A guide to accessible presentations and eLearning

Making your content accessible isn’t just a compliance checkbox, it’s table stakes for good design. But it’s complex and nuanced too. Even if you think you know your audience or your user group, many people could be experiencing invisible disabilities or situational limitations that could affect their ability to fully engage with your content.

We’ve been poring over WCAG guidelines, getting to grips with Section 508, and digging into best design practice for a long time, and we’ve posted lots of our insights on our blog. To make it easier for you to navigate we’ve collated all of our posts on accessibility in this one easy-to-reference resource, to help you create inclusive content that meets everyone in your audience where they’re at.

How to use this resource

What are you looking for help with? Choose a topic from the list below and then dig deep into your insights of choice.

Topics

Accessibility considerations

• Designing presentations for cognitive disabilities: Learn five core principles for designing presentations for neurodiversity. From text and fonts, to colour and layouts, this is your new starting point for accessible presentations.
• How to optimise presentation design for people with colour blindness: Get to grips with how Colour Vision Deficiency can affect your presentation content, and learn some best practices to use colour well for your whole audience.
• How to optimise presentation design for people with dyslexia: Did you know at least 10% of your presentation is affected by dyslexia? Here are five things to consider when building engaging and accessible presentations.

Free accessibility tools for PowerPoint:

• Colour contrast checker for PowerPoint: Not sure if your colour combos meet industry requirements? Follow the link to get your free colour contrast checker for PowerPoint.
• Add and edit alt text with this free add-in: We spoke to Stephy Hogan, accessibility champion and co-creator of the alt-o-matic alt-text add in. Export your alt text into Excel and import it back into your presentation and make compliance that little bit easier.
• Define PowerPoint placeholder names for screen-reader compliant presentations: Due to some PowerPoint defaults, the placeholders on your slide master don’t always match what you have in your Reading Order pane. Get this free add-in to fix the problem.

Principles of accessible design

• Tips for more accessible presentations: Only got five minutes? Start your journey towards accessible presentation design here.
• How to make presentations vibrant, bold and accessible: Do you feel like making presentations accessible gets in the way of making them bold and vibrant? Sometimes it feels like taking an accessible approach to colour and contrast levels takes the punch out of our presentations, but it’s a myth to think that you can’t have the best of both worlds. Learn how in this article.

eLearning

• How to make accessible eLearning content: Only have five minutes? Check out this overview to get you started on your eLearning accessibility journey.
• Create accessible eLearning – core principles: Learn a four-step process for building accessibility into the foundation of your eLearning to set all of your users up for success.
• Create accessible eLearning – technical tips: Get to know the accessibility features in Articulate Storyline, Rise, and PowerPoint, with bonus tips to help you spot-check your accessibility as you design. (Coming soon)

Presenting your content

• How to present inclusively: You want to give your audience the best chance at engaging with your content in a presentation setting, so learn seven techniques to ensure you’re not inadvertently excluding anyone along the way.
• Creating content for a global audience: Making your content accessible to international audiences is vital. Learn key considerations for writing content, making your text easy to translate, and how to create visuals that resonate for everyone.

Google slides

• Best accessibility tools for Google Slides: Use Google Slides? Check out this post to get to know the top tools you’ll need in your accessibility toolbelt.
• Colour blindness simulators for Google Slides: We’ve tested three browser extensions that allow you to simulate different types of Colour Vision Deficiency in Google Slides.