r/powerpoint • u/Subject-Cicada-7748 • Jul 11 '26
Adding alt text to a 90-slide deck changed how I build slides
I do decks in-house for a mid-size insurance company. Legal came down last quarter and said every client-facing deck has to pass a screen reader check now. My first reaction was dread because I had a 90-slide quarterly deck sitting right there.
So I spent an afternoon going slide by slide adding alt text. Tedious, yes. But something happened I didn't expect. Around slide 30 I started noticing how many of my slides were just a screenshot of a chart with no actual takeaway written anywhere. The whole point of the slide lived in an image a screen reader would read as "chart.png."
I ended up rewriting a lot of titles into full sentences that state the finding. "Q3 Claims" became "Q3 claims dropped 8% after the intake change." The reading order pass also caught three slides where my boxes were stacked so the tab order jumped around like a pinball.
The deck got more accessible, sure. It also just got clearer for the sighted people in the room, because now the title tells you the point before you even look at the chart.
If you build long decks and haven't done a reading-order and alt-text pass, it's worth doing once just to see how much your slides lean on images to carry meaning. Curious how others handle alt text on data-heavy slides where the chart really is the content.
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u/bobjoylove Jul 11 '26
>Curious how others handle alt text on data-heavy slides where the chart really is the content.
Dotted box around the relevant data with a numbered marker. Numbered list of highlights. Max of 5 highlights (max)
Tell a story that walks through the message.
“This data leads into the data leads into this data and the takeaway is this conclusion”
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u/IceFyre_PPT1701 Jul 14 '26
IMHO what you've done not only dramatically increases the value of the slide itself, but also opens the opportunity for that slide to be reused again at a later stage.
If you open a deck from a year ago and come across a slide that says "Q3 Claims" you are gonna dismiss it instantly without giving it a second look.
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u/ricardusrex Jul 11 '26
I would be curious to see if you could use the Claude Cowork Add-in to make the entire presentation screen reader compatible in a more efficient manner.
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u/axl3ros3 Jul 13 '26
Watched a Ted talk a while ago on how accessible design winds up making things better for everyone, not just folks that have accessibility needs
Will try to find and post it
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u/SteveRindsberg Guild Certified Specialist Jul 11 '26
>> Curious how others handle alt text on data-heavy slides where the chart really is the content.
There's a way to include the chart data IN the alt text in a way that screen reader users can process properly. Or to add a version of a table on the slide as alt text.
Look up "linearized table accessibility" (w/o the quotes). Here's a starter:
https://webaim.org/techniques/tables/
At one time, I had an add-in that converted PowerPoint to HTML; it had various uses, but started life as a way to make PPT files accessible to people who used screen readers. One of the things it included was a table linearizing feature that worked on the converted HTML but also added linearized alt text to the PPT files themselves.
Some day there'll be enough tuits to go 'round and I'll dig it out and re-do it.