This session gives information on making PowerPoint presentations accessible, particularly on the Web. It also takes a look at LecShare, a program that both checks on accessibility in your native PowerPoint file and also exports PowerPoint to accessible web-friendly formats.
As teachers at a public educational institution, CCSF's Faculty are legally bound by section 508 to make course content accessible to students with disabilities. Concerns to bear in mind include: designing with color-blindness in mind Providing text equivalents for all pictures
Also, all audio and video should have a text alternative that screen readers can access so that hearing-impaired people can read all audio content. It's best if the text can be viewed at the same time as any visuals and while the audio is being broadcast - as it is in a captioned video presentation.
Procedures to make native PowerPoint files - presentations with a .ppt or, for PowerPoint 2007, .pptx extension - accessible even if you don't use LecShare include the following:
To make it easy for screen readers to read your text:
Use PowerPoint's preset layouts for all text (not text boxes)
Add Alt text to all pictures
Add a summary and headings to Tables
For Audio: Include your script in PowerPoint's Notes view
Here's how to add Alternative text to pictures in PowerPoint XP or 2003:
Right-click a picture - or Control-click on a Mac
Click Format Picture
Click the Web tab on the popup window
Type in explanatory text
Click OK
Your Alt text can show up when cursor hovers over the picture, and Screen readers read Alt text.
Here are the steps for adding Alt text in PowerPoint 2007: Right-click a picture - Click the Size and Position entry on the popup menu. Then click the Alt text tab on the window Add your text and then click Close
LecShare's advantages include checking your PowerPoint file for Alt text and table and graph headers and captions. The LecShare screen allows you to make corrections right there and prompts you to save them back into your PowerPoint file.
If you want to provide audio with your presentation, you should, as usual, enter the text in PowerPoint's Notes view. Then you can use LecShare to help you record the audio. LecShare's screen presents your notes to prompt you, and automatically times the captions and slides as you click to proceed from slide to slide.
LecShare allows you to export your Powerpoint (with or without audio) in a variety of web-friendly formats, including: First: HTML: In LecShare's format, HTML slides appear on the same page as your notes as the timed audio plays with the slide. LecShare states that this is the most accessible of its export formats because it is calibrated to the capabilities of screen readers. Second, as a QuickTime movie, with timed audio and captions taken from your notes displaying at the bottom of the movie frame Lecshare can also export as a Video podcast using MP4 video
Here are some of LecShare's limitations: It doesn't preserve any animation in your PowerPoint Links to web pages or other slides are not active Any video embedded in a PowerPoint slide doesn't play LecShare doesn't preserve audio created inside PowerPoint. You can record audio inside LecShare, or import external sound files.
Some workarounds might be: Using successive slides to simulate text blocks or pictures popping in with PowerPoint's animation
And you could place any links to web pages or video files nearby on the web page that calls up the LecShare PowerPoint presentation
And of course on your web pages you can always include a link so that students can download the original (accessible) PowerPoint presentation (complete with animations and links) in addition to links to the accessible HTML or captioned QuickTime movie that you have exported using LecShare.
Just a reminder that the only web format that doesn't require other software is the accessible HTML: PowerPoint requires that the student has PowerPoint or the free, downloadable PowerPoint viewer, and QuickTime requires the free QuickTime player.
That's it for the descriptions of LecShare and accessibility for PowerPoint on the web: there are demos of the various exported formats at www.lecshare.com - click the About tab.