How to Create Accessible PowerPoint and Slide Decks for Online Courses

When you build an online course, your slides aren’t just visual aids-they’re the main way students absorb information. But if those slides aren’t designed with accessibility in mind, you’re accidentally shutting out learners with vision impairments, motor disabilities, cognitive differences, or hearing loss. The truth? Making slides accessible isn’t about adding extra work. It’s about building better learning experiences for everyone.

Why Accessibility Matters More Than You Think

One in four adults in the U.S. lives with a disability, according to the CDC. That’s not a small group. In online courses, where students learn from home, on phones, or with assistive tech, inaccessible slides can mean the difference between passing and dropping out. A student using a screen reader won’t hear your chart titles if they’re embedded as images. A learner with color blindness won’t know which data point is which if you rely only on red and green. A person with dyslexia struggles when text is tiny, justified, or crammed into dense paragraphs.

Accessible design isn’t a legal checkbox-it’s good teaching. When you make your slides easier to read, navigate, and understand, you help all learners. Students without disabilities benefit too: clearer fonts help tired eyes, captions help those in noisy environments, and organized layouts help anyone trying to focus.

Start with the Structure: Slides Aren’t Documents

Many people treat PowerPoint like a Word doc-just paste text and call it done. That’s a mistake. PowerPoint is a presentation tool, not a handout. Your slides should be simple, clean, and structured like a spoken conversation, not a textbook.

Use the built-in slide layouts. Don’t delete placeholders or add text boxes randomly. Why? Screen readers follow the order of elements on the slide. If you drag a title to the bottom and a bullet list to the top, the screen reader will read the list first, then the title. That confuses learners who rely on assistive tech.

Stick to one idea per slide. If you’re explaining a process, break it into 3-5 slides instead of cramming it all into one. Each slide should have a clear heading that tells the learner what’s coming. Avoid vague titles like “Section 3” or “Key Points.” Use “How to Calculate ROI in Marketing” instead.

Text That Works for Everyone

Font choice matters. Use sans-serif fonts like Arial, Calibri, or Helvetica. Avoid Times New Roman, Comic Sans, or decorative fonts. These are harder to read, especially for people with low vision or dyslexia.

Size is critical. Never go below 24-point font for body text. Headings should be at least 32-point. If you’re projecting on a small screen or someone’s phone, smaller text becomes unreadable. Zooming in on a slide with tiny text often cuts off parts of the content-making it useless.

Left-align your text. Justified text creates uneven spacing between words, which disrupts reading flow for people with cognitive or visual processing challenges. Never use all caps-it’s harder to read and sounds like shouting. Use title case instead: “How to Build Accessible Slides.”

Don’t use italics or underlines for emphasis. Screen readers can’t tell the difference between italicized text and normal text. Use bold instead. And never rely on color alone to highlight important info. If you say “Click the red button,” someone who can’t see red won’t know what to do.

Color Contrast: Don’t Rely on Guesswork

White text on light gray? Black text on dark blue? These might look fine to you-but they’re invisible to many learners. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) require a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (18pt or bold 14pt).

PowerPoint has a built-in accessibility checker. Go to Review > Check Accessibility. It will flag low-contrast text. But don’t wait for the tool. Test your slides yourself. Take a screenshot, open it in a free contrast checker like WebAIM’s Contrast Checker, and see if it passes.

Use high-contrast combinations: black on white, dark blue on white, dark gray on light yellow. Avoid combinations like green on red, purple on blue, or light green on white. These are common culprits for people with color vision deficiency.

Images, Charts, and Graphics: Add Meaning, Not Just Decoration

Every image, chart, or icon on your slide needs an alt text description. Not “image of a graph”-that’s useless. Alt text should explain what the image shows and why it matters.

For a bar chart showing sales growth: “Bar chart showing quarterly sales growth from Q1 2024 ($120K) to Q4 2024 ($210K), with a 75% increase over the year.”

For a photo of a person speaking: “Instructor speaking to a diverse group of students in a virtual classroom.”

Don’t forget decorative images. If you’re using a background pattern or a clip art flower that adds no meaning, mark it as decorative in PowerPoint’s alt text settings. Screen readers will skip it, keeping the flow clean.

Tables in slides? Same rules. Use headers for rows and columns. Avoid merged cells. Screen readers can’t interpret complex tables with merged cells. If your table has more than 5 rows or 5 columns, consider breaking it into two simpler ones.

