Better Accessibility in Presentations
Communication is the lifeblood of every business. Recently, the shift to remote work has made this an even more challenging task as our interactions have been taken almost exclusively to the digital realm, removing the more human experiences like seeing someone’s body language and facial expressions. While this has provided a wealth of benefits in day-to-day tasks and collaboration, in my experience, the most significant pain point lies within the more substantial milestones and essential decision-making that requires meetings. Why? Because if there's a meeting, you can bet someone is making a presentation.
Presentations. The word alone induces anxiety in both presenters and audience members. That's because presentations are often too long, poorly organized, badly designed, and frankly dull. As an audience member, I often feel assaulted by a presentation's unreadable type, terrible graphics, hideous amount of words per slide, and confusing diagrams. As a designer, I feel responsible for doing something about it to make these experiences not only better for myself—but more accessible for everyone.
Accessibility isn't new. At this writing, a Google search for "accessibility" turned up over four billion results. The issue is that most of those top results pertain to websites and digital products. This is a problem because, for every company website or product, you can imagine there are hundreds, if not thousands, of presentations that are created without accessibility in mind.
As designers, our responsibility is to stay updated with current standards and regulations surrounding accessibility. Our role is to turn the conversations and initiatives behind accessibility beyond websites and digital products to the corporate presentation. Designing with accessibility in mind will make your content understandable for all audience members.
Considering accessibility and practicing inclusive design means broadening our understanding of exclusion and how it affects us. Far too often, our view of exclusion stops at the most common examples, those with permanent disabilities. Permanent exclusion (e.g., being medically diagnosed as deaf) is essential, but it’s not the only type of exclusion we should consider. Two other important categories represent a much larger group of people that society wouldn’t label as disabled; however, we should account for these exclusions as well. Temporary exclusion (e.g., an ear infection that may cause hearing loss for a time) is just as relevant in the moment, although it is not permanent. Lastly, examples of situational exclusion (e.g., a bartender having trouble hearing due to the situational noise of the crowd) happen to all of us. Think of the last time you couldn’t hear clearly for whatever reason. Wasn’t it frustrating? Did you feel excluded?
When considering presentations, those exclusions might look like this:
Viewing your presentation from a phone while waiting for the doctor
Trouble seeing interactive content due to a poor connection or slower processors
Contending with background noises that prevent you from hearing clearly
The sunlight or other bright light source obfuscating your device’s screen
Trouble discerning between the colors in a chart or graph
Issues like these happen every day. As a result, people miss the opportunity to convey their message clearly and compellingly to everyone. As designers, we need to address this. Here are a few guidelines to create better, more accessible presentations. Because if you can’t make it pretty, at least make it clear.
Lead with empathy
The number one piece of advice I can offer is not to follow the well-worn path of just doing it the way you've always done it. Each presentation should be considered and planned. That means understanding who your audience members will be, where they will be when they view your presentation, the best way to deliver the information to them, and what limitations or exclusions may be present (e.g., Are some of your audience members colorblind? Will audience members be viewing on a mobile device? If so, are they at home on their couch, or are they in a cab on the way to the airport? Are they remote or hybrid, or will this presentation take place in person? etc.)
For a tangible example, slides are most often created to display in widescreen orientation. Our templates and experience are built on the belief that they will be viewed full-screen on a desktop/laptop in landscape orientation. However, many people set their desktops in the vertical position or exit full-screen video conferencing windows so that they can multitask, rendering content much smaller than intended. And for those on mobile devices, we expect users to respond by rotating their devices appropriately. However, some users have their mobile devices locked in the portrait position or are mounted in a fixed orientation (e.g., on the arm of a power wheelchair or if they find holding their phone in portrait mode easier.)
This single example proves that it’s critical to understand more about your audience to create the best experience for them.
Less is more...way more
The purpose of slides is to visually support your talk track, not contain your talk track. Large blocks of text are painful to read, but more importantly, they will be indecipherable for dyslexic audience members—who represent roughly 1 of every 10 Americans. You want your audience to pay attention to you, not to try and read what's on the slide. What is the one takeaway I want this slide to convey? Everything else that isn't that singular core idea should be moved to the speaker notes or a different, new slide.
If having large amounts of text is unavoidable:
Break paragraphs apart to avoid dense blocks of text.
Consider breaking your content into more digestible bullets.
Use left-justified text instead of center-justified as it's easier to read.
Avoid columns that are too narrow or excessively long lines.
Avoid starting a sentence at the end of a line.
If you cannot separate ideas clearly and organize them on a single slide, use multiple slides.
