New Components
Auditing a PowerPoint Deck for Accessibility
A three-pass method for auditing an existing .pptx, a 28-item checklist graded for decks specifically, and the rule for determining the resulting level.
Part 1 — The three-pass method
Run the passes in order. Each catches a different class of defect and none is sufficient alone.
Pass 1 — Automated check
PowerPoint’s built-in checker is stronger for decks than Word’s equivalent is for documents, because the defects it detects — missing titles, missing alt text, suspect reading order — are precisely the ones that matter most here. Run it first.
How to run it:
- Open Review > Check Accessibility.
- Work through the Inspection Results pane, selecting each item to jump to it.
- Read the “Additional Information” section for the recommended fix.
- Re-run until Errors and Warnings are clear.
What it reliably catches:
- Slides with no title
- Duplicate slide titles, in recent versions
- Missing alt text on images, charts and objects
- Tables with no header row
- Reading order that it judges likely to be wrong
- Non-descriptive hyperlink text
What it does not catch:
- Alt text that exists but is meaningless
- A reading order that is technically set but wrong
- Colour contrast, in most versions — including text over images
- Information conveyed by colour alone
- Missing or inaccurate video captions
- Auto-advance timings and looping motion
- Body text too small to read in a room
- Content typed into drawn text boxes rather than placeholders
As with documents, a clean checker result is a starting point, not evidence that the deck is accessible.
Pass 2 — Structural inspection
Two views expose almost all structural damage in a deck, and neither is visible from the slides themselves.
- Outline View (View > Outline View) — the single most useful audit tool for PowerPoint. It shows only slide titles and placeholder text. Any slide with a blank entry has no real title; any text visible on a slide but missing from the outline is trapped in a drawn text box and carries no structure.
- Reading Order pane (Review > Check Accessibility) — walk every slide carrying more than one object and confirm the sequence. On older builds only the Selection Pane is available, where the order is inverted: the bottom item is announced first.
Working through Outline View first is efficient: it tells you which slides need attention before you open a single one.
Pass 3 — Rendering, media & assistive technology
- Run Read Aloud, or a real screen reader such as NVDA, over each slide and follow along. This is the only reliable way to confirm reading order.
- Test contrast on the actual theme colours — body text, titles, text on coloured fills, and text over images.
- Scan for anything distinguished only by colour: chart series, legends, status indicators.
- Play every embedded video and confirm captions are present, synchronised and accurate.
- Run the deck in presentation mode start to finish, watching for auto-advance, looping motion and flashing.
- View the deck at the size it will actually be shown, and confirm body text is readable at distance.
On this page
Part 2 — Audit checklist
Tick each item that passes. Severity is fixed per item: one slide missing a title fails that Blocker for the whole deck.
Severity meanings:
- Blocker — the deck cannot be navigated or understood reliably with assistive technology. Do not distribute.
- Major — usable but significantly degraded for some audience members.
- Minor — a good-practice issue to correct in the next revision.
| Check | Severity | WCAG 2.2 |
|---|---|---|
| A. Slide foundations – the deck-specific essentials | ||
| Every slide has a real title placeholder How: View > Outline View. Every slide must show a title. A blank entry means no title, even if text appears on the slide. |
Blocker | 1.3.1, 2.4.2 |
| Slide titles are unique and meaningful How: Read the Outline View list on its own. Repeated titles such as “Results” on six slides give no way to navigate between them. |
Blocker | 2.4.2 |
| Reading order is correct on every multi-object slide How: Open the Reading Order pane and walk each slide, then confirm with Read Aloud. Order follows the pane, not visual position. |
Blocker | 1.3.2 |
| Slide content sits in placeholders, not drawn text boxes How: Outline View shows placeholder content only. Text visible on the slide but absent from Outline View is in a drawn box. |
Blocker | 1.3.1 |
| Bulleted content uses the placeholder’s own bullet levels How: Click into the list and check whether indent levels respond to Tab, rather than being typed characters. |
Major | 1.3.1 |
| No empty placeholders showing prompt text How: Page through the deck in Normal view looking for “Click to add text”. |
Minor | 1.3.1 |
| B. Images & graphical objects | ||
| Every informative image has meaningful alt text How: Right-click each image > View Alt Text. Reject filenames and unedited auto-suggestions. |
Blocker | 1.1.1 |
