Slides

The same design principles shared in Docs apply to Slides, with a few additional concepts to keep in mind.

Six core skills:

• Headings and document structure
• Hyperlinks
• Video captions
• Bullets and numbered lists
• Color and contrast
• Image alt-text

Slide layouts are comprised of content containers that govern how content is displayed on the page. You should use predefined layouts instead of manually created text boxes, because the layouts are specially coded to work well with adaptive technologies like screen readers.

The biggest issue outside of those covered in Docs is the reading order of the elements within a slide. If you add additional pieces to the original slide layout or start with a blank, this can cause an issue for you or the person using assistive technologies to access your presentation.

To check the reading order of a slide, put your cursor on the top left object/element in your slide and tab through the different elements in the slide. The order it moves through the slide is the order the screen reader will read them.

It follows the format of the original slide layout you chose, then goes through any additional elements you added to the slide.

If you need to change the reading order you can do so by selecting the element, then go to the arrange menu.

Move backward puts it higher in the reading order, move forward puts it lower in the reading order.

If you add elements to the original slide layout, be sure to add alt text (even for text boxes) because screen readers will not fully read the new elements since they are missing some of the code present in the preset layout.

Google Slides has a customizable Closed Caption tool that can be used when presenting.

Turn this on when using Slides to make it more accessible to your students that may be deaf or hard of hearing

You normally think of speaker notes as a resource just for the presenter. Screen readers can actually read the information in the notes section. If you provide a transcript of your presentation in the notes you are able to generate a fully accessible handout for your audience. Be sure you describe the pictures and charts included in your presentation to make it as accessible as possible.

You can also voice type your speaker notes if you don't want to type them. If you do this while rehearsing each slide, it will give you a fairly accurate transcription of the presentation. You will need to clean up with punctuation and any words it didn't accurately transcribe.

People can't read a slide and listen to the speaker at the same time. Rather than cramming as much text as you can onto your slides (making them essentially function as speaker notes), include only the most essential points.

Additionally, when presenting, don't assume that everyone in your audience is able to see or make sense of your slide design. Get in the habit of describing the slide, especially when you are showing images, charts and graphics.

Grackle Slides-Add-on accessibility checker that will scan 22 potential accessibility issues and list them for your to correct.

Slides Toolbox: This has many great tools to assist you while you create slideshows, but the one I like the most is the ability to create a table of contents with hyperlinks. This eliminates the need to create one manually and gives you some of the same functions found in Docs.

SlideContents: If you don't need any of the other tools found in the Slides Toolbox, try SlideContents instead.

Slide Object Order: Allows you to control the tab order of objects in your slide. Very useful for screen reader setup. Much easier than moving the object forward and backward on the slide layout.

Pear Deck