In our Accessibility: Basics webinar series at UCEM, many participants ask questions about creating accessible presentations. Many Microsoft users utilise PowerPoint software to create slides and the Microsoft Support Centre contains excellent posts with many tips.
Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities
This article contains instructions for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Windows 10 app and Web users how to create accessible PowerPoint presentation.
Apart from what we have already looked at in previous blogs such as (alternative text, colour contrast, link text) the article shows many other PowerPoint specific tips.
PowerPoint Specific Tips
Use an accessible slide design
For this you can select File > New > Search for Online templates and themes > type accessible templates.
Make slides accessible
- Use unique slide titles: to restore all slide title placeholders Home tab, in the Slides group, select Reset. Now you can type a unique and descriptive title for each slide.
- Hide a slide title: When you want to show a full image you don’t want the slide title showing. But if you remove the slide title, screen reader users are going to be affected. So the best way to do this is to drag the title off-slide. This way title is still there for screen reader users but invisible to sighted viewers.
- Reading order of the slide content: Use the accessibility checker Review > Check Accessibility. If there are warnings on Check reading order category and use Make slides easier to read by using the Reading Order pane guide to correct the reading order.

I am a Learning Technology Researcher and the Chair of the Online Learning Research Centre at the University College of Estate Management. My principle research interests lie in the area of social implications of information and communication technologies, especially eLearning.