| Charts and SmartArt carry a summary alt text How: Select the outer border of each object, not an inner shape, then View Alt Text. |
Blocker | 1.1.1 |
| No meaningful text is locked inside an image How: Look for screenshots of tables, quotes or labelled diagrams. If you cannot select the text, it fails. |
Blocker | 1.4.5 |
| Decorative shapes and images are marked as decorative How: Check each decorative object’s alt text pane for the “Mark as decorative” tick, so it is skipped rather than announced. |
Minor | 1.1.1 |
| Grouped objects do not collapse meaning How: Select each group and listen to how it is announced. A diagram announced as one unlabelled group fails. |
Major | 1.3.2 |
| C. Tables | ||
| Every table has a header row designated How: Click in the table > Table Design > confirm “Header Row” is ticked in Table Style Options. |
Major | 1.3.1 |
| No merged or split cells How: Scan each table for cells spanning rows or columns. |
Major | 1.3.1 |
| No table is used to lay out a slide How: Ask whether the content is genuinely tabular. Image grids and side-by-side prose in a table fail. |
Major | 1.3.1 |
| D. Media & motion | ||
| Video with speech has synchronised captions How: Select each video > Playback tab > confirm a caption track is attached. Auto-generated captions used unreviewed do not pass. |
Blocker | 1.2.2 |
| Visual-only information in video has a text or audio alternative How: Watch each video with the sound off. Anything essential conveyed only visually needs an alternative. |
Major | 1.2.3, 1.2.5 |
| Nothing plays or advances automatically How: Playback tab: Start should be “When Clicked On”. Transitions tab: “After” should be unticked on every slide. |
Blocker | 2.2.1, 2.2.2 |
| Nothing flashes or strobes How: Run the deck through in presentation mode and watch for rapid flashing in builds or media. |
Blocker | 2.3.1 |
| Motion effects are subtle and click-triggered How: Check the Animations pane for spin, bounce and zoom effects, and for anything set to loop. |
Minor | 2.2.2 |
| E. Text, colour & links | ||
| Body text contrast is at least 4.5:1 How: Take the actual theme colours and test each text-on-background pairing. Check text over images and over coloured fills specifically. |
Blocker | 1.4.3 |
| No information is conveyed by colour alone How: Look at chart legends, status indicators and colour-coded cells for a label, symbol or pattern alongside the colour. |
Blocker | 1.4.1 |
| Text over images remains legible How: Check every slide with text on a photograph for a solid or heavily darkened overlay behind the text. |
Blocker | 1.4.3 |
| Link text describes its destination How: Scan every link. “Click here” and bare URLs fail. |
Major | 2.4.4 |
| Body text is large enough to read at distance How: Roughly 18pt minimum for body text. A presentation readability requirement rather than a WCAG threshold, but treat it as mandatory for decks shown in a room. |
Major | Not applicable |
| F. Deck settings | ||
| The language is set correctly How: Select content on each slide > Review > Language > Set Proofing Language, and confirm it matches the actual language. |
Major | 3.1.1 |
| Passages in another language are tagged individually How: Select each foreign-language passage and check its proofing language separately. |
Major | 3.1.2 |
| The Title property is filled in How: File > Info > Properties. A blank Title leaves assistive technology announcing the filename. |
Minor | 2.4.2 |
| Essential information is not confined to the speaker notes How: Read the notes pane on each slide and check nothing the audience needs appears only there. |
Major | 1.3.1 |
On this page
Part 3 — Determining the accessibility level
The level is set by the most severe category that fails, not by how many items pass. Counting items would let a deck with no slide titles and an arbitrary reading order score above 80%, which misrepresents it entirely.
| Level | Condition | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Level 0 – Not accessible | One or more Blocker items fail. | Do not distribute. The deck cannot be navigated or understood reliably with assistive technology. |
| Level 1 – Partially accessible | No Blocker fails, but one or more Major items fail. | Usable but degraded. Remediate before external distribution. |
| Level 2 – Substantially accessible | All Blocker and Major items pass; some Minor items fail. | Acceptable for distribution. Fix Minor items in the next revision. |
| Level 3 – Accessible | Every item passes. | Meets the checklist in full for the deck as delivered. |
Recording the result
For each audited deck, record at minimum:
- Deck name, version and audit date
- The level reached (0 to 3)
- Every failed item, with the specific slide numbers affected
- Which findings came from the automated pass and which required manual expertise — reported separately
- Whether the deck is distributed as a file, presented live, or both, since captions and motion matter differently in each case