Delivering Accessible Presentations

5 easy steps to accessible presentations

Colleagues in the Learning and Teaching Development Service (LTDS) have worked with Peter Hayton (PhD student and Postgraduate Teaching Assistant) to establish consistent presentation practices that adopt accessibility best practice by design. 

Within this page, you can find the 5 steps to delivering accessible presentations.​ This is detailed on this webpage, and also as a PDF which you can download and print.

1. Share resources ahead of time

• Sharing resources in advance helps everyone by allowing extra time for people to get familiar with your slides, but particularly benefits groups including those who are blind, partially sighted, neurodiverse and people with cognitive disabilities.
• Releasing resources in advance may allow them to be downloaded to a piece of assistive technology.

2. Clearly deliver presentations

• Take care to avoid using slang or colloquialisms and, for complex subject matter, avoid using jargon terms too early as these could confuse your audience, including those with cognitive.
• Speaking at a steady rate (not too fast) can help people who are deaf or hard of hearing follow along with your speech.
• While speaking, always facing the audience and ensuring that your face is sufficiently lit allows people to lip read, which is used by some people who are death or hard of hearing.

3. Select sensible colours and fonts

• Colour is important, but when choosing colours, ensure there is a suitable contrast (a ratio of 7:1 is advised as a rule) to help people with low vision distinguish between content on slides.
• Ensure colour is not the only distinguishing factor, to accommodate people who are colour blind or who may access your presentation non-visually. Instead, consider using a combination of bold and underline. Even better, use markers like (brackets) or *an asterisk*.
• A clear serif font like Arial is considered a good choice and should be large enough so everyone can read it in both light and dark.
• Take care not to overload a slide with text, as this will reduce the font size and can make the presentation more complex to.

4.  Graphics and animations – less can be more

• For graphs, avoid introducing multiple complex plots at once. Remember that abstracted graphs, with fewer individual details may be more suitable to show concepts.
• For graphs and other graphics, consider its size when displayed on your slide, to ensure its visible to everyone, including those with low vision.
• If you use animations in your presentation, you should verbally describe what the animation is doing, so any blind or partially sighted members of the audience can follow along.
• You should generally avoid fast or flashing animations, where a slower animation will generally be preferred.

5.  Describe content on slides

• You should include ‘alt text’ with all images, which will allow this content to be accessed non-visually and is especially helpful when combined with releasing materials in advance.
• Don’t assume everyone can see your presentation. Instead, you should verbally describe the content of any images or graphs. The description should explain the content of the image, such as “as the price increases, the number of sales steadily decreases, with a sudden drop-off above £50”.
• Before speaking, allow time for your audience to read the content on a slide and ensure everyone has sufficient time to process information, so people are not overwhelmed.
• You should read aloud all text on a slide to ensure those with visual impairments don’t miss any content.
• All videos should include captions to allow people who are deaf or hard of hearing to engage with spoken content and should include audio descriptions to enable people who are blind or partially sighted to understand what is happening on-screen.