS text field.

If you want to change the hyperlink text, modify the text in the DISPLAY text field.

Use accessible text format and color

An accessible font doesn't exclude or slow down the reading speed of anyone reading a slide, including people with low vision or reading disability or people who are blind. The right font improves the legibility and readability of the text in the presentation. 

Use accessible text format 

Select the piece of text you want to format.

On the Home tab, select the current font type to open the font menu, and then select the font type you want or adjust the font size to your liking.

Use accessible text color

Use the predesigned Themes  to make sure that your slide design is accessible. For instructions, go to  Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more .

On the Home tab, select Font Color , and then pick the font color you want.

Select the text you want to modify.

Create accessible lists 

Design lists so that you do not need to add a plain paragraph without a bullet or number to the middle of a list. If your list is broken up by a plain paragraph, some screen readers might announce the number of list items wrong. Also, the user might hear in the middle of the list that they are leaving the list. 

On a slide, place the cursor where you want to create a list.

On the Home tab, select Bullets or Numbering , and then select the bullet or numbering style you want.

Type the first bulleted or numbered item in the list, and then select return on the on-screen keyboard. A new list item is added. Repeat this step for each list item you want to add.

When your slides are ready, you can try a few things to make sure they are accessible:

Switch to the full desktop or web version of PowerPoint, and then run the Accessibility Checker. The Accessibility Checker is a tool that reviews your content and flags accessibility issues it comes across. It explains why each issue might be a potential problem for someone with a disability. The Accessibility Checker also suggests how you can resolve the issues that appear. For instructions, go to  Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker .

In the PowerPoint for iOS app, you can try navigating the slides using the built-in screen reader, VoiceOver. VoiceOver comes with iOS, so there's no need to install anything. This is one additional way to spot issues in the navigation order, for example.

To turn on VoiceOver, do one of the following:

In your device settings, select  Accessibility  >  VoiceOver , and then turn on the  VoiceOver  switch.

Press the power button of your device three times.

To navigate the content in the slide, swipe left or right. Modify the reading order of the elements on the slides if necessary.

Tip:  To select an item in focus when VoiceOver is on, double-tap the screen.

To turn off VoiceOver, do one of the following:

In your device settings, select  Accessibility  >  VoiceOver , and then turn off the  VoiceOver  switch.

Make your OneNote notebooks accessible to people with disabilities

PowerPoint has built-in, predesigned slide designs that contain placeholders for text, videos, pictures, and more. They also contain all the formatting, such as theme colors, fonts, and effects. To make sure that your slides are accessible, the built-in layouts are designed so that the reading order is the same for people who use assistive technologies such as screen readers and people who see. 

Give every slide a title 

One simple step towards inclusivity is having a unique, descriptive title on each slide, even if it isn't visible. A person with a visual disability that uses a screen reader relies on the slide titles to know which slide is which. With descriptive titles on each slide, everyone can quickly scan through a list of slide titles and go right to the slide they want. 

Select  Style Options , and then select Header Row .

In the table, type the column headings.

On a slide, select a visual.

Select the visual.

Select  Alt Text .

Select the Mark as decorative checkbox.

Select the piece of text you want to turn into a hyperlink.

Select Home > Insert > Link .

Do one of the following:

To insert a hyperlink to a web page, select Insert Link . Type or paste the hyperlink URL to the  Address text field. If you want to change the hyperlink text, modify the text in the  Text to display text field.

To insert a link to a recent document, browse the Recent Items list until you find the one you want, and then select it.

On the  Home  tab, you can do, for example, the following:

To change the font type, select the current font type to open the Font menu, and then select the font type you want.

To adjust the font size, select the current font size, and then select the new font size.

Use the predesigned  Themes  to make sure that your slide design is accessible. For the step-by-step instructions, go to  Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more .

On the  Home  tab, expand the  Font Color menu, and then pick the color you want.

On the  Home  tab, select  Bullets  or  Numbering , and then select the bullet or numbering style you want.

Test the accessibility of your slides 

In the PowerPoint for Android app, you can try navigating the slides using the built-in screen reader, TalkBack. TalkBack comes with Android, so there's no need to install anything. This is one additional way to spot issues in the navigation order, for example.

To turn on TalkBack, do one of the following:

In your device settings, select  Accessibility  >  TalkBack , and then turn on the  Use service  switch.

Press and hold the volume keys of your device until the device vibrates.

Tip:  To select an item in focus when TalkBack is on, double-tap the screen.

To turn off TalkBack, do one of the following:

In your device settings, select  Accessibility  >  TalkBack , and then turn off the  Use service  switch.

Best practices for making PowerPoint for the web presentations accessible

Add alt text to visuals and tables.

The following table includes key best practices for creating PowerPoint for the web presentations that are accessible to people with disabilities.

Check accessibility while you work 

To manually launch the Accessibility Checker, select  Review  >  Check Accessibility . The  Accessibility  pane opens, and you can now review and fix accessibility issues. For more info, go to  Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker .

PowerPoint for the web has built-in slide designs that contain placeholders for text, videos, pictures, and more. They also contain all the formatting, such as theme colors, fonts, and effects. To make sure that your slides are accessible, the built-in layouts are designed so that the reading order is the same for people who see and people who use technology such as screen readers.

Tip:   For more info on what to consider when you're creating slides for people with dyslexia, go to  Design slides for people with dyslexia .

In your browser, go to Accessible PowerPoint template sampler .

On the Accessible PowerPoint template sampler  page, select Download . The template sampler is downloaded to your device.

Open the sampler in the full desktop version of PowerPoint, select a suitable slide design, and save it.

Open PowerPoint for the web in your browser, open the selected design, and create your presentation.

Use the  Accessibility  ribbon to make sure every slide has a title. For the step-by-step instructions, go to the section "Use the Accessibility ribbon to title a slide" in  Title a slide .

You can position a title off the slide. That way, the slide has a title for accessibility, but you save space on the slide for other content. For the step-by-step instructions, go to the section "Put a title on a slide, but make the title invisible" in  Title a slide .

Use an accessible reading order for the slide contents

Use the  Selection Pane  to set the order in which screen readers read the slide contents. Screen readers read the objects in the reverse of the order they are listed in the  Selection Pane .

To find slides with a problematic reading order, use the  Accessibility Checker .

On the Home tab, select Arrange > Selection Pane .

If you do need to use tables, add headers to your table to help screen readers keep track of the columns and rows. If a table is nested within another table or if a cell is merged or split, the screen reader loses count and can’t provide helpful information about the table after that point. Blank cells in a table could also mislead someone using a screen reader into thinking that there is nothing more in the table. Screen readers also use header information to identify rows and columns.

Select Table Design .

In the alt text description field, spelling errors are marked with a red squiggly line under the word.

In the visual's Alt Text  pane, you can also select  Generate a description for me  to have Microsoft cloud-powered intelligent services create a description for you. You'll see the result in the alt text field. Remember to delete any comments PowerPoint added there, for example, "Description automatically generated."

To add alt text to visuals and tables, do one of the following:

To add alt text to an image, do one of the following:

Right-click an image. Select Alt Text... .

Select an image. Select Picture  > Alt Text .

To add alt text to a SmartArt graphic, select a SmartArt graphic, and then select SmartArt  > Alt Text .

To add alt text to a shape or embedded video, select a shape or video, and then select Shape > Alt Text .

To add alt text to a table, place the cursor in any cell, and then select  Table Layout > Alt Text .

For images, type a description. For SmartArt graphics, shapes, videos, and tables, type a title and description.

For the step-by-step instructions on how to create hyperlinks, go to  Add a hyperlink to a slide .

To change the font format or color, select the piece of text you want to modify

Select the Home tab.

In the Font group, select your formatting options, for example, a different font type or color.

Type the text you want for each bulleted or numbered item in the list.

PowerPoint supports the playback of video with multiple audio tracks. It also supports closed captions and subtitles that are embedded in video files.

Closed captions or subtitles must be encoded into the video before it is inserted into PowerPoint. PowerPoint does not support closed captions or subtitles that are stored in a separate file from the video file.

Closed captions, subtitles, and alternative audio tracks are not preserved when you use the  Compress Media  or Optimize Media Compatibility features. To learn more about optimizing media for compatibility, go to the section "Optimize media in your presentation for compatibility" in  Are you having video or audio playback issues?  Also, when turning your presentation into a video, closed captions, subtitles, or alternative audio tracks in the embedded videos are not included in the video that is saved.

When you use the  Save Media as  command on a selected video, closed captions, subtitles, and multiple audio tracks embedded in the video are preserved in the video file that is saved. For more info, go to  Save embedded media from a presentation (audio or video) .

To make your PowerPoint presentations with videos accessible, ensure the following:

Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker

Make your Outlook email accessible to people with disabilities ​​​​​​​

Technical support for customers with disabilities

Microsoft wants to provide the best possible experience for all our customers. If you have a disability or questions related to accessibility, please contact the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk for technical assistance. The Disability Answer Desk support team is trained in using many popular assistive technologies and can offer assistance in English, Spanish, French, and American Sign Language. Please go to the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk site to find out the contact details for your region.

If you are a government, commercial, or enterprise user, please contact the enterprise Disability Answer Desk .

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The Ultimate Guide to Accessible Presentation Design

As a presentation design agency, we understand the importance a good design holds in effectively reaching your audience.

