Making Presentations Accessible

SPEAKER:
everybody, welcome to this discussion. I'm assuming everybody... Can people confirm that they're able to see the google back making presentations assessable on the screen. OK, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put that link in to the chat. And so, it's a short link so if everybody could please, if you're able, to click on that link and join me in there. So, I've given everybody edit access. And the whole point of this conversation is to, you know, I've structured it a bit in this document and so what I’m going to do now is just kind of go top to bottom through this document and explain as I go. So, thanks for coming. The first section that I have I'm highlighting on my screen right now is attendees. If you're comfortable feel free to add your name here in your Drupal username. That's just for follow up. Again, this goal here ideally would be a living document that turns into action and we'll get a little bit more into that later. But next up, I'm going to discuss the summary. So, this talk was inspired about, as you're (INAUDIBLE) for slides for any event that you're giving, you definitely want to be mindful of accessibility.

So, the reason we're here and I've invited a few other people, specifically some designers to get some input here, is to, you know, talk through some tips and tricks so everyone is able to understand your session and have a nice assessable presentation. So, the other part of this is MidCamp has received some really helpful feedback on how to improve our slides, and how to address accessibility. And there's some specific points here, I believe there's some clarification provided by another person in the chat, that images in the background. So, again this is a Google doc feel free to add that clarification in there. I apologize I kind of missed that. But this was the information that I got the first time around about how to improve specifically the MidCamp presentation template. So, again thanks for coming and collaborating and having this discussion about how to meet accessibility for all participants through presentation templates. Moving down to the next section you'll see on my screen links and resources.

So, what you'll find here are the current MidCamp templates for review. So, we have the same format, but it's in the same design and approach, but it's in a Google slides format a PowerPoint format and keynote format. so, it'd be great for you to open those up. I'm actually going to open the google slides and another tab here. And I'm going to go back to the Google tab and, you know, we'll come back to that in a second. I was able to quickly go through some of my resources to see some helpful links here. So, MidCamp additional tips to make your presentation assessable. So, this was a speaker resources and some additional tips that we've provided for people. Next one is a W3C link. How to make your presentation accessible to all. I'm going to go ahead and just open these up in another tab and then come back. And the last one that I have found is the Chicago accessibility. It's a great meetup here in Chicago. I'm located in Chicago. And it's how to pull together an assessable presentation and I believe they share this with their speakers at events.

Highly recommend everything's virtual now with them in the short term, but if you ever have a chance to go to the meetup, it's a great meetup. So, with all those, all that background all that information to kind of level set everybody, what we'd like to do is discuss MidCamp but specifically that's kind of the output of this is I'd like to gather a lot of information and tips and additional resources to turn into action to improve our camp presentation templates. So, with that what I want to do is I'm going to go into the first topic and then open it up and feel free to unmute yourself or if you're more comfortable you can put comments in the chat and I'm happy to or (UNKNOWN) as a host here can read those aloud. So, the first topic of discussion would be, has anyone here created a slide template and addressed accessibility as part of the design? If so, can you share your experience? I'll open it up to the floor. work at Canopy and we use a slide template for when we represent Canopy at camps.

And when I first came onto the organization, the template wasn't very accessible. And so, we worked on that over time. But it's an iterative process. So, every time someone as the guidelines change and as we create new presentations, all of us sort of use these slides as living documents as well that we iterate on it, you know, someone gives some feedback. Like when I first came on, there were some headings and things that were in all capital letters. And someone suggested, well, you know, for folks who might be dyslexic, or cognitive abilities differ from person to person, that all caps is too hard for people to distinguish, because they rely on the shape of the words for context. And so, we change that part of our template. So, that's just kind of an example is we just sort of change it over time. And then we realize, like, the designers didn't understand what accessibility meant. So, we worked with our designers, and they created new color combinations. And as a result, our website changed because as we realized our slide deck wasn't accessible.

Our slide deck gets inaccessible, what does that say about the website colors? And so, we've actually used it as a learning process over time. I'm not sure if that's, I didn't create that. But like I said, working on it. And, you know, and for me, it was especially important, because I give presentations on accessibility. And I'm like, I can't use this slide, because it's not accessible. So, it's that learning, that really important part of like having that self-advocacy for myself, too, and being able to take it to the marketing team. That's excellent feedback. And if y'all are looking at my screen, I'm doing my best to take notes. Again, this is a collaborative document, if you have something or links, feel free to, you know, there's nothing sacred about this document. Feel free to add information as we go. Does anybody else have any experiences to share? Again, the question is, has anyone created a slide template and address accessibility as part of the design? And if so, share your experience.

