Your presentation is beautiful, but is it accessible?

Love it or hate it, presentations and decks are an inevitable part of our jobs.

While much is said about accessibility in web and app development, it's equally important to make your presentations accessible whether you're using Google Slides, Powerpoint, Keynote or plain PDFs.

As a primer, folks should start by familiarizing themselves with the accessibility features of Adobe Acrobat.

Acrobat provide tools for doing an accessibility check on your document, which is important because sometimes when you "Export to PDF" from a different system, it doesn't automatically carry over your accessibility features to PDF format.

If you're a Powerpoint user, then Microsoft provides a good intro into making your presentations more accessible.

Google Slides also provides some basic guidelines

Lastly, the Apple documentation for Keynote accessibility is not as thorough as the others, but we found this guide from TCU which provides some richer context for making your Keynote presentations accessible.

Ultimately, though, accessibility should not be an afterthought that is bolted on once a presentation is done. It works best when it's integrated from the beginning into the strategy, structure and design of your presentation.

For more information and to better understand the different audiences you are designing for with accessibility, start with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.

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