There are many factors that feed into an effective PowerPoint design including hierarchy, color and image selection, and which font you decide to use.

Presentation design relies heavily on creating enticing visuals that get your message across. But for those who are visually impaired, enticing visuals may not be enough to provide an accessible presentation.

Why you should design your PowerPoint for accessibility

At the forefront of why we practice accessible design is the desire to have clients benefit fully from the presentations we create for them. A large part of being a presentation designer is knowing your audience and knowing how they are accessing your material.

PowerPoint presentations may be viewed by individuals on their personal devices, or they may be projected in large auditoriums for thousands of people. Presentation designs can easily be washed out from the light of the projector, fluorescent lights, or even natural sunlight shining into the room. Having an accessible design will make your presentation easier to see for all members of your audience, with or without visual impairments.

As presentation designers, we are responsible for staying up to date with current standards and regulations surrounding design accessibility. In recent years, tech companies have been sued for web designs that did not align with the accessibility standards set by the ADA .

In 2018, a class action lawsuit was filed against Apple for having a website that was inaccessible to the visually impaired, due to its incompatibility with screen readers. In the same year, Amazon was hit with a class action lawsuit for the same reason.  

At the beginning of 2019, Beyoncé’s company, Parkwood Entertainment, was sued on the grounds that their website was inaccessible to visually impaired users and was preventing them from being able to fully access the website.

Designing with accessible practices will allow more people to enjoy your content as well as protect you from avoidable legal ramifications.

Defining accessibility

When we mention accessible graphic design, we mean designing for people with color blindness, other visual impairments, such as low vision, and motor disabilities. Below is some information to keep in mind regarding how your designs will be experienced by those who have these disabilities.

Some notes on color blindness

People with color blindness are unable to distinguish between certain colors—these colors appear to look similar to each other and tend to blend together, rendering them indistinct.

There are three main types of color blindness, each with its own challenge:

• Red-green color blindness. This is the most common, affecting 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women . Those with this color blindness have difficulty distinguishing between reds and greens.
• Blue-yellow color blindness. Less than 1 in 10,000 people worldwide have this variety of color blindness, but it affects males and females equally. It presents as an inability to distinguish between blue and green, and red and yellow. In some cases, it can also make colors appear less vivid than they are.
• Monochromacy. This is complete color blindness and affects 1 in 100,000 people worldwide . With monochromacy, people cannot see color at all and are sometimes particularly sensitive to light.

Some notes on screen readers

For those with further visual impairments, such as low vision or tunnel vision, or individuals with motor impairments, screen readers are often used to navigate websites, read emails, go through presentations, fill out forms, and so on. Screen readers create an audio equivalent to visual material. This video shows how a screen reader reads a website.

How to design presentations for color blindness accessibility

In the case of PowerPoint presentations where sighted people may view the content on a slide all at once, screen readers voice out each item on the slide one at a time.

When we talk about creating accessible presentation designs, it can seem like we are separating our audience and creating one design for those with unaffected vision and a separate design for those who are colorblind or have other visual impairments—but this is not the case. Fortunately, many of the best practices for accessible presentation design are also the best practices for graphic design in general. The idea is that when you design for accessibility, you design for everyone. The list below highlights those design practices that are especially important for creating an accessible design.

Use the right color palette in your presentation design

When designing for clients, we are often given a set of guidelines that provides information on the branding and colors that their company uses to create their collateral. If you are not given brand guidelines to follow, you may need to come up with your own color palette for your presentation designs. Here are some important reminders on what to keep in mind as you plan what your presentations will look like.

How many colors should I use?

You will want to keep your presentation’s color palette as minimal as possible. A study from the University of Toronto showed that most people preferred simple color combinations that relied on only 2 or 3 colors.

Generally speaking, content is easier to understand if the audience does not have to interpret it through too many colors. Having one primary color with two supporting colors is a good place to start—many brand guidelines follow this format.

Which colors should I use for my design?

When selecting colors, whether from a brand guide or from scratch, it’s important to note how the colors you choose can influence your audience’s response to your presentation design. People are conditioned to attribute different meaning to different colors. Here is a brief look at what each color can mean for your presentation design.

• Red: Energy, passion, danger, love. Great for a presentation that is made to stand out or have a really large presence.
• Orange: Creativity, youth, enthusiasm. Orange is a good color to use for companies with a more youthful focus and want to do something a little bit different.
• Yellow: Happiness, hope, spontaneity, positivity. Good for use with companies that want to emphasize their efficiency, positivity, and lower costs.
• Green: Nature, growth, harmony, wealth, stability. Green is associated with both nature and money. It’s great to use for banks or companies that want to emphasize an eco-friendly message.
• Blue: Calm, trust, intelligence. Blue is often used for B2B brands and companies that set themselves up as hubs for information.
• Purple: Luxury, mystery, spirituality. Use purple to add a sense of prestige to your design.
• Pink: Femininity, playfulness, romance. Great for a company that wants to sell to a traditionally female audience.
• Brown: Wholesomeness, warmth, honesty. Brown is a good color to use for companies that want to point to a well-established heritage and sense of tradition.
• Black: Power, elegance, sophistication. Great for more luxurious brands.
• White: Purity, innocence, minimalism. White is often used as a secondary accent in a color scheme.
• Gray: Professionalism, formality, conventionality. If you are designing for a company that is more serious, gray will help you communicate authority and stability.
• Multicolor: Fun, diversity, optimism. Using an array of colors is a great way to show a company’s playfulness, and appeal to younger and more creative audiences.

When choosing a color palette, remember that red-green color blindness is quite common. If you have opted to use red or green, try not to pair it with the other color to avoid confusion. Below are some guidelines that will help you choose color combinations that will work for any audience.

The color wheel can help you choose your color combinations

When choosing your colors, the color wheel can be a great point of reference for what colors will work well together. Here is a short list of color schemes that traditionally complement each other.

Using the color wheel

• Complementary colors are any two colors that appear opposite from each other on the color wheel. Using a complementary color scheme will help make your design pop and create clear differentiation.
• Analogous colors are any three colors that appear side by side on the color wheel. In this type of color scheme, one color dominates, one color supports, and the last color accents. These combinations tend to be visually pleasing and effective in communicating different types of information.
• Triadic colors are any three colors that are equally spaced around the wheel. They create a bright and dynamic presentation, giving your presentation contrast and harmony at the same time. Red and green fall together easily with this type of combination. Keeping in mind the frequency of red-green color blindness, try to avoid combining these two colors where you can.

The best color schemes for readability tend to be complementary or analogous colors. Canva has a great color wheel that will help you choose the type of scheme you want, and experiment with different color combinations.

Proper color contrast makes your presentation design more accessible

Contrast is how well one color stands out against another. A common misconception is that contrast is created by the difference in colors—but the tone of the colors is what makes the real difference in being able to see each color clearly. Tone is how a color looks when you add a shade of gray to it, making the color less vibrant.

You might choose two vastly different colors and still find that they do not stand out from each other the way you had hoped. This is likely because they are the same tone. An easy way to test how well your colors contrast each other is to put them into grayscale.

Generally, you want to go for high contrasted elements in your design because that is the easiest to see. Light text on a dark background or dark text on a light background will appear more clearly than light text on a light background or a dark text on a dark background.

However, be careful not to oversaturate your designs with high contrast elements. If everything is highly contrasted, nothing stands out anymore. Contrast is best used to emphasize a point, such as a call to action, or a word or phrase that needs to stand out from the rest.

Low contrasts tend to be pleasing to the eye, but they impede the readability of text and the visibility of your graphics. The key here is to find balance between a beautiful color scheme and one that works for optimal clarity.

Since red-green color blindness is common, try to avoid this combination where you can. Some other combinations to be cautious with include: green and brown, green and blue, blue and gray, purple and blue, green and yellow, green and gray. These color combinations tend not to contrast well and it can be difficult to see a distinct difference between them, even for viewers without color blindness.

Contrast is especially important for text in a presentation. Text is an essential feature of any presentation, but it needs to be well contrasted against its background to be clearly legible to all audiences. Text is what provides the bulk of information in a presentation, so we want to make sure it doesn’t go undetected.

Besides contrast, our lead designers have some other tricks to emphasize text. One way is by giving the word or phrase being emphasized a different color from the rest of the text. Sometimes they will additionally place a thin box around the words to make it stand out even further.

When itemizing lists or outlining processes, it’s helpful to use numbers to indicate hierarchy and the order in which you want your audience to read.

Select photographs that are highly contrasted

Photographs are other graphics where you want to keep contrast in mind, especially if you will be overlaying text. Take the time to select photos with good contrast and try to avoid those with too much white if you already have lighter colors in your design palette. Light colors tend to get washed out by natural lighting, projector lights, and other environmental factors that tend to be beyond your control—accommodate for this in your design.

Use symbols for additional emphasis

It is important to not rely on color alone to convey your messages or be the focus of your design. Subtle changes or differences in color may go unnoticed by those with color blindness or other visual impairments.  Where possible, try to incorporate symbols to emphasize parts of the slide that need to be highlighted. This can mean underlining a word so that it stands out or putting a symbol next to the point you are currently focusing on. This helps guide your audience through each point as it is presented, and can help to minimize any confusion.

