Thank you for contributing to the Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology! UC Davis is committed to making experiences as inclusive as possible for everyone in the campus community, so we’ve compiled this accessibility guide as an aid while you prepare your presentation. Many of the recommendations below are steps you already know how to do, and likely already do, when creating slides and documents. We are here to help with any of the items below!
New federal guidance
In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a final rule clarifying how Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to digital content provided by state and local governments—including public colleges and universities. At UC Davis, we view this not only as a legal mandate but as an urgent call to action to remove digital barriers that affect real people every day.
For many disabled students, staff, and community members, digital accessibility determines whether they can participate in campus life, access course materials, submit applications, or engage with campus services. When digital resources are inaccessible, people are excluded. When they are designed inclusively, everyone benefits.
As we approach the April 24, 2026 compliance deadline, we encourage you to use your SITT preparation as a moment to reflect on the human impact of accessible design. Whether you’re sharing slides, building Canvas content, or linking to external media, incorporating accessibility best practices helps ensure that all users—regardless of ability—can engage with your materials. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 provide not only a technical standard, but also a foundation for equity.
We’re excited to support you in this important work!
Notes
While the recommendations we share here are relevant for any presentation or word-processing software, we are only providing step-by-step instructions and links to support documentation for two slide presentation tools, Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides, and two word-processing tools, Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
To keep this page as succinct as possible, we share screenshots and short screencasts of some of these processes on the SITT Presenter Accessibility Guide Media Resources page. Links throughout the page below will direct you to specific sections of that page in this same browser window. You may want to keep that page open in a new tab to make it easier to go back and forth. The document icon 📄 will indicate when we have linked to a support document and the movie camera icon 🎥 will indicate when there is a video or screenshot on our Media Resources page.
Please feel free to reach out to schedule a consultation or a co-working session as you work on your materials—we are happy to help! You can reach us at instructionaldesign@ucdavis.edu.
For slides and documents
Click on each recommendation for more information.
- Set a few properties
Setting a few properties for any digital item you produce - documents, slides, etc. - allows screen readers to accurately share what the document is and how it should be read.
🎥 The short screen casts in the "Set a few properties" section of the Media Resources page will show you how to set the title and language properties of documents in the four different software packages: Google Docs, Google Slides, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft PowerPoint.
- Select easy-to-read fonts, including size and color
Font choice: Use an easy-to-read font face, such as Arial or Proxima. Sans serif fonts are slightly easier to read than serif fonts.
📄 Learn more about serif versus san serif fonts, including an image showing the main differences.
Font size: Use a text size that will make slide content legible for those who have medium or small screens. We recommend a minimum font size 14 for slides and size 12 for documents.
Color contrast: Be sure that there is a sufficient difference in color between text and its background that all readers can read the text easily.
🎥 See how to check the color contrast.
Font color: Convey information with text features in addition to color so that color blind readers can see them. For example, indicate important vocabulary by making it bold and green instead of just green, so that folks who can’t see the green will still know that it is important vocabulary.
- Add alt text to images
Add alt text to all images in documents or slides. Alt text is a written description of visual elements like pictures, graphs, or charts. This allows devices called screen readers, which read computer files and websites aloud to blind users, to describe images as well.
How do we write “good” alt text? First, mark images that are strictly aesthetic as “decorative.” Second, be precise. Third, be as concise as possible. Fourth, align the alt text for each image with your learning outcomes. For example, if your art students need to notice the use of light in a painting, include information about the light in your alt text.
Good alt text is like a comedian delivering the perfect punchline—it adds clarity, context, and keeps the audience engaged. Bad alt text? That’s like a heckler shouting random nonsense—distracting, unhelpful, and totally ruining the flow. One enhances the experience, the other derails it.
📄 Learn how to add or edit alt text in Google Docs & Slides.
🎥 Review screenshots of adding alt text in Google Slides.
📄 Learn how to add alt text in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, including guidance on how to write the alt text itself.
- Use headings styles in order
Avoid “heading impostors!” Instead of just typing text and making it bold with large font to look like a title or heading, we must arrange our documents according to the formatting tools built into MS Word, Google Docs, Google Slides, and PowerPoint. This ensures that the underlying code is set correctly for screen reader use and allows for easy skimming and navigation.