Make your slides more visual
Where possible, tell your story visually instead of showing only words. Diagrams, flowcharts, and graphics are simple ways to explain things more clearly for your audience to understand. Make the visuals big enough to be seen clearly from the back of the room, or know that they may be viewed from smaller screens like minimized video conferencing windows and mobile devices.
When using diagrams and flowcharts, make it easy to understand the hierarchy and order of your content. Use numbers, arrows, or other methods to show audience members where to begin and how things progress from there.
Although visually communicating your ideas is essential, avoid using text within the image(s) as the sole method of conveying important information. If you must use an image with text as part of the image, verbally repeat that text in your presentation.
Increase the size of your text...then do it again
My biggest complaint about presentations is that the text needs to be bigger. It's often illegible even for people with good vision. People with dyslexia describe seeing text “swim together” (the jumbling or compressing of one line of text into the lines above and below). They often see text merged or distorted, rendering it illegible.
The software doesn’t help this: the basic template in Microsoft PowerPoint accounts for five levels of descending body copy text, and not to be outdone, Google Slides, by default, gives you nine (9!) levels of body copy text. Try limiting yourself to two levels (or three at most). If you are forced to use smaller text, break your single slide into multiple slides.
For people with dyslexia or who have low vision, it's critical to reduce the reading load. Here are a few simple ways:
Size type to 14 points or above; 18 points or larger is optimal.
Use sans serif fonts with a consistent thickness that can be read from a distance more easily.
Avoid using all capital letters for longer sentences or paragraphs.
Avoid excessive italics or underlines.
Use line spacing greater than 1.15.
Include ample white space between sentences and paragraphs.
Use sufficient contrast
Mobile devices are more likely than desktop/laptop devices to be used in varied environments, including outdoors, where glare from the sun or other strong lighting sources is more likely. This scenario heightens the importance of good contrast for all users and may compound the challenges users with low vision have accessing content with poor contrast on mobile devices.
Use appropriate contrast between your content and the background so people with low vision can see and understand the content. For best results, use dark text on a white or off-white background, reverse it, and use white text on a dark background. White and black schemes make it easier for people who are colorblind to distinguish text and shapes. Avoid red, pink, and green, as these colors are often problematic for colorblind individuals.
To check contrast for accessibility, try using the web tool Are My Colors Accessible? (You'll need to know your web/hex color codes, which you can find in your brand standards documentation.) You can download a free color picker from the web that will give you those codes if you do not have one.
Limit motion & animation
While motion can be a powerful tool for illustrating points or drawing attention, be aware that certain types of motion, like text or objects flying across the screen, can be particularly distracting or cause some people to feel ill. Slide transitions and other motions, such as parallax scrolling, can trigger nausea, headaches, and dizziness in people with vestibular (inner ear) disorders.
Treat motion like salt. A little bit can go a very long way. Add too much, and it ruins the dish. In most cases, the information should be able to be conveyed without the use of motion. If your idea cannot, iterate to be easily understood in sequential slides/steps.
If you must use animation:
Limit the number of objects animating and how far they must travel across the screen within the animation.
Create multiple slides that show steps of the animation instead of one swooping motion.
Time the animations properly to make things happen reasonably to match your talk track.
Explain the animation before and once it happens.
Ensure color isn't the only means of conveying information
People who are partially blind, have low vision, or are colorblind might miss out on the meaning conveyed by particular colors. This is especially important if you feature charts and graphs of data that rely on color as the primary means of differentiation between data sets.
Generally speaking, content is easier to understand if the audience can interpret it through fewer colors. That was confirmed by a study from the University of Toronto showing that most people prefer simple color combinations that rely on only 2 or 3 colors.
Here are some additional ideas to try:
Add an underline to hyperlink text so that those colorblind know the text is linked.
Talk about the slide and the images for those who can't see it.
For headings, consider adding bold or using a larger font.
Keep your color palette as minimal as possible.
Use one primary color and limit yourself to two supporting colors.
Eliminate any acronyms.
To test for colorblindness, try the free app Color Oracle. Or you can upload and check individual images here.
Use your voice
Most of these tips center around better visual accessibility. However, a presentation is the complete experience you are providing.
For audience members who are deaf or hard of hearing, keep your video on to make sure people can see your lips so that they can read them. Repeat audience questions and clarify anything you may not understand.
Audibly explain any key content. For example, don’t say, “As you can see on this slide,” because some may not be able to see the slide. A good idea is to pretend you are presenting your talk on the phone and describe your content in the way you would describe it in that situation. Define all terms and acronyms that someone might not know.
Many of these concepts may sound foreign, but they are essential to practice so your presentations can be clear and understood. By better adapting, we can ensure we create opportunities for people to move beyond “Death by PowerPoint.”