Include patterns and textures in your graphs

One of the most effective and accessible techniques for distinguishing between the different series within your graph is to use patterns in addition to colors. Using textures gives viewers an additional point of reference when comparing the cells of a graph with the graph’s respective legend. This way, even if the viewer finds the colors difficult to distinguish, the pattern will be a clear indication of what the graph is showing.

Additional resources for designing for color blindness

To ensure your presentation design is color accessible, there are resources you can use to see what your design would look like to someone with any type of color blindness.

• ‍ Color Oracle is a tool that will show you how your design appears to color blind viewers, as you design it.
• ‍ Color Review lets you check the contrast between two colors.
• ‍ Color Contrast Analyzer is a desktop tool that is available for download. It helps you determine the legibility of text and the visibility of visual elements.
• ‍ Color Shark is another quick way to check that the contrast between your colors is distinct enough to make for clear visibility and text readability.

How to design PowerPoint presentations to work with screen readers

When designing presentation decks that will be read by screen readers, the layout and order of objects on each slide are key to provide a meaningful experience to listeners.

Creating an appropriate layout for screen readers can be difficult to do, but it is very important to facilitate how the audience understands the information being presented. Layouts that are difficult to follow will result in screen readers doing a poor job of reading the slide, and consequently the listener will not gain any useful information. They will also miss out on the full experience of the presentation.

When screen readers read information out of order, listeners hear information that is not cohesive and consequently, carries little value or meaning. While screen reader users may not be able to see the design of your slides, the order of your content is still important to ensure a seamless progression through the content.

These tips will help you ensure your layouts are logical and compatible with how a screen reader will navigate through the content.

Organize content in a linear fashion

Screen readers go through each item on a slide from top to bottom, left to right. When organizing content on a slide, be sure that it flows linearly and logically. Put distinguishing information as early as possible in your slide so that listeners will know the key focus of the slide sooner. The most important information should be introduced as early as possible so that listeners know what each slide focuses on.

The Selection Pane in PowerPoint shows you the order in which a screen reader will navigate through your content. This can be found on the Home tab in the “Drawing” section; click on “Arrange” then “Selection Pane” to bring up the Selection side panel. Note that the screen reader will read this list of objects from the bottom to the top , so you want to make sure the title of the slide is at the bottom of this pane.

Another way to check if your slides are accessible to a screen reader is in the Review tab; click on “Check Accessibility”. This will point out which slides, and which items on those slides, are presenting an issue.

Writing alternative text for images

Alternative text (alt text) is what the screen reader reads to describe an image to the listener. It is also displayed in place of an image in case it cannot be loaded. Images that do not have alt text will either be ignored by screen readers or the image file name is read instead—either way, missing alt text often leaves users without useful pieces of information. If you have any images that are important for understanding the context of the slide, be sure to include alt text for each one.

Be descriptive

• Alt text should be clear and provide all the relevant information needed to understand what the image is. Here’s a good test for descriptiveness: close your eyes and have someone read the alt text to you. You should be able to picture a reasonably accurate version of the image and understand the key concept it conveys.

Keep it concise

• While it is important to be descriptive, your audience does not need unnecessary details. Additionally, most widely used screen readers cut off alt text at 125 characters. Focus on writing succinct alt text that sufficiently describes the image.

Identify the image’s purpose

• It is important to determine what purpose the image serves on your slide: is it informative or decorative?
• Alt text for informative images should not only describe the content of the image, but also make sense when read with its surrounding content.
• ‍ Decorative images exist on presentation slides for layout or aesthetic purposes and do not contain important information as it relates to the slide. For these images, you can leave out alt text—PowerPoint allows you to mark items as decorative so that screen readers know to ignore them.

Use proper punctuation

• Commas and periods in the alt text will cause the screen reader to ‘take a breath’, creating a more natural-sounding flow to the speech produced.

Use language that is appropriate to your audience

• Knowing your audience will help you discern which images need alt text and how complicated the text needs to be. If your slides are being shown to the general public, you should use layman terms and be as straightforward as possible. If your slides will be presented to industry professionals, you may use more technical descriptions that will provide additional meaning.

Creating alt text for grouped objects

There is a common misconception that grouped objects in PowerPoint do not need alt text, but this is not necessarily true.

When you have a heavily detailed graph, you will want to write alt text that explains the main takeaway. For example, if you are showing a company’s performance as it has increased over the last five years, you don’t need to write the statistics for every year—but you might write alt text that lets the audience know the graph shows an increase in sales over the last five years.

If you have a simple chart, you can write the data in the alt text as it concisely explains the chart's purpose. For example, a chart that shows 50% of customers prefer email contact and 50% prefer phone calls is straightforward but important nonetheless. Each piece of information is important on its own, so it is a good idea to include both stats in the alt text.

Writing alt text in PowerPoint

PowerPoint has an easy-to-use, built-in feature that allows you to add alt text for slide objects . You select the image, then right-click and select “Edit Alt Text”. Or, you can select the image and under the Picture Tools tab, select “Format” then “Alt Text”.

When marking items as a group, you will need to indicate that each of the individual aspects of the graph or image are decorative. In the alt text window in PowerPoint, you will have the option of setting decorative images. Click this option if you do not need to write alt text for the image.

If marking individual elements of a group, you can write text that easily explains what each element of the graph represents. Using the above example, if the section shows that 50% of people like emails, that is all you need to include in your alt text.

If the slide has text that already provides a sufficient description of the information presented in the chart or graph, you may not need to go in-depth with your alt text.

Design for people

While a large focus when writing alt text is for it to be screen reader friendly, do not lose sight of the fact that you are designing for the people in your audience. The photos used in your presentation should exhibit diversity, and that should carry over into the alt text.

Create hidden titles for “untitled” slides

In some cases, not all presentation slides need a designated title. Unfortunately, slides without titles will bring up an error message in PowerPoint. A workaround we use is to create a hidden title—simply put, it is a slide title that is moved outside of the slide workspace. It will be read by screen readers and will not appear during presentation show mode.

Since the title will be read by a screen reader, you want to provide a title that is informative to what the focus of the slide is.

Additional resources for screen reader accessibility

There are many resources available to help you understand how your designs will be interpreted by a screen reader. Since 2000, Windows comes with Microsoft Narrator pre-installed, which you can use to listen to how your PowerPoint presentation is designed and adjust for improved accessibility. The Mac equivalent is VoiceOver .

Designing for accessibility in all areas of life , should not feel any different from designing for any other audience. Adhering to good design practices and techniques will ensure that your designs are accessible and easy to follow, no matter who your audience is. If your company works with an external design agency , be sure to let them know that you want your designs to be considerate and accessible to all audiences. Stay up to date on ADA standards for design to ensure that you are protecting yourself and your company and creating slides that everyone can enjoy.

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Creating Accessible Powerpoint Presentations

This guide outlines best practice for creating accessible PowerPoint presentations. In the UK around 2 million people have sight loss. A visual impairment could be sensitivity to light, blurred vision or blindness. So please don’t think that because you don’t have a colleague with a guide dog that this isn’t relevant to you. It is! Video calling and webinars are the new norm so accessibility should be a priority rather than an afterthought.

Imagine presenting to an audience, or at a job interview only to discover those you need to impress can’t understand your slides. It’s not a good first impression, especially if equality and inclusion are values your employer actively promotes.

Good Practice

Lots of people who are visually impaired will be able to read your slides without using any specialist software IF you make some subtle and simple changes.  Use these points when creating accessible PowerPoint presentations.

• Use PowerPoint’s inbuilt accessibility checker. It’s super easy to use and will quickly highlight accessibility issues.
• Have a sufficient colour contrast between the text and the background so that people with low vision can see the content. A dark font on a light background often works best and avoid a pure white background.
• Choose your fonts carefully. Sans Serif typeface is best and should be font size 24 or above (larger for titles).

• Some people will find reading italic and underlined text difficult so keep these to a minimum if you must use them.
• Make sure that you are not using colour alone to convey information. It can be useful to select greyscale from the view tab and scan your slides for occurrences of colour coding.
• Avoid busy backgrounds and keep ample ‘white space’ between sentences and paragraphs.
• Avoid using animations and sounds if it’s not vital to the presentation because they are distracting.

More Insights

Whilst not exhaustive these tips are a good starting point. Every month we add new articles to this site ranging from ‘How To’ practical instructions to insightful interviews.

Please contact us if you’d like to chat about working together to make your organisation accessible for all. We offer accessibility audits, disability awareness training, British Sign Language Lessons and much more.

You may also enjoy these articles:

12 Tips for Accessible Video Calls

Video Conferencing with Deaf Colleagues

What is A Hidden Disability

Join us on twitter @EnhanceTheUK for more practical tips on disability awareness and making your working environment inclusive for all.

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Home Blog Presentation Ideas Accessibility in Presentations: Making your Slides Accessible

Accessibility in Presentations: Making your Slides Accessible

Accessibility in web, print, and presentation design is of paramount importance. Approximately 2.2 billion people in the world have a near or distance vision impairment. An even larger number lives with other types of visual or cognitive dysfunctions. When delivering a presentation to an audience, you never know what type of people will attend. Some audience members may have dyslexia, color blindness, moderate or severe forms of vision impairments which can affect their ability to enjoy your presentation as much as others do. This post offers a walkthrough of web content accessibility guidelines and PowerPoint accessibility features that will help you design and deliver more inclusive presentations. 

