Presentations and Slide Decks - Accessible Teaching Toolkit

Overview

Accessible presentation style refers to ways that educators design and facilitate in-class learning sessions, including presentations, slides, visuals, verbal explanations, and learning activities to support student perception, understanding, and engagement with course content. Grounded in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, this approach anticipates learner diversity (e.g., disabilities, neurodivergence, language backgrounds, cultures, and other aspects of lived experiences).

Meanwhile, slide presentations, often created using PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote, are used to present text, images, charts, or multimedia to learners to increase accessibility, engagement, and understanding. Developing an accessible slide presentation means taking steps to ensure people who have difficulty seeing, interpreting, or otherwise engaging with visual information can understand and engage with slide decks as a part of the established learning materials.

In doing this work proactively and collaboratively with learners, we can reduce reliance on formal individual accommodations and improve clarity and equity for all learners.

Rationale

Accessible presentation style is a way to support learner engagement, learning, and feedback processes by reducing barriers. Done proactively and effectively, accessible presentations can achieve the following:

Improvement of comprehension, retention, and participation.
Reduction of cognitive overload during complex lectures.
Proactively support students who may experience access barriers in the classroom across a variety of positionalities and access needs
Align with accessibility legislation and human rights frameworks
Support institutional accommodation policies and equity commitments.
Reduce the number of retroactive adjustments that are needed.
Shift responsibility from student advocacy for individual needs to proactive learning material and facilitation design

Slide presentations often rely on an individual’s ability to see what’s being projected and simultaneously process that information, usually while someone is talking. Not everyone in a teaching and learning space will be able to see or process the content on your slides, especially if elements of slide deck design are not thoughtfully considered.

"I struggle with dexterity and writing; if you are going to speed through the slides - please post them for me to review afterwards, as I likely could not keep up with my notetaking. If you refuse to post the slides, then please make sure you proceed at a pace that allows me to write my notes."

- A Western Student

Guidance

Accessible Presentation Style

Accessible presentation style is implemented before, during and after instruction.

Verbal Delivery and Explanation

Try:

Speaking clearly and at a moderate pace
Explaining visuals aloud (e.g., “What you’re seeing on this graph is….”)
Explaining any acronyms, jargon, or idioms (e.g., by using plain language or analogies)
Repeating and rephrasing key concepts

Context example: During a statistics lecture, the instructor describes each step of a formula verbally, pauses for processing and questions, offers a brief summary before moving on.

Information Structure & Cognitive Load

Try:

Clearly outlining the lecture structure at the beginning
Using signposts (e.g., “To get started, let’s talk about;” “Now we’ll move to;” “To finish up, let’s discuss”)
Chunking content into manageable sections
Providing summaries at transition points

Context example: A 90-minute lecture can be divided into three thematic blocks, including short interactive check-ins and providing a closing synthesis that connects concepts.

Flexible Access to Content

Try:

Sharing slides and materials before class when possible
Recording lectures or providing alternatives for students who cannot attend (e.g., summaries, instructor or student collaborative notes)
Using the LMS (i.e., in the Western context, OWL Brightspace) to centralize content

Context example: Students can preview pre-class slides, attend live, or revisit recordings for reinforcement.

Other Considerations

Try

Planning with learner variability in mind
Getting to know your students in order to engage with that unique cohort’s access and engagement needs and preferences
Using student feedback to refine delivery
Recognizing proactive accessibility as a core element of teaching design and delivery

Avoid

Relying exclusively on verbal delivery without visual support
Using inaccessible PDFs, scanned images, or unreadable slides
Assume students will request accommodations if they "need help"
Overloading slides or rushing through concepts
Using humor, metaphors, or cultural references without explanation

Accessible Slide Decks

Use Built-In Templates

Use the "New Slide" layouts provided by the software. These have a pre-defined reading order that screen readers follow. If you add items to your slides (e.g., textboxes, images, figures) then you need to manually adjust the reading order (see below).

Manually Adjust the Reading Order

Check the reading order of the objects on your slide to make sure they follow a logical reading order.

Add Unique Slide Titles

Make sure each slide has a unique title. For example, if you have three slides on "Research Methods," label them "Research Methods 1 of 3," etc.

If you don’t want the title of the slide to show visually, you can drag the title box off the top of the slide. A screen reader will still find it.

Other Considerations

Try

Using accessible fonts
Ensuring slide text is a minimum size of 18 pt, though 24 – 36 pt is preferable for larger spaces
Leaving white space in your slides, rather than overcrowding them (including between bullet points, if needed)
Adding colour and visual elements to your slides, ensuring that colour choices meet colour contrast guidelines and that you use alternative text for added images
Adding and enabling captions to your video files
Formatting tables appropriately
Using the Microsoft PowerPoint accessibility checker (or similar options across other software). Please note that this will highlight some, but not necessarily all, accessibility issues
Enabling captions while you present, including for in-person classes

Avoid

Overcrowding slides with too much text
Using colour alone to convey meaning
Including flashy animations that bounce, swivel, or fly into your slides as these may be distracting for learners
Integrating grainy or highly pixellated photos
Enabling timed slide transitions, as these may disrupt navigation or create sensory barriers

Resources

Centre for Teaching and Learning. Making lectures inclusive. U of Oxford.

Centre for Teaching Excellence. Accessibility checklist for MS PowerPoint. U of Waterloo.

eCampus Ontario. Microsoft PowerPoint. Digital Accessibility.

Gagné, A. Accessible presentation considerations. ACCUTE.

Power, R. (2024). Accessible presentations. The ALT Text. Power Learning Solutions. PressBooks.

Teaching and Learning Exchange. Accessible classroom facilitation. George Brown Polytechnic.

Teaching@UW. Making course materials accessible. University of Washington.