In March of 2024 I was asked to think about putting together a workshop on “When Group Work Is Not Going Well”. After putting together a bunch of research and notes, I thought about using this task as an opportunity to familiarize myself with PowerPoint’s accessibility features. I know that faculty use PowerPoint, and that the Disability Resource Center heavily recommends the use of Microsoft products because of the accessibility features that are built into their products.
To begin, I was pleasantly surprised with the number and variety of templates that were available to me from within the PowerPoint interface. I settled on a colorful template that included a variety of slide layout options. As I began to build my first slide I saw that PowerPoint was offering me design options based on what I was creating. (This can be found under Home → Designer.) I found this feature really helpful as I think it made my slides appear more structured and organized. See the video below for a demonstration of how this works.
The second finding that I was really impressed with was PowerPoint’s automated alt-text generator. It allowed me to auto-generate alt-text and then approve it. If alt-text is approved PowerPoint will remove a notation about the text being auto-generated. You can get to this feature by right clicking on an image and selecting View Alt Text. I also ran an accessibility review which can be found under Review → Check Accessibility. This feature helped me locate and correct issues in my slideshow. Some of the problems I found were images missing alt-text, slides without slide titles, and slides with duplicate slide titles.
Lastly, I found an option to rehearse my presentation with a coach (Slideshow → Rehearse with Coach). This feature allowed me to practice my presentation and provided me feedback on the following elements: pace of delivery, filler words, pitch, pronunciation, originality of content, and inclusiveness. See the link in the previous sentence for details about how the coach provides feedback.