Accessibility Definition 

Accessibility focuses on how a disabled person can access or benefit from a physical or digital object they interact with. 

Web accessibility, in particular, pertains to how people can interact with online materials, apps, and digital systems effectively. A huge body of website accessibility research is specifically dedicated to removing software usage barriers for people with different types of disabilities. 

What’s more, improving web accessibility is a global regulatory agenda. The US adopted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) back in 1990. Three decades later, it remains an important regulatory mechanism for imposing compliance on digital service providers. Last year, over 2,285 ADA class-action suits were filed against businesses, who failed to create an inclusive environment. 

Globally, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) , introduced by World Wide Web Consortium, are used to ensure a greater degree of accessibility for web content and web experience. Specifically, these include guidelines for: 

• Adding support for voice-control systems
• Using transcripts and subtitles for content 
• Prioritizing convenient navigation that does not use color 
• Incorporating descriptive captions for images (alt texts) 

To ensure compliance with the above, a lot of free web accessibility tools were created such as Section508 test , AChecker accessibility checker , and MAGENTA among others. 

ADA accessibility guidelines also extend to presentation design . Since presentations are primarily digital mediums nowadays, making them easily accessible for different user groups is highly important. 

Benefits of Making Your Presentations Accessible

Some of the benefits of making your slides accessible are:

• Inclusion of audience members with special needs
• Ability to engage people who lack language fluency
• Improved perception of you as a speaker (and as company representative) 
• Supplementary materials such as transcripts or audio can be re-distributed through other channels
• Presentation transcripts also help improve the SEO of the website where they are published

Let’s see how to create accessible PowerPoint & Google Slides presentations.

How to Make Your Presentations More Accessible: Best Practices 

Accessibility is all about making your content more inclusive to diverse people, despite their physical or mental abilities. It doesn’t take long since PowerPoint includes a number of accessibility features. You just need to be a bit more mindful about your design choices to create accessible designs. 

Fonts can easily make or break the aesthetic appeal of the presentation. But far more importantly, a non-suitable font can prevent some audience members from benefiting from your slides. 

Here are some best practices for accessible PowerPoint fonts: 

• The best font size for a PowerPoint presentation is a minimum of 24 points . It’s okay to use a bigger typeface for headings and subheads to accentuate the important information. Likewise, go for a bigger size if you anticipate presenting in a big conference room. 
• Prioritize sans serif fonts. Sans serif fonts are those without small lines (serifs) at the ends of characters. Popular examples of sans serif fonts are Palatino, Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, and Helvetica. Also, avoid handwritten and calligraphy-style fonts as these are the hardest to read for most people. 

• Do not use flickering, flashing, and animated text. Such animations may not land well with visually impaired people or those suffering from epilepsy. In most cases, flashing fonts also make your presentation look cluttered and amateurish.
• Use bold for emphasis. When you want to highlight an important idea, use bold styling over underline and/or italics . The latter change the letter shapes, making them less identifiable, and thus less readable.
• Mark the hyperlinks. A good accessibility practice is to mark all hyperlinks are marked properly with both color and underlying for color-blind people. Also, use descriptive hyperlink texts. Otherwise, people who use screen readers will struggle to understand where the link leads. 

Slide Texts 

Once you’ve settled on the fonts, you’d be itching to type some presentation texts. But before (and after) you do the writing, make sure that your accessible template has the following characteristics: 

• Use strong contrast between text and background. Contrast helps visually impaired people better distinguish the characters. Use PowerPoint accessibility checker to locate insufficient color contrasts on slides. Also, check recommended color contrast values for text by WCGA. 

• Go for simpler language. Don’t use jargon, industry-specific terms, acronyms, or catch-phrases. Most are not universally understood and some audience members may struggle to comprehend them. By using simpler language you are not “dumbing down” your copy — you make it more clear and concise. Add some more powerful words to make your texts more compelling. 
• Check your texts for logic flow. Screen readers typically stand the text elements of the slide in the order they were added to the slide. It may be different from the order in which they actually appear. So double-check that your text flow is correct. Also, try adding ScreenTips if you are using PowerPoint.
• Don’t bottom-align slide text. Why? Because that may hide some of the bottom texts from people sitting in the last rows if the seating is tiered. 
• Use captions and subtitles. Both can help audience members to better follow your delivery. Also, it’s easy to do since PowerPoint allows to automatically create real-time automatic captions for slides . 

Presentation Visuals

Finally, an accessible PowerPoint template also features images everyone can understand, interpret, relate to, and process. Remember: some of the people may not see your slides well. Hence, you may need to add some extra cues for them. 

Here are the essential accessibility practices for improving presentation visuals: 

• Limit the use of GIFs, flashy videos or, animated transitions. Likewise, avoid shifting colors, rotating icons, and moving borders. Abusing of animations, or using too many effects and flashes in your slides can create unnecessary clutter and worsen the reading experience. 
• Opt for texts over videos, when possible. If you absolutely must add a short video, ensure that the clip has good audio context for the listener to understand its content. As an alternative, add a slide note with a summary of the video clip.
• Include Alternative Texts (Alt Texts) for visuals. An ADA compliant PowerPoint presentation has to include alt texts for all images and other visual content. Alt texts can be processed by a screen reader, meaning people with visual impairments can better understand the featured information. Adding an alt text is easy. Right-click the graphic, select Format object , then click Alt Text pane, and provide a brief text description. The same approach works for Shapes. In the example below we can see how we configured the Alt Text for a human figure in the Health Check Dashboard template .

• Highlight diverse people on your slides. Our world is wonderfully diverse. So add use inclusive visuals featuring folks of different backgrounds, ethnicities, body shapes, and abilities. In fact, that’s what most people expect from you. According to a recent Getty poll , 80% of consumers believe that businesses should show more ethnic diversity in their advertising.
• Avoid complex charts or tables. These are often hard to process for screen reading software and audience members with cognitive issues. Thus, make your graphics as simple as possible. Be careful while using SVG format. SVGs are great as they give a lot of flexibility for designing the slides and including graphics in your presentations at a minimum file size, but the format lacks semantics for expressing structures like bar charts, tables, scattered plots, etc. The above makes the content difficult to parse by a screen reader. 

Presentation Delivery

When the big day of the public speech comes, don’t let your accessibility design efforts go to waste by sabotaging the delivery. Remember: accessibility is about creating an inclusive experience, not just objects. Respectively, you’ll need to adjust your delivery too. Here’s how: 

Before starting the presentation, ask if there are any people with special needs in the audience. That’s a simple gesture of courtesy that goes a long way. If you see some raised hands, ask how you could adjust your speech for the person’s comfort. 

Overall, speak slowly and distinctively. Use simpler language when you can, mimicking the terms you are using in the presentation copy. Don’t overload your slides with text and instead use voice to communicate and explain extra concepts. Give enough time for the audience to read the slides. Make timely pauses, allowing people to catch up with reading and processing your main points. 

Keep your language more inclusive overall. Use “they” as your main pronoun when making a generalization, instead of masculine pronoun (e.g., he), or the awkward “she/he” combo. Likewise, use plural noun forms (e.g. people, workers, employees) over terms marked for masculine (e.g. foreman, fireman, etc). 

When you want to introduce a hero to your story, for example, as part of a case study , go for a “gender-neutral” name such as Alex, Dana, Kim to avoid stereotyping either males or females. By all means, avoid blanket, generalistic statements in your presentation such as “Women are better cooks” or “Asians are good in STEM”. This may alienate some audience members. The Linguistic Society has a great set of guidelines for inclusive language. 

Finally, consider making your slides available in other formats. While accessibility in PowerPoint is rather great, converting your slides to another format such as PDF, HTML, mp3 audio, or another type of word processing document is another great step for ensuring that more people can access your content after a live delivery.

To Conclude: Go for an ADA Compliant PowerPoint Template 

Designing accessible presentations requires some effort. Making your presentations accessible means you’re considering all disabilities. If you are not sure that you’ve got all the aspects of PowerPoint ADA compliance right, consider using a premade accessible template. Accessible PowerPoint templates are fully optimized for use by people with visual impairments and other types of special needs. By opting for such a solution, you won’t have to worry about the design intricacies and have more time to hone your delivery! 

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How to create accessible PowerPoint presentations

Instructions for improving the accessibility of PowerPoint presentations.

• Create accessible documents and
• GOV.WALES standards and guidance (Sub-topic)

Arrange slides correctly

Put your slide content in a proper reading order so that screen reading software can read it aloud correctly for users with a visual impairment.

Reading order

To set the reading order, click on Home > Arrange > Selection Pane.

List objects in the slide in a logical order so that any screen reading software reads them aloud in the right order.

To rearrange objects into a new reading order, either drag the object into a new location or click on it and select Bring Forward or Send Backward.

To check the reading order, select a slide and press the Tab key. Each time you press the key, the focus moves to the next object that a screen reader will read.

Improve image accessibility

How to make the charts, graphs, and images in your PowerPoint slides accessible to users with visual or cognitive disabilities.

To make images more accessible:

• use colour, text, patterns, or shapes to communicate ideas
• add descriptive Alt Text to pictures, charts, and other visual objects
• group layered images, like a picture with callout lines, into a single object
• select View > Grayscale, to get an idea how your slides might look to someone with colour vision deficiency

Add Alt Text to a chart

• Highlight the chart by clicking on it.
• Right-click the chart and select Format Chart Area.
• Select Size & Properties > Alt Text.
• Add a meaningful Title and Description.