It is also important to use the heading levels in order. This means starting with heading 1, and then make the next subsection heading 2, rather than skipping right to heading 3. A screen reader user will not be able to skip to other headings if they are non-existent.
📄 Learn how to use heading styles to improve accessibility in Word.
Note for Google Slides: you must use the Title slide template to get a Title. Unfortunately, you can’t designate text as titles after the fact.
- Use list styles
Use the list style rather than making lists manually. This allows screen readers to accurately decipher the text as a list rather than just as a string of text with numbers thrown in.
📄 Learn how to add a numbered list, bulleted list, or checklist in Google Docs & Slides.
📄 Learn how to create a bulleted or numbered list in Microsoft Word.
📄 Learn how to add bullets or numbers to text in PowerPoint.
- Use descriptive links
Rather than writing “click here” when linking to a different resource, use text that explains what the user will find when they click. This allows users who need screen readers to more easily navigate your content.
Screen readers are software programs that read text aloud to blind and low-vision individuals and others who benefit. To navigate a webpage, users listen to a list of links to decide where to go. Ensure that each hyperlink you write is descriptive enough to make sense when removed from its context. For example, if a long, nonsensical hyperlink is pasted under the text “visit the following,” then the screen reader will read aloud the long strand of letters and numbers that make up the link.
Not very helpful!
In addition, if you use links that only say “click here” or “more,” when a screen reader announces these different links, it will just say “click here, click here, click here.” This is not very helpful for a user trying to determine which link to select.
An exception to this accessibility rule is for printed documents, on which full hyperlinks should be written out, since printed documents aren’t clickable.- Use tables sparingly
Tables should be used for displaying tabular data, rather than for slide or document layout. To make tables comprehensible for screen readers, please have a title for your table, identify a header row, and don’t merge cells.
📄 Learn how to create accessible tables in Word.
📄 Learn to make your PowerPoint presentations accessible.
Since tables can be a little extra tricky to make accessible, we encourage you to schedule a consultation if you are including tables in your materials: instructionaldesign@ucdavis.edu.
- Use built-in Accessibility Checkers
Built-in accessibility checkers can assist in identifying and resolving accessibility issues.
📄 Learn how to improve accessibility with the Microsoft Accessibility Checker for Word and PowerPoint. Microsoft also has an Accessibility Assistant.
📄 Learn to make your PowerPoint presentations accessible.
📄 Although there is not a built-in accessibility checker for Google Docs or Google Slides, you can use this guidance to make your Google Doc or Slides more accessible, with lots of links to specific guidance.
Just for slides
Click on each recommendation for more information.
- Use built-in templates to create slide titles
Each slide should have its own unique title. This will make it easier for those using screen readers to know for sure what slide you are talking about. Even if one topic is discussed on more than one slide, you can make the second one something like, “Genetic Engineering - slide 2” or “Osmosis: Steps 3-4” to keep the slide title unique.
In Google Slides, you must use the Title slide template to get a Title. Unfortunately, you can’t designate text as titles after the fact.
- Specify reading order
Screen readers need to be told the order in which to read the different elements on a slide. Otherwise, they might read the title last, and that would be very confusing for users!
📄 Learn to create slides with an accessible reading order in PowerPoint.
In Google Slides, reading order is set by selecting an object (e.g., image, text box) on the slide and then selecting “Order” from under the “Arrange” menu. “Send backward” or “bring forward” can be used to change the reading order. To check the reading order, click on a blank part of the slide so that no object is selected and then hit the “tab” key multiple times to cycle through the objects on the slide. The order in which the objects are selected is the order they will be read by a screen reader.
- Minimize motion or animation
- Limit motion and animation to moments where they add impact or value to your presentation (source on motions / animations in presentations).
- Add slide numbers
Add slide numbers to your presentation deck to easily reference aloud for those following along in alternative formats.
📄 Learn to add slides numbers in PowerPoint.
Many thanks to Margaret Merrill, Katie Healey, and Joshua Hori for their work and their expertise in making this guide.
🚧 Please note: This guide is a work in progress! We welcome your feedback on how we can make it more clear and more user-friendly. Please send feedback to instructionaldesign@ucdavis.edu.