How Do I Make PowerPoint Slides Accessible?

PowerPoint is one of the most widely used tools in higher education. Lectures, workshops, orientation sessions, conference talks — slides are everywhere. But most presentations created by faculty have serious accessibility barriers that prevent students using screen readers, magnification software, or other assistive technologies from accessing the content.

The good news: making PowerPoint accessible is not difficult once you know what to look for. This guide walks through the essential steps, common mistakes, and how to verify your work before sharing or exporting.

1. Always Use Built-In Slide Layouts

This is the single most important rule. When you create a new slide, choose one of PowerPoint's built-in layouts (Title Slide, Title and Content, Two Content, etc.) rather than starting with a blank slide and dropping in text boxes manually.

Built-in layouts use placeholders that PowerPoint understands structurally. A screen reader knows that the title placeholder is the slide title, and the content placeholder is the body. When you use freestanding text boxes on a blank slide, that structural information is lost — a screen reader encounters floating text with no context about what it represents or in what order it should be read.

If none of the default layouts suit your needs, create a custom layout via the Slide Master rather than manually arranging text boxes on each slide.

2. Add a Title to Every Slide

Every slide needs a unique, descriptive title. Screen reader users navigate presentations by jumping between slide titles, much like sighted users scan headings in a document. A presentation with untitled slides — or slides all titled "Slide 1," "Slide 2" — is essentially a wall of undifferentiated content.

If you want the title to be invisible on-screen (for example, on an image-heavy slide), you do not need to delete it. Instead, use the Arrange panel to drag the title placeholder off the visible area of the slide, or select the title and use Format > Selection Pane to hide it visually while keeping it in the structure.

3. Add Alt Text to All Images

Every image, chart, diagram, and graphic needs alternative text that conveys its meaning in context. Right-click the image, select Edit Alt Text, and write a concise description focused on what the image communicates on that particular slide.

For purely decorative images — borders, background textures, stock photography used for visual appeal — check the "Mark as decorative" box so screen readers skip them entirely. Failing to mark decorative images is a common mistake: the screen reader announces the file name (often something like "IMG_4382.jpg"), which is worse than no description at all.

For detailed guidance on writing effective descriptions for educational content, see our guide on how to write alt text for educational images.

4. Check and Fix the Reading Order

The reading order determines the sequence in which a screen reader announces the elements on each slide. By default, PowerPoint sets the reading order based on when objects were added to the slide, which is often not the logical order.

To check it: go to Home > Arrange > Selection Pane. The Selection Pane shows all objects on the current slide. The reading order goes from bottom to top in the list. Drag items to reorder them so the sequence makes sense: typically the title first, then body content, then supplementary elements.

Do this for every slide. It takes seconds per slide but makes a significant difference.

5. Use Sufficient Colour Contrast

Text must have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background (3:1 for large text, 18pt or larger). Light grey text on a white background, or coloured text on a photograph, frequently fails this requirement.

Use a free contrast checker like the WebAIM Contrast Checker or the Colour Contrast Analyser to verify. If you place text over an image, add a solid or semi-transparent background shape behind the text to guarantee contrast regardless of the image content beneath it.

6. Use Built-In Tables with Header Rows

If your slide includes tabular data, insert it using PowerPoint's built-in table tool (Insert > Table). In the Table Design tab, ensure "Header Row" is checked. This tells assistive technology which cells are headers and which are data.

Avoid using images of tables, text boxes arranged in a grid pattern, or screenshots from Excel. These look like tables visually but are completely inaccessible.

7. Add Speaker Notes as Text Alternatives

Speaker notes serve a dual purpose: they help you present, and they provide a text-based alternative to the visual content on each slide. For slides that are heavy on diagrams, charts, or images, use the notes to describe and explain the visual content in full.

This is especially valuable when slides are shared after class. A student who cannot see the diagram can read the notes to get the same information.

8. Handle Animations and Media Carefully

Animations and transitions are common accessibility pitfalls:

• Flashing content: Never use animations that flash more than three times per second. This can trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy.
• Auto-advancing slides: Avoid timed transitions. Users who need more time to process content — or who are using a screen reader — will be left behind.
• Embedded videos: All video content must have captions. If you embed a video from YouTube or another platform, ensure captions are available and accurate. If you record your own video, add captions before embedding.
• Audio clips: Provide a transcript in the speaker notes or on an adjacent slide.

9. Run PowerPoint's Accessibility Checker

Before you share or export, run the built-in checker: Review > Check Accessibility. It will flag missing alt text, missing slide titles, reading order issues, insufficient contrast, and other problems. It is not perfect — it cannot judge whether your alt text is good — but it catches the structural issues reliably.

Fix every error. Review every warning. Make this part of your workflow, just like running a spell check.

10. Export to PDF Correctly

If you distribute slides as PDFs (and most faculty do), the export method matters enormously. Use File > Save As > PDF and ensure the "Document structure tags for accessibility" option is checked in the export settings. This preserves the heading structure, reading order, and alt text in the resulting PDF.

Do not use "Print to PDF" — this creates a flat image with no structural information, destroying all the accessibility work you just did. For more on accessible PDF creation, see our guides on making PDFs accessible and creating accessible PDFs from Word.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Using blank slides with text boxes instead of built-in layout placeholders — this breaks structure and reading order.
• Leaving decorative images unmarked — screen readers announce meaningless file names.
• Complex animations that convey information — if content only appears through animation, users who cannot see or control the animation miss it entirely.
• Embedded videos without captions — one of the most common WCAG failures in educational content.
• Skipping the Accessibility Checker — it takes 30 seconds and catches issues you will miss manually.

When You Have Hundreds of Existing Presentations

These steps work well for new presentations. But what about the backlog? Most departments have years of lecture slides already exported as PDFs and sitting in their LMS. Retrofitting each one manually is not realistic.

Need to fix a library of inaccessible presentation PDFs? Aelira remediates them automatically — try it free. You can upload PDFs exported from PowerPoint and get back tagged, structured, WCAG-compliant documents with alt text generated by AI. Learn more about how it works on our PDF remediation features page.