Add Alt Text to an image

• Right-click the picture and select Format Picture.
• Select the Size & Properties panel.
• Click on the Alt Text drop-down.

Group layered images for simplicity

• Select all the images you want to group.
• Click on the Format tab and choose Group.

Use accessible colours and styles

PowerPoint is primarily visual and often displayed at a distance from the audience. However, you can make your PowerPoint slides more accessible by following a few best practice tips.

The colours and styles you use for slides, text, charts, and graphics go a long way toward improving accessibility in PowerPoint.

Start with a template

Prebuilt PowerPoint templates can help save time and improve accessibility in the content that you create. Microsoft have a range of these templates available for users to download at  office.com .

Templates from this collection have several features that support accessibility.

Tips for accessible colour and style choices

• Off-white backgrounds are better for people with perceptual differences, like dyslexia.
• Select templates and themes with sans serif fonts that are 18 points or larger.
• Use solid backgrounds with contrasting text colour. This is preferred to patterned / watermarked backgrounds and low-contrast text themes.
• To make information more accessible, differentiate it in more than one way. For example, use both colour and text to mark up different chart elements.

Design slides for people with Dyslexia

The elements that make presentations clearer and easier to follow for people with dyslexia also make them better in general.

These tips help you do both:

Use simple, sans serif fonts with adequate spacing between letters.

Use at least an 18-point font size. Good Sans Serif font examples include: Calibri, Franklin Gothic Book, Lucida Sans and Segoe UI.

Avoid compressed fonts, fonts with uneven line weights, fancy / script / display fonts and italic or underlined fonts.

To keep your text easily readable, limit the number of lines in each slide and leave plenty of space above and below each line.

Apply the “6 by 7” rule: only 6 words per line and 7 lines per slide.

Speaker notes

Use speaker notes to provide more in-depth information.

By default, speaker notes are formatted in a readable, sans serif font.

Share your slides after your presentation so your audience can refer to the slides and notes later. This will allow them to recall the verbal presentation delivery.

Bright white slide backgrounds can make text harder to read; choose an off-white or cream background instead.

Text should be dark, with lots of space around the letters.

Alternatively, a dark background with white text also works well.

Images are a great way to break up blocks of text and make your slide easier to scan.

Remember to add Alt Text to every image in your presentation.

A colourful, high-contrast graphic layout, with pictures and text creates a structured design.

Structured layouts are easier for people with dyslexia to understand.

Make use of alternative formats

To make a presentation more accessible to people with low vision, save it in an alternate format that can be read by a screen reader. Users can then open it on a personal device or port it to a Braille reader.

Create a document version of a presentation

• Open the PowerPoint presentation.
• Select File > Export > Create Handouts.
• To create a Word version, choose Create Handouts.

Formatting options for exporting slides:

• to display presentation slides first, followed by presentation notes, select Notes below slides
• to include slide images in the Word document, select Paste and then select OK

Remember to add Slide Titles using Heading Styles and add Alt Text to each image to improve accessibility in the exported Word document.

Slide titles

Add a colon (:) after each slide number in the document and then copy and paste the appropriate title from the PowerPoint presentation.

Heading styles

Highlight the slide title and then select Home > Heading 1.

To see an outline of the presentation with slide headings, select View > Navigation Pane

(Sometimes people who use screen readers or Braille review the navigation first to get an overview of the document).

• Right-click the slide image.
• Select Picture and then choose Alt Text.

Add a meaningful title and text that describes the image in the appropriate box.

Check accessibility

Use Microsoft’s built in accessibility checker to help ensure your content is easy for people of all abilities to read and navigate.

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Accessibility in PowerPoint: Presentations for people with colour blindness

• Written by: Olivia Kippax Jones
• Categories: PowerPoint design

Colour has always been powerful; from warning us which berries to avoid, to establishing iconic global brands. Many of us consider it a key tool when designing presentations – but what effect does this reliance on colour have on people with colour blindness?

This post is part of our mini-series on accessibility in PowerPoint. Check out the other post in the series: Presentations and Dyslexia

Colourblind Awareness say that people with colour blindness have “been forgotten in the race for progress in a digital world.” Though colour is an important tool, many designers don’t understand the needs of people with colour blindness. However, not understanding how to optimize your presentations for people with colour blindness could mean losing up to 10% of your audience before you even begin. To help you make your design more inclusive, we’re going to break down what exactly colour blindness is, before giving some practical tips to use in your slides.

Just want the practical tips? Click here to skip to the good stuff .

What is colour blindness and how does it affect people?

People with colour vision deficiency or CVD – commonly called colour blindness – find it difficult to distinguish between different colours. Complete colour blindness – being unable to see any colours at all – is very rare, but different types of CVD affect approximately 8% of men and 0.5% of women worldwide .

People are affected by CVD for a variety of reasons. It’s usually genetic but can also develop in adults as the result of health conditions, such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and glaucoma. Colour blindness can also be a side effect of some medications, and it’s fairly common for people to find it more difficult to distinguish between colours as they get older. If you want to test your own colour perception try this online test.

As there are multiple types of CVD, and each affects sight differently, the effects of CVD on people’s day-to-day lives differ.  A few common problems are:

• Children finding it difficult when colours are used to help with learning or games
• Certain career paths, like becoming a pilot, being unavailable to those with CVD
• Struggling to know when meat is properly cooked or whether fruit is ripe
• Getting medications confused
• Having trouble understanding signs

Why should this affect presentation design?

Here at BrightCarbon, we are brave champions of the visual presentation. We encourage presentation creators to rid their slides of boring bullets and put effective, dynamic visuals in their place. But we also understand that without proper consideration, this is where problems can sneak in.

Though ever-advancing technology means that lots of smartphones and computers have specific settings to assist people with colour blindness, this doesn’t help when they are sitting in front of projected slides. Slides that rely too heavily on colour to tell their story could be leaving some of your audience behind.

This problem is common in data visualisations as colours are often used to highlight comparative data points. Here is what a typical pie chart could look like to people with different types of CVD.

The difference between the colours is much less clear, rendering the legend useless.

In this example, the colours green and red are used to show positive and negative results. This is really common colour coding, but red and green is one of the most troublesome colour combinations for people with colour blindness.

As you can see, to someone with CVD, the colours are indistinguishable.

Other colour combinations that can cause problems are green and brown, green and blue, blue and grey, blue and purple, green and grey, green and black, and light green and yellow.

Using coloured text and coloured backgrounds can also cause problems. Though we would never recommend using a slide like this with so much text ( Death-by-PowerPoint alert !), it is also totally useless for people with colour blindness.

How to optimise presentations for people with colour blindness

So, how to tackle this? One option is to simply use colour-blindness-friendly colour palettes. There are lots of resources online if you chose to go down this route.

Using a colour blindness-friendly palette means you can just pull slides together without having to check your colours every time. If you want to create your own colour blindness-friendly palette in PowerPoint, download our resource that will help you set custom colours and read our blog post on changing theme colours.

However, if you’re creating slides in a corporate setting it’s likely that you have limited colour options set by your branding department. In fact, you probably have a brand-compliant colour palette that you have to stick to. But there is no need to give up. There are three things you can do to optimize your presentations for people with colour blindness.

1. Contrast

CVD does not affect perception of colour value – the lightness or darkness of a colour – but the colour hue. Explaining hue can get a bit scientific ( check out this site for a detailed explanation ), but an easy way to think of hue is as a position on the colour wheel – colours in their purest form. What this means is that people with colour blindness can distinguish between light and dark colours, even if they both appear the same hue. When optimising your presentations for people with colour blindness, you can increase the contrast between colours to help make things stand out.

For example, in the red/green example earlier, we can change the brightness of the colours to help people distinguish between the two lines.  

Be sure to use more than just colours to tell your story. You can also employ patterns, shapes, text, positioning and hierarchy, and animation to create dynamic slides with a clear message. This is a great habit to get into anyway, as, if your presenting space has bad lighting or a dodgy projector, you might find the colours on your slides don’t look quite how they did on your laptop in the office. In that situation, it won’t just be those with CVD struggling to understand your slides!

We can sort out that pie chart by choosing colours with greater contrast and integrating the legend into the chart. We always recommend labelling your chart in this way as it makes the information quicker to process because your audience aren’t constantly looking back and forth.

Redundancy is a good way to safeguard against issues with colours. Use icons or other visual markers to make sure colour is not the only visual means of communicating your message, like with these simple symbols:

The most important thing you can do to ensure your use of colour is magical instead of miserable is to check that your slides are crystal clear when seen in greyscale. As we saw above, the difference between colours that have the same brightness can disappear when viewed by someone with colour blindness. When you convert your slides to monochrome you will be able to quickly tell whether your visuals make sense. 

This is very easy to do directly in PowerPoint. You can either go to View and then choose Greyscale about halfway along the ribbon, or you can go to File , click Print , then select Grayscale . You can then view your slides in the preview window. You could also use an online contrast analyser (like this one) for checking text on a background.

Realised you need to change the contrast on every text box? Or on every other shape? What a nightmare! Actually, it doesn’t have to be. Download our free PowerPoint add-in BrightSlide and use the Select Objects tool to edit multiple objects in seconds. Let’s look at an example. 

