Microsoft PowerPoint™ has become a standard for creating stunning visual presentations. There are a variety of approaches used for delivering PowerPoint content online, each of which has strengths and weaknesses concerning accessibility.

The most basic approach is to provide the original PowerPoint file for download. Access to the file requires that users have either the PowerPoint application or the PowerPoint browser plug-in, which shows PowerPoint pages directly in the browser. If slides contain simple content such as a heading and bulleted list, these are readily accessible to PowerPoint users with disabilities, including those using assistive technologies such as screen readers. As content increases in complexity (i.e., graphics, animations, tables and charts) accessibility decreases.

Users who don't have PowerPoint software might be able to access native PowerPoint files within their browser, which is installed automatically in recent versions of Internet Explorer™, but users of other browsers must locate, download, and install the plug-in, providing one exists for their browser.

The plug-in provides only visual access to the slideshow and is not accessible to screen reader users.

Another approach is to use PowerPoint software’s built-in web publishing feature. It creates a website with multiple frames. One frame will contain links to each slide, while another frame contains the slides. Additional frames provide navigational controls. Each slide is presented as text in an HTML file and is formatted with extensive proprietary markup that sometimes makes screen readers fail miserably. Screen reader users also face problems navigating the frames interface, though it's possible with skill and patience.

WebAIM Tutorial

WebAIM has a tutorial covering alternative approaches for delivering PowerPoint content online. In PowerPoint Accessibility Techniques (http://www.webaim.org/techniques/powerpoint/), they describe the problems with the methods described above and give examples of the following alternative techniques:

• Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office (http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/software/office/). Free tool, developed at the University of Illinois. Attempts to convert PowerPoint, Excel, and Word documents into valid and accessible HTML.
• Making your own HTML, using the outline from your PowerPoint file.
• Use HTML-native slide generation programs, such as WimpyPoint (http://philip.greenspun.com/help/for-one-page.tcl?url=%2fwp%2findex%2etcl) or the World Wide Web Consortium's Slidemaker (http://www.w3.org/Talks/slidemaker/YYMMsub/).
• Create your own HTML-based slides from scratch using your favorite HTML editor (for example, Macromedia Dreamweaver)

Accordent's PresenterOne is another alternative some people have adopted (formerly known as “Real Presenter”). This software lets creators narrate their PowerPoint slideshows and create RealMedia files for output. This enables users to deliver presentations that are similar to live presentations. If the presenter describes slide content and other visual information, presentations are more accessible. The RealMedia file can also be captioned to provide access to the narration for individuals with hearing impairments.

Exporting to PDF is also an option. Using Adobe PDFMaker plug-in for Microsoft Office by default creates a tagged PDF file, which is optimized for accessibility, and is readable using recent versions of select assistive technologies.

Whichever of the above techniques is used, further work is required to assure accessibility, including adding “alt text” to images prior to exporting.

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