PowerPoint
Arguably, PowerPoint is the most frequently used presentation tool in educational environments. When PowerPoint files are presented online, two major issues arise:
- While individuals who own a license for PowerPoint can download a presentation from the web and use PowerPoint’s accessibility options to view the presentation, individuals who do not own or otherwise have access to PowerPoint will have difficulty viewing a presentation.
- PowerPoint makes heavy use of non-text elements to portray information and is not capable of associating alternative text to each element when converting a PowerPoint file to HTML.
To address both of these issues, a presentation that shows slides as graphics and as text must be used. The following approach is recommended:
- Save presentation as a series of graphic files.
- In a different folder, save the presentation as a Rich Text Format file (RTF).
- Paste the RTF text into an HTML editor.
- Integrate graphics where appropriate with HTML code that meets accessibility standards.
To manipulate the appearance and make the text unobtrusive for visual readers, you can use cascading styles with very small text, and match colors for text and background.
Links
PowerPoint Accessibility Techniques
(http://www.webaim.org/techniques/powerpoint)
