Design for Accessibility: Accessible Presentations with Google Slides PDF Free Download
1 / 20
/20
100%
DESIGN FOR
ACCESSIBILITY
Accessible Presentations with Google Slides
Willie Payne
Assistant Professor
Outline
1. Overview of the class
2. Accessible presentations (with Google Slides)
About Willie (He/Him)
Assistant Professor in SILS (2023–)
●Teaching User Experience and Design.
●Researching Accessibility, Informal STEM
Learning, and Creative Computing.
Background
●PhD in Music Technology from NYU
●BS/MS in CS, BM in Music Comp from CU Boulder Photo of MSIS student Norry Lu and me
with a braille display and MIDI keyboard.
Class Overview - Design for Accessibility
●Introduce concepts in Disability
Studies and Inclusive Design
●Six Assignments
○Access Technology Research, Disability
Justice Readings, Web Accessibility Audit
●One large group project
○Making short educational activities for
the GMS Accessible STEM Expo in
Raleigh
●Second time teaching this class
Students on the steps of Governor Morehead School
Organized into 3 Modules (1/3)
INTRO ACCESSIBILITY + DISABILITY
Topics: AT, disability
justice, plain language,
disability aesthetic
Skills: Creating and
giving accessible
presentations, making
images and video
accessible
INCLUSIVE DESIGN SPECIAL TOPICS
Organized into 3 Modules (2/3)
INTRO ACCESSIBILITY + DISABILITY INCLUSIVE DESIGN
Topics: Inclusive Design
Practices, WCAG, UX
research methods with
disabled participants
Skills: Identifying and/or
remediating inaccessible
websites
SPECIAL TOPICS
Organized into 3 Modules (3/3)
INTRO ACCESSIBILITY + DISABILITY INCLUSIVE DESIGN SPECIAL GUESTS
Last Year: Industry
Design, Social Media,
Data Visualization
Skills: Dependent on
final project
Who Takes This Class
●20 Students
○15 grad
○5 undergrad
●Mix of interests and technical skills
○Information Science/Journalism - UX design, digital accessibility
○Library Science - physical accessibility, learning
How I think about Course Accessibility?
●Slides posted in advance and made accessible
●Zoom Attendance Option
●Lots of chances to get help
○Office hours four days a week
○Weekly walk-in Open Lab.
○Ad Hoc meetings
●No late deductions (until the last week)
●Will regrade resubmissions
●Alternative assignments and projects
○No coding or digital fabrication necessary
Accessible Presentations
(With Google Slides)
“Bad” Presentations are Inaccessible
Too much text - PowerPoint
automatically shrinks font size and
reduces spacing.
Extremely low color contrast - will look
worse on many projectors.
When Students Use Google Slides
ASSIGNMENTS
●Assn. 1 - AT Around Us
●Assn. 5 - Design Meets
Disability*
●Project - Final Presentation*
Reduced scaffolding for each.
IN-CLASS COLLABORATION
●Shared Class Values
●Access as Aesthetic Activity
Creating and giving accessible presentations is baked into the course design.
* Students can use other presentation software if they prefer.
Embedding Google Slides in Canvas
I link either a “viewable” or
“editable” version of slides
allowing students to access
directly within Canvas.
Accessible Presentation Guidelines
In the Slides
●Large Sans-Serif font, fewer words
●High contrast, clear layouts, no animations
●Unique titles, descriptive links
●Images have alternative text
●Room at the bottom for captions
While Presenting
●Speak slowly
●Describe figures
Class Concepts
●Plain Language
●Visual Design
●Multimodality
We return in:
●Photos/Videos
●Web
●Projects
Grading both course content and accessibility (1/3)
From Assignment 1:
●Research an Access
Technology (AT).
●Find a first-person account
of someone who uses it.
●Create and present an
accessible slide.
Results in 20 slides encompassing
navigation, computer access,
gaming beauty, sex, etc. Example slide submitted by a student.
Grading both course content and accessibility (2/3)
Augmentative and
alternative
communication.
Includes a first
person video of a
child using it.
Strengths and
weaknesses lack
some nuance, but
it is pretty good.
Grading both course content and accessibility (3/3)
Alt: A person on a
couch using an
iPad, looking at a
phone being held
in front of them by
another person.
Unique title
Large font
High contrast
Clear layout
No caption
under image
Subtitles will
conceal text.
Sometimes Students do Cool Things
This group researched
DeafBlind poet John Lee Clark.
Staring from my template they:
●removed an image of him.
●replaced it with his own
self-description in this
white box.
Limitations of Google Slides
I particularly like Google Slides
●I know it and students know it.
●It is optimized for collaboration and it is free.
However it has limitations
●Limited accessibility support, e.g. hard to tell reading order.
●No automated checking for color/unique titles/empty pages.
●Improved with 3rd-party software like Grackle.