Video and Audio: Captions and Transcripts Are Non-Negotiable

If your slide includes a video, it must have accurate captions. Not auto-generated ones from YouTube-those often miss technical terms, mispronounce names, or get punctuation wrong. Use professional captioning or edit auto-captions carefully.

Always include a transcript below the video or in the course materials. Transcripts help learners who are deaf, hard of hearing, or who prefer reading. They also help non-native speakers and people in quiet environments like libraries.

Audio-only content (like a narration track) needs a written transcript too. Don’t assume learners can pause and replay. Many have attention difficulties or limited bandwidth. A transcript lets them skim, search, and study on their own time.

Animation and Transitions: Less Is More

Animated text that flies in? Sound effects that play with each slide? These aren’t fun-they’re distracting. For learners with ADHD, autism, or vestibular disorders, motion can cause nausea, anxiety, or make it impossible to focus.

Use animations only if they help explain something. For example, revealing steps in a process one at a time can be useful. But don’t use “bouncing” or “spinning” effects. Keep transitions simple: fade or wipe. And always let users pause or skip animations.

PowerPoint lets you set animations to start “on click.” Use that. Don’t let slides auto-advance with animations. Some learners need more time to process. Forcing them to keep up is exclusionary.

Test Your Slides Like a Real User

Before you launch your course, test your slides with real accessibility tools.

• Turn on your screen reader (Narrator on Windows, VoiceOver on Mac). Listen to your slide deck from start to finish. Does it make sense? Is the order logical?
• Use grayscale mode on your computer. Can you still understand the content without color?
• Zoom in to 200%. Does text wrap properly? Are any parts cut off?
• Ask someone with a disability to review your slides. You don’t need a specialist-just a friend or colleague who uses assistive tech.

Also, share your slides as PDFs. PowerPoint files can be messy for screen readers. Export them as tagged PDFs (File > Save As > PDF > Options > Create PDF/A compliant file). Tagged PDFs preserve structure and alt text better.

Tools That Make Accessibility Easier

You don’t have to do this alone. Here are free tools that help:

• PowerPoint Accessibility Checker: Built into PowerPoint 2016 and later. Run it before you save.
• Microsoft Accessibility Insights: Free tool from Microsoft that scans PowerPoint for contrast, alt text, and structure issues.
• WebAIM Contrast Checker: Paste in your colors to test contrast ratios instantly.
• Descript or Otter.ai: For transcribing audio and video content accurately.

Some learning platforms like Canvas, Moodle, and Blackboard have built-in accessibility checkers for uploaded files. Use them. But don’t rely on them completely-they miss context.

What Happens When You Skip Accessibility

One university in Ohio had to pay $250,000 in legal fees after a blind student sued because their course slides had no alt text. The slides were built in PowerPoint, exported as PDFs, and uploaded without checking. The court ruled it was discrimination under the ADA.

But beyond legal risk, you lose trust. Students notice when a course feels thoughtfully designed. They notice when it doesn’t. If your slides are hard to use, learners will assume the whole course is careless. And they’ll leave.

Final Checklist: Your Accessible Slide Deck in 5 Minutes

Before you upload your slide deck, run through this quick list:

1. Is every image, chart, or graph labeled with meaningful alt text?
2. Is all text at least 24-point and left-aligned?
3. Does every color combination pass 4.5:1 contrast ratio?
4. Are animations set to “on click” and not automatic?
5. Are videos captioned and transcripts available?
6. Is the slide order logical when read by a screen reader?
7. Have you exported a tagged PDF version for download?

That’s it. Five minutes. No extra software. No design degree needed. Just attention to detail.

Accessible slides aren’t about perfection. They’re about inclusion. Every time you make one small change-adding alt text, increasing font size, turning off auto-play-you’re saying to your students: you belong here.

Next Steps: Start Small, Think Big

You don’t need to redesign your entire course tomorrow. Pick one slide deck. Fix the alt text. Increase the font size. Turn off animations. Test it with a screen reader. That’s one step. Next week, do another. Over time, you’ll build a library of accessible materials that work for every learner.

Accessibility isn’t a project. It’s a habit. And the best part? Once you get used to it, it becomes second nature. You’ll start noticing how much better your slides feel-not just for students with disabilities, but for everyone.