Accessibility Best Practices for Presentations

We strive to make Keller Center physically and digitally accessible to everyone. This includes ensuring that presentations given by and presented to the Center community follow accessibility best practices.

From preparing your presentation, through delivering it, through distributing materials post-presentation, it is important to realize that some of your audience may not be able to:

• See well or at all
• Hear well or at all
• Move well or at all
• Speak well or at all
• Process information in certain formats well or at all.

Below are some common guidelines.

Color

Many accessibility issues in presentations relate to color. About one in every 8 people experiences color blindness. Many people have trouble perceiving information when there isn't sufficient color contrast between the foreground and background. For these and other reasons:

• Do not use color as the only means of conveying or distinguishing information.
  • Traditional pie charts are a classic example where this issue is commonly seen. When color is the only means used to connect the slices to the key, people who are color blind or have low vision may not be able to tell which slice goes with which color in the key. It is better to additionally use patterns, shapes, or other means to distinguish various elements from each other.
• Use a color blindness simulator to test how your presentation will appear to people with various forms of color blindness.
• Make sure all elements of your presentation have strong color contrast. Use a tool like Colour Contrast Analyzer to check that all foreground elements will be perceivable against their backgrounds.

Text

• Use a sans serif font (e.g., Arial, Verdana, Helvetica).
  • Presentations by Keller Center staff should use Franklin Gothic.
• Use large (28 points or larger) type size.

Video and imagery

All video content should be captioned.

• Captions should be displayed in a way that provides sufficient color contrast against the background of the video.
• Our standard is for videos to be captioned by humans, because computer-generated captions generally only range from about 57 to 93% accurate.

Keller Center typically posts video recordings of presentations - when authorized by the presenter - on our website and YouTube channel. Those recordings will be human captioned before posting. With that in mind, it is recommended that you ideally leave the bottom 20 to 25% of each slide blank so that the eventual captions will not cover the content of your slides.

Avoid excessive movement of elements within the content of your presentation. This can include some animations, slide transitions, certain visual patterns, flickering or flashing content, and video content that quickly cuts from one scene to another. These types of content can trigger seizures and other disorders in some people.

Good practices while presenting

• Speak slowly and clearly.
• Make sure to convey what is on each slide for the people in the audience who may not be able to see it.
  • This is especially important when displaying images or charts where most of the information is typically only conveyed visually.
• If you do not have a wearable microphone, make sure to position yourself so that you are always in range of the podium microphone.
• When taking questions from a person who is not using a microphone, first repeat the question to ensure it can be heard throughout the room.
• Avoid phrases like "As you can see here..." that assume that everyone in the audience is a sighted person.
• Use best practices for making presentations accessible (Microsoft PowerPoint | Google Slides), particularly if you will be sharing the slide deck with the audience.

Ask questions or get help

Email Keller Center's Digital Media and Communications team with questions about making your presentation more accessible to everyone. We will happily review your slides, check for proper color contrast, and make accessibility recommendations. We suggest that you reach out early in the development of your presentation so there is time to remediate any potential issues.