The contrast between the text and background on this slide is clearly not great! To use BrightSlide’s Select Objects tool and edit super speedily, click on one object then head to the BrightSlide tab , under Selection & Object , click Select Object and chose the appropriate formatting option from the drop down menu. In this example, you want to select the purple text boxes, so Fill Color is the appropriate formatting option. 

All the objects with the same fill color will be selected and you can go ahead and edit as usual. 

Now, this is just a simple slide but imagine how much time this tool could save you if you’re editing a more complex slide, like this world map!

If you’re interested in continuing to make your presentations more inclusive, then check out our post on PowerPoint presentations and dyslexia . We also have loads of general design advice to get you started on the path to PowerPoint greatness, like this post on creating effective presentations with the wow factor .  

References and further reading

Colour blind awareness

Coblis colour blindness simulator

Olivia Kippax Jones

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15 Practical Tips for Teaching Blind or Visually Impaired Students

Ideas you can use every day, from the experts.

The average classroom is designed for fully sighted students. But according to the CDC , nearly 3% of children under the age of 18 are blind or visually impaired. Some of these children attend schools that specifically teach blind students, but others enroll in their local public or private schools. As a teacher, you may wonder how to accommodate these students to give them the best chance to succeed. That’s why we’ve asked some experts to offer practical tips you can use every day for teaching blind or visually impaired students.

What does it mean to be blind or visually impaired?

When you hear the term “blind,” you likely think of someone who has no vision at all. But that’s just one part of the visual spectrum. Here are some other terms you should know .

• Partially sighted: A person who is partially sighted has some vision in one or both eyes. This term is frequently used in educational settings.
• Low vision: This term describes a person with poor vision that cannot be fully corrected with glasses or contacts. In some cases, the person can see things up close but not at a distance, or vice versa. Others have poor visual acuity across the entire spectrum.
• Legally blind: A legally blind person has vision that cannot be corrected to better than 20/200 in at least one eye. It also refers to those who have a field of sight of 20 degrees or less.
• Totally blind: One who is blind has total loss of sight.

Students may fall anywhere along this spectrum, so it’s important to know more about their specific level of impairment. They may have an IEP or 504 on file, so study it carefully to learn what you can do to help them do well in your classroom.

A Note About Language

The debate continues about “person-first” vs. “identity-first” language, and the correct terms to use to describe those who are differently abled. Some organizations and people prefer the terms “blind person” or “visually impaired person.” Others encourage the use of “person who is blind” or “person with visual impairment.” In this article, we’ve used both forms, since you’re likely to encounter them both in the real world. We recommend asking affected students in your classroom if they have a preference, and follow their lead.

Meet the Experts

Charlene Laferrera, MEd, is a Certified Teacher of the Visually Impaired (TVI). She’s spent 30+ years working in various school systems, including the Perkins School for the Blind, with students ranging in age from birth to 22 years of age.

Magali Gueths, MEd, has been a Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist (COMS) for 20+ years, working in various locations and school districts. Gueths has a fully blind son, so she innately understands the needs of blind and visually impaired students.

Additional comments were provided by classroom teacher contributors on our We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Tips for Teaching Blind or Visually Impaired Students

Laferrera and Gueths assembled this list of tips for teachers who work with students who are blind or visually impaired. Overall, they stressed the importance of ensuring these students always have access to a COMS or certified TVI in their schools. They also offer these day-to-day actions for helping blind or visually impaired students succeed.

1. Always use names

Always use a visually impaired student’s first name when addressing them. This way they will know you are talking to them and not someone else. When passing them in hallways, instead of saying, “Hi,” have people announce their names, as blind or visually impaired students may not be able to recognize faces. For example: “Hi Sara, it’s Mrs. Murphy. How are you today?” Prompt fellow students to do the same because this fosters connection in the school community.

2. It’s OK to use words that reference sight

Don’t avoid words like “see” and “look.” Just like their sighted peers, these words should be part of a blind or visually impaired student’s vocabulary to connote how they see, whether by touch, bringing things close, or in normal conversation, like saying “see you later!”  

3. Don’t gesture, always verbalize

When writing on the board, always verbalize what you are writing so the student has access to that information and can follow along. Use positional and directional concepts like above/under, on top, behind/in front of, left/right, etc., and use descriptive sentences like “The ball is next to the door” instead of “The ball is over there.” Avoid words and phrases like “here,” “there,” “over here,” and “over there,” and gestures that provide direction, e.g., pointing to a location without verbalizing what is being pointed to, because visually impaired students cannot see that.

4. Avoid asking if a student can see something

Don’t ask a student, “Can you see this?” They often can see it, but that does not mean that they can access it or read it. Instead ask, “Can you find X?” or “Can you identify all the words and numbers without guessing?” or “Can you see some parts of the board better than others?”

5. Correct seating is crucial

Always favor the stronger side of the student’s vision due to visual field deficits. For example, if the student only uses their left eye, they would need to sit on the right side of the classroom away from the windows. Seating that faces a light source (sun, windows) should ideally be at their back.

6. Contrast, contrast, contrast!

When teaching visually impaired or blind students, use contrast for everything. Think, “bold, big, and simple!” Use bright balls in contrast with the floor at the gym. Stairs should have at least the first and last steps taped with a contrasting color (typically yellow) at the edge of the step.

7. Follow the leader

When in line, direct a blind or visually impaired student’s attention to the child in front of them using color of clothing or hair and have them model/follow what that child is doing (stopping, walking straight, turning, etc.), always moving slowly for safety.

8. Be a confident sighted guide

If you need to be a sighted guide for a preschooler, offer two fingers or your wrist for them to hold. You are not holding them unless it is for their safety. For older students, they hold just above your elbow with their dominant hand.

9. Keep safety top of mind

Students need to understand the “rules of the road” and always use the right-hand side of hallways or the right railing. When teaching blind students, use boundaries like cones in the gym, lines on the pavement to follow from school to the playground, etc. If there are changes to the classroom, walk the student through alone so they know where things are.

10. Examine your own beliefs

Be aware of your own acceptance and your beliefs surrounding what a student who is blind or visually impaired can do both in your classroom and as a professional . Your acceptance of a student who has a visual impairment will serve as an example to all the students in your class.

11. Create a stable environment

“Be super organized with your space and don’t change things. Train the other kids to not leave their stuff in unexpected places. Movement routines and transitions should be well planned. Be open to listening to constructive feedback and adjusting your methods and practice on the fly a bit as stuff comes up.” —Christine A.

13. Take advantage of assistive technology

“Do you know what kind of assistive technology the student will have? I taught a completely blind student a few years ago. He had a para to assist him, and I had to send materials to our assistive technology office in advance to have it converted to Braille. I teach math, so he had a board with magnetic braille letters and numbers and symbols, so I could re-create what was on the board for him. He also had a calculator that would speak his answers aloud through headphones.” —Kristin L.

14. Consult with parents

“Your student’s parents can be your best resource. After all, they’ve known them their whole lives. Meet with parents well ahead of their child’s first day and partner with them to learn what is best for the student’s needs.” —Tammy D.

15. Differentiate materials

“I used puffy paint for diagrams (for example, parts of a plant cell), label all my lab equipment in braille (the cost to purchase a label maker was my dime), and use different bumpy stickers. Make sure the student has a braille program that when they type on their computer you can print it out in English. Also make sure there is a plastic cover that labels each key with its correct braille symbols. Finally, make sure you have the ability to type in braille so they can read the assignments, homework, and tests.” —Elaine W.

What practical tips do you have to offer those who are teaching visually impaired or blind students? Come share your thoughts and ask for advice in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, how to help students who are deaf/hard of hearing succeed in school ..

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Guide to Accessible Colors Palettes [Templates Included]

By Jessie Strongitharm , Nov 30, 2022

Color is important. Like,  really  important. So important, that  93% of people  report it being the number one factor influencing their purchasing decisions. But remember: not everyone experiences color in the same way.  With over 2.2 billion people  affected by a visual impairment, failing to design with accessible colors in mind is one costly, exclusionary mistake to make. 

So to help you appeal to your whole audience, I’ve done a deep dive into all aspects of accessible colors.

Keep reading for an infographic overview of what they are, why they matter and how you can easily create be- hue -tifully inclusive color pairings — along with tons of tips, examples and accessible templates too.

Click to jump ahead:

• Accessible colors 101 [infographic]
• What are accessible colors? 

Color accessibility guidelines

• How do you choose accessible colors? 

10 Examples of accessible color palettes and templates

• Why are accessible colors important? 

3 Types of color blindness

• 3 quick tips to improve color accessibility

Accessible colors FAQ

Accessible colors 101 [infographic].

What are accessible colors?

Accessible colors are color combinations that have enough contrast to make layered elements (such as text or icons on a background) clearly distinguishable to those visually impaired or deficient in color vision. A key component of  accessible design , accessible colors pay consideration to how people with disabilities understand information, in order to ensure all components of a page are  accessible , legible and inclusive. 

Wondering what  makes  a color accessible? For folks who are “colorblind”, the ability to differentiate certain hues depends on the color contrast ratio — or the degree of contrast between two layered objects (i.e. foreground and background colors). 

Established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3), these contrast ratios are laid out in the  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)  — a continuously-updated document that defines accessibility standards and provides instructions on how to make digital content accessible to people with sensory impairments. I’ll discuss the specifics of those color contrast ratios in a moment. But first, let’s review the types of impairments that require accessible design choices. 

