Creating Accessible Presentations

• Provide captioning and transcripts for individuals with auditory impairments and audio descriptions for the visually impaired. Transcripts are also an excellent study guide and captions help English language learners. 
• WebAIM page on Captions, Transcripts and Audio Descriptions

PowerPoint

General guidelines

• Use slide layouts.
• Check slide reading order.
• Avoid watermarks, background images and color (use the Color Contrast Analyzer to check for sufficient contrast). 
• Use bullets and end statements in a period. 
• Add alternative (Alt) text to all images, charts and graphs. For purely decorative images, use "" as the alternative text. This designation tells screen readers to skip over the image. 
• Provide table summaries. 
• Caption/transcribe audio. 
• Use slide notes to describe slide content. 

Detailed resources

• Accessibility checker: a built in tool that will identify accessibility issues in your PowerPoint documents.
• WebAIM PowerPoint recommendations
• Tutorial on making accessible PowerPoint presentations

YouTube

You can upload presentations exported from PowerPoint or Keynote to YouTube. Videos created with Blackboard's Video Everywhere tool are also stored on YouTube. YouTube has options for both automated and manual video captioning.

• Export PowerPoint presentation to video and upload to YouTube
• Caption your YouTube video
• Edit Video Captions on YouTube

Echo360

EchoVideo (personal capture) is a tool for creating screen capture videos. It can be used for narrated PowerPoint lectures, web tours, or an introduction to your Blackboard course space. 

If you have a student with a documented disability in your class, you can have your presentations captions by Cielo24. Contact UMass disability services to make arrangements. 

VoiceThread

VoiceThread is a tool for creating interactive threaded discussions. It is also a simple option for recorded student presentations. VoiceThread Universal is a screen-reader friendly HTML version of the interface. You can also add closed caption files to all VoiceThread comments. If you have a student with a documented disability in your class, contact UMass disability services to make arrangements for captioning.