Related: Image Alt Text: Definition and Best Practices for Accessible Designs

The  WCAG 2.1  provides clear recommendations on how to make content accessible for everyone, regardless of disability or device. They’re based on three levels of compliance — A, AA and AAA — that stem from the color contrast ratio of layered components.

A – Minimal accessibility

Color combinations with a contrast ratio below 4.5:1 for normal text (and 3:1 for large text and graphics) will cause difficulties for many people with disabilities and impairments. 

AA – Strong accessibility

Color pairings with a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 and above provide sufficient accessibility for use in normal text, large text and graphics. 

AAA – Enhanced accessibility

Color combinations with a contrast ratio of 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text and graphics provide enhanced accessibility. Government sites typically follow these standards.

TLDR:  a minimum color contrast ratio of 4.5:1 is best practice for text and interactive elements to meet the needs of colorblind or visually impaired users.

Here’s an example of an accessible infographic that follows a contrast ratio of 4.5:1.

FYI (yenno, because this blog doesn’t have enough abbreviations), you can customize this template, or any other accessible template, to suit your needs by swapping out the text components within. 

WCAG exceptions

There are three exceptions to the 4.5:1 contrast requirement for text: 

• Large text:  for 18 pt text and larger, or 14 pt  bold  text and larger, a color contrast ratio of 3.1 is acceptable.
• Incidental text: text that’s inactive, decorative or unimportant to an image.
• Logotypes 

Wondering if these guidelines are legally enforceable? The answer depends on where you live and who you work for. Check out the FAQ section for more information.

And if accessibility guidelines still sound confusing, you can always use an accessibility tool to check your designs and ensure their color contrast and design compliance.

How do you choose accessible colors? 

In a typical design process, you’d choose a color palette, put together a visual and then manually check it for accessibility using a  contrast checker  or  color blindness simulator . 

This means you have to mix, match, test and retest, until you’ve found something that works. 

Translation: there’s a ton of trial, error and time involved… so save yourself extra time and effort by flipping this process around! 

With  Venngage’s 100% free Accessible Color Palette Generator , you can generate a range of beautiful, WCAG-compliant color palettes in one of two ways — no design experience or accessibility knowledge required.

Here’s how it works: 1. Generate an accessible color palette based on a predetermined color

Have a color in mind (such as a brand color?). All you need to do is input your predetermined HEX color code in the box at the top of the page, and the  Accessible Color Palette Generator  will do the work for you. 

I’ll use Venngage’s very own blue as an example… After inputting a HEX code, a swatch dot will appear on the left hand side to confirm you haven’t made one of those classic copy paste mistakes.

Then, all that’s left is to hit ‘Generate’, and the tool will produce different palettes with guaranteed accessible color and text pairings. 

This includes:

• Vibrant color palettes
• Monochromatic color palettes
• Contrasting color palettes
• Pastel color palettes
• Contrasting pastel color palettes
• Dark to light / light to dark color palettes,  oh my!

You’ll also find either black or white text on each shade that confirms the layered combo passes the 4.5:1 contrast ratio required for accessible color design.

Once you’ve found your perfect match (or  matches , rather), select the download button on the right side to get a copy of the HEX codes as a text file. And there you have it — brand consistency, meet accessibility, meet quickly. Or, if you’re a free agent… 

2. Generate randomized accessible color palettes In search of inspiration? Shuffle through endless palette options by clicking the ‘Random palette’ button at the top of the  Accessible Color Palette Generator .

The tool will then choose a HEX color code at random, and use it to generate a range of themed shades. Because who doesn’t love to roll the dice every once in a while? 

Again, you’ll see a swatch of the randomly selected color pop up in the HEX code field, so you’ll know exactly what you’re in for. You’ll also see white or black text layered on top of the different color options to confirm accessibility. Found a palette most pleasing? Hit the download button and you’re all set. 

This tool is truly simple and completely free to use no matter which method you choose, so you can pass those accessibility tests with flying colors. 

With this color palette generator, you have a whole  spectrum  of amazing, accessible palettes available to you in moments. To show off this range, I’ve generated some accessible palettes at random for easy reference. 

Below, find examples of accessible color palettes arranged according to color scheme. For good measure, I’ve included a few templates you can easily edit to create beautiful, engaging, inclusive visual communications in the same vein too.

Vibrant accessible color palettes 

Feeling punchy? Vivacious? Full of life? These bright, intense color palettes have got you covered.

Vibrant accessible color templates

Here’s an accessible process infographic template that employs a vivid color scheme.

What’s great is that you can 100% customize its content to suit your needs. If you’re not a fan of these vibrant colors in particular, just use the accessible colors generator and choose a shade with an acceptable contrast ratio for white. (Note that this only applies to templates that have white text, or white sections backing the text!)

Alternatively, this kaleidoscopic presentation packs a colorful, accessible punch.

Monochromatic accessible color palettes

Sometimes, you just need more consistency in your life. (Okay, that was deep. Anyway…) These monochromatic palettes let you stay true to one hue through-and-through.

Monochromatic accessible templates

Layering monochromatic colors on their own is an accessibility faux-pas. To get around it, use white space to break up sections and provide clarity like this presentation template does. 

Otherwise, opt for a high contrast combo by layering your lightest and darkest tones. 

Contrasting accessible color palettes

By splitting the palette into groups of highly contrasting hues, these shades are sure to stand out when used together in a design.

Contrasting accessible templates

Want your project proposal to speak volumes while still looking sophisticated? 

Look no further than the contrasting teal, tone and charcoal tones layered in this template. On the other hand, here’s an infographic that juxtaposes a moody background color with striking pale turquoise accents and white text. 

Pastel accessible color palettes

Color psychology  explains why pastels are so calming and uplifting: with their high brightness and low saturation, these tones are soft, soothing and pleasing for the eyes.

Pastel accessible templates

Wondering why this template forgoes pastels for its pie charts and graphs?

Because pastels have low saturation, it’s difficult to achieve a 4.5:1 ratio when layering. Adjusting the level and adding labels ensures your  data visualizations are color blind-friendly .

Okay, so this one is a bit of a stretch. But with a few customizations using Venngage’s  intuitive drag and drop editor , it’s easy to tweak this infographic so it follows a pastel theme while remaining accessible. Here’s how:

• Decrease the saturation of the colors housing the bullet points.
• Change the white lines separating each section to dark lines.
• Add a black outline to the icon bubbles.

Three steps, and you’re done.

Dark to light accessible color palettes

Last but not least, these palettes contain analogous shades ( in color theory : neighboring hues on the color wheel) that transition from dark to light tones.

Dark to light accessible templates

This timeline infographic employs color in a particularly clever way, conveying the progression of time via tone.

Meanwhile, this informational infographic keeps things clean with two crowd-pleasing hues: navy blue and periwinkle.

Why is choosing accessible colors important? 

At this point, we’ve covered a few reasons why using accessible colors is important. But for posterity, I’ll review… 

First and foremost, accessible colors make your designs usable and legible to those with visual impairments. By empowering these groups to interact with visual environments the same way non-impacted folks do, accessible design choices show your entire audience they’re seen and supported by your organization.

(Why anyone would want to alienate 360 million people — and counting ! — is beyond me.)

What’s more, using accessible colors is a wholesale way to prioritize equity and inclusion. Folks with low vision, and even those without any impairments, will benefit from more clear, distinguishable UX designs. 

With  inclusive visuals top-of-mind  for consumers in 2023, you have every reason to prioritize accessibility.

And while WCAG compliance isn’t mandatory for private businesses yet, legal troubles for those who don’t follow these guidelines abound.

In 2021,  more web accessibility lawsuits than ever  were filed against businesses for violating the American Disabilities Act ( see FAQ for more info ). If these cases are anything to go by, today’s best practices could become tomorrow’s requirements. 

So, clear ethical choice. Smart business decision. No matter what you call it, using accessible colors is the right thing to do.

Convinced? Cool. Now, let’s discuss how you can pick inclusive pairings.  Related: ADA Standards for Accessible Design

3 Quick tips to improve color accessibility

1. avoid problematic color combinations.

Because of the way color blindness affects vision, the following low-contrast color combinations tend to present an accessibility issue when layered:

• Red and green
• Green and brown
• Green and blue
• Blue and gray
• Blue and purple
• Green and gray
• Green and black

That said, if you’re set on a certain combination for your designs, it’s not the end of the world. You can always…

2. Break up low contrast colors with white space or dark space 

A simple way to get around issues pairing low contrast colors is to clearly define each section by separating them  using white space  or dark space. (Many of the templates listed above do exactly that).

To figure out which to use, simply input the color’s HEX value into the free accessible color palette generator, and reference the matching hue on the page.

3. Apply icons, underlining, labels and patterns to distinguish elements

When in doubt, don’t rely on color as your only indicator alone. It’s best practice to add another layer of visual differentiation to the mix — particularly for interactive elements,  data visualizations  and error states. For example, writing out  links  in blue font isn’t enough. Underlining hyperlinks ensures everyone will understand where to click.

Icons  or  text labels  should highlight error states or system warnings that would otherwise go unnoticed.

And patterns can up the visual distinction for those with monochromatic vision, like in this example from  Trello .

For more tips on designing for people with color vision deficiency, check out this post: Color Blind Design Guidelines: How to Convey Meaning to Everyone [With Examples & Templates]

Despite the name, over 99% of “colorblind” individuals  can  actually see color — just not in the same way as those who aren’t impacted.

Red-green color blindness 

The most common form of red-green colorblindness is deuteronomaly. Affecting 5% of males, this deficiency makes it difficult to distinguish red and green colors, or separate blue pigments from purple.

Blue-yellow color blindness

Vision deficiencies affecting the ability to differentiate blue and yellow tones are much more rare, but they impact men and women equally. With blue-yellow color blindness, blue will look more like green, yellow will look more like gray or violet, and pink will be hard to distinguish.

Complete color blindness

Though extremely rare, there are some people who have  monochromacy  — the inability to distinguish between any colors at all.

With  over 360 million “colorblind” people in the world  (and counting!), the importance of using accessible colors in your communication designs cannot be overstated.

This comparison shows why differentiating interactive components, system warnings and success/error states through high contrast colors is vital. You can imagine how frustrating it would be to read a page with incomprehensible text, or to try and figure out what property to adjust on a form when an error is only indicated via red outline. 

In other words, making your communications usable and legible to those visually impaired helps ensure all the time and energy spent designing really counts. 

Let’s take a look at those color contrast ratios in more detail. 

What is a WCAG color? 

A WCAG color is shorthand for a color combination that’s accessible and usable to most folks with color vision deficiencies. These colors must be paired with elements or text that adheres to the acceptable level of contrast for web color accessibility as defined by the  Web Content Accesiblity Guidelines  (WCAG): 4.5:1.

What is AA and AAA in color contrast?

In color contrast, AA and AAA describe the level that color schemes (or palettes) conforms to the accessibility standards set by the  WCAG . Level AA is the middle level of compliance that works with most assistive technologies, and requires a (color) contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3.1 for large text in order to be distinguishable for those who are colorblind.

Level AAA is the gold standard level for accessibility compliance used by government sites and requires a contrast ratio of 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text.

Are the WCAG guidelines legally enforceable? 

While the WCAG guidelines are not a legal document, section 508  is  a law that requires American federal agencies and their contractors to comply with WCAG 2.0 AA standards. 

For private companies, it’s even more complicated.

The American Disability Act (ADA) — which organizations with more than 15 employees are subject to — requires places of public accommodation be accessible, and many regions now consider businesses’ websites an extension of that.

In 2019, more than 10,000 lawsuits were filed for violating the ADA, and  20% of those involved website and mobile app design . None of those would have occurred had they followed WCAG AA guidelines.

Is purple accessible?

The color purple is accessible so long as the contrast ratio of the colors, texts and elements are 4.5:1 and higher. Typically, this means a lilac shade would need to be paired with darker text/elements in order to be accessible, while a darker purple would need to be paired with lighter text/elements.

The best designs keep accessibility in mind

Rejoice! You’re now armed with the knowledge and tools you need to create beautiful, inclusive designs that empower  all  audiences to engage and participate. 

Now I’d call that a  hue -ge win! Remember to check out the  Accessible Color Palette Generator tool , and take our accessible templates for a spin by  signing up for free . Because at Venngage, we’ve made prioritizing accessibility our prerogative, and you should too. Stay tuned for more exciting news on the accessible design front soon…

Veronica With Four Eyes

How To Create Helpful Visual Descriptions For Visually Impaired Audiences

At many of the recent events I have attended, I’ve noticed that the speakers have been including visual descriptions of themselves when introducing themselves, to be more inclusive of visually impaired audiences. While I know some people don’t believe visual descriptions are necessary, I personally find them extremely helpful, and plan to incorporate this practice at my next event. Here are my tips for how to create helpful visual descriptions for visually impaired audiences, from the perspective of a person with low vision.

What is a visual description?

In this context, a visual description is a way for presenters or people at an event to describe their physical appearance and provide helpful contextual information. These descriptions are voluntary but can help with eliminating unconscious bias and with navigating social situations, since people may feel uncomfortable asking for details on what a person looks like. Visual descriptions specifically benefit people who are blind, that have low vision, or that otherwise have vision loss.

Related links

• How To Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the Visually Impaired
• How To Access Images Without Alt Text

Why are visual descriptions helpful for people with vision loss?

As a person with low vision, I often have trouble seeing what people look like or distinguishing between two different speakers, so having a visual description can help me to identify who is speaking. It is also helpful for if I want to talk to the person later, as I have an idea of what they look like and what they are wearing, which is helpful information to relay to a human guide. Even though I might be able to pick out some limited details about what a person looks like with my usable vision alone, it’s tremendously helpful to hear people describe themselves in their own words. Plus, I really like fashion, so hearing people describe what they are wearing can be interesting!

I acknowledge that there are people living with vision loss that do not care for visual descriptions or believe that visual descriptions are part of a broader social or political agenda. However, I find them personally helpful, and so do many other people with vision loss, and I encourage speakers to provide this information whenever possible to help make events and conversations even more inclusive.

• Should I Request a Human Guide At a Conference?
• Using PicsArt To Simulate Vision Impairment

How to provide a visual description

So how should someone go about providing a visual description? There are a few different options that come to mind:

• Mention it during a verbal introduction. For example, I might greet the audience by sharing my name, provide a visual description, and then deliver the rest of my introduction
• Include it in a caption. If I was not standing in front of an audience but had my photo included in a presentation, I would add a visual description (or image description) to the photo and mention the description when discussing visual content on the screen.
• Mention it in a program or guide. If photos of speakers are included in a program or guide, mention the visual descriptions as well so people can have a visual reference.
• Add it to audio description. For events that are pre-recorded, narrators can give a visual description of the speaker as part of the additional narration track.
• Creating Inclusive and Accessible Video Lectures For Visually Impaired Audiences
• Creating Audio Description For Primary Source Videos With YouDescribe

Things to mention in a visual description of a person

Helpful details to mention in a visual description for the blind include:

• Hairstyle and hair color
• Race/ethnicity
• Age or age range (optional)
• Clothing description
• Any additional distinctive accessories, i.e glasses or large jewelry
• Mobility aids, i.e a guide dog, wheelchair, blindness cane, hearing aids, etc

I recognize that some people may not feel comfortable disclosing their mobility aids or if they have a disability, though this can help with eliminating unconscious bias. People can also choose to disclose their pronouns in their visual description, though most people I know disclose this in their introduction anyway.

• How To Write Alt Text For Casual Outfits
• Writing Media Descriptions For Current Events: My Talk At Protest Access-A-Thon

Things that shouldn’t be mentioned in a visual description

Things to avoid mentioning in a visual description include:

• Comments related to attractiveness, or commentary on appearance, i.e statements like “I am ugly” or “I am an attractive person”
• Eye color- not particularly helpful here, since the other audience members would not be able to see this
• Body measurements and clothing sizes
• Small visual details such as a zit
• Information about clothing brands, unless it is a distinctive style- for example, the word Crocs can be used to describe shoes made by the brand, but there’s no need to mention that a sweater came from Target
• Any visual details that would not be obvious to sighted audience members
• Making the description longer than about 30 seconds

I did receive a question from someone who was wondering if it was okay for them to disclose that they are pregnant in their visual description, and I said that was up to them, but fine to include if they wanted. They chose to share how far along they were, but “pregnant” would have been enough if they did not want to go into detail.

What about body type?

I wrote more about my decision to list body measurements as something to not include in visual descriptions below.

• My Thoughts on Visual Descriptions

Some example visual descriptions

Here are some example visual descriptions I have created, or that I have reprinted with permission from others:

• I am a white 24-year-old woman with short brown hair, and I have large, tinted glasses with purple frames. I am wearing a black and white geometric patterned dress with a rose-pink infinity scarf, a denim jacket, and black flat shoes. I also have a blindness cane that has a bright pink handle and pink segment near the tip of the cane.
• I am a Filipino man with short black hair, and am wearing sunglasses along with a black shirt, blue jeans, and black dress shoes. My guide dog Lola is a German Shepherd and is currently sitting under the table for the presentation.
• I am nonbinary and have olive skin with curly brown hair that is in a ponytail. I am wearing a black suit with a purple tie, and have gauged ears with purple earrings, as well as a septum piercing.
• I am a black woman in her mid 30s with long blonde and black locs that go down my back. I am wearing a t-shirt that says “Accessibility Matters” along with black skinny jeans, and purple Converse high-tops. The frames of my glasses are bright red and have round lenses inside.
• I am a biracial (Japanese/white) college freshman and have an androgynous appearance. I am wearing a blue button-down top, dark gray pants, and black and white checkered shoes. I have shoulder length wavy black hair with a purple stripe towards the front and have multiple silver rings on each of my hands.

Summary of how to create helpful visual descriptions for visually impaired audiences

• A visual description allows presenters to provide a physical description of what they look like for the benefit of audience members with vision loss
• Visual descriptions are a great inclusive practice, and can help people to avoid unconscious bias as well as help with understanding who is talking during a presentation
• Visual descriptions are typically included as part of a verbal introduction
• Helpful things to mention in a visual description include hair color/hairstyle, race/ethnicity, gender, clothing description, or other distinctive visual details. People can also choose to mention their age or age range
• People should avoid including details such as commentary on appearance, eye color (since it is a small detail), body measurements or clothing sizes, or details that would go unnoticed by sighted audience members.

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