While we're waiting for that, I'm going to go ahead and go to the MidCamp template. Slide deck here. Just kind of go through some things. So, you can kind of see what our current template has been. And... curious about this slide template. Can I ask, can I kind of move away and ask a question? course. this like, what's the anticipated, like, compliance level that we're looking for when we're adjusting the slide deck? Are we looking at like AA compliance or triple A compliance? What's, you know, because they're two really different things? What's sort of the goal for us? is great. To be perfectly honest, I have not done a whole lot with presentation accessibility. My experience has been more with web and web accessibility and audits in that way. So, that's why again, we're having this discussion. I'm really looking for more information. as a digital asset, like, sorry, this is just a question. As a digital asset doesn't go through that same sort of like standards and like testing and things like that?

guidelines, you know, receivables. So, if you're not familiar with (INAUDIBLE) guidelines, POUR principles of perceivable, operable, robust, sorry, understandable and robust. So, I do believe being a digital deliverable, it would adhere here to that. And that is kind of the question is, you know, meeting those guidelines would be a double A and triple A. So, yeah, I do believe those principles still would apply. It is different because it's a different way to consume it, right? Virtually you consume it. Consume it one way when you're in a room with 1000 people in the back of the room, you consume it in a different way. So, that's what makes presentations really interesting. So, I do find that this was a really helpful tool. I do really like a lot of what the assessable Chicago digital accessibility people pull together. Cause they do fill, you know, foreground and backgrounds. They address that, we suggest using a dark background. The dark color creates an improved negative space for the lighter content.

This is what this Lincoln page says. Talking about color contrast guidelines 2.0 and talking about specific color contrasts. Is everybody here familiar with color contrast checkers? If not feel free to speak up or there's also a great link here probably going to the tool. Well, this is a new tool, I haven't used this one before. But this is a way to get a contrast ratio, it's kind of difficult to see when you try and bump up the size here. But these are different ways to say the foreground was a certain value. Oh, this is just a screenshot of the tool, it's not the tool itself. Apologies. (INAUDIBLE) been to this page as much as this looks like an application. Now let's go back to the page here see if anybody... So, in light of, you know, other people's and experiences, you know, what we can do is, was hoping for a little bit more insight in digging in a little bit more of like the MidCamp's presentation template to see if there's additional suggestions that we can have, or if somebody else has an open discussion, we can talk about that as well.

But what we can do is go up to the specific feedback and kind of have a case study and discuss this. Does anybody have any opposition of that? Or does anybody have a template? You know, I'm happy to give up control of the screen sharing, if somebody has something to show and can discuss that'd be great. Alright. I see a comment in the chat shouldn't go be as inclusive as possible to reach the greatest audience? Absolutely. After all you are delivering presentation to convey knowledge on something. Yeah absolutely. I mean the Midcap’s point of a slide deck, you know, is to reiterate the points that you're verbally telling people, so, and visually conveying. So, if they're not able to understand those things, you know, you're really doing a disservice to your audience. So, yeah. And the whole idea of a template is to just make it easy for somebody to pull their and gather their ideas together and have good patterns established. So, it's very simple to swap in and out your content for something else.

I do want to talk about this first point, because this was interesting and also, you know, I'm going to go back to the Chicago accessibility about the dark background. So, we suggest using a dark background, black, gray or blue, to host your light white, light gray foreground content. The darker color creates an improved negative space for the lighter content. And again, the point here is a white, bright background challenges certain people with dyslexia. I'm not familiar with this syndrome, so, forgive me if I get it wrong. Ireland, Berlin. I'm not familiar with that syndrome in light sensitivity. I do know from templates that I've seen, at my company and in previous places, is there's typically a mix of light, you know, like lighter and darker backgrounds, which is what we have here in the MidCamp. You know, there's typically a color, a darker color, or some other color. And then there's typically a white, kind of a blank color here. And from what I'm reading, and what I'm seeing here is, this should kind of be the exception or not even an exception, we should really try and avoid having a light background.

So, if that was something that was good feedback, so maybe a takeaway there is to remove some of those white backgrounds. And really let the user know that to avoid that. And this is really helpful, this provides context as to why a little bit more of the why instead of you know, just do not use. So, it's helpful to educate as we go along. Any other comments about like a white background versus a darker background? Great. Next, the color combinations are very low contrast. Again, 5:1, you know, that does meet double A, but just barely. So, we'll talked about that contrast, guessing it's probably this purple background and the blue background. So, the blue (INAUDIBLE) we're looking at the template right now. So, be better to bump up that contrast. So, we have a purple theme, we also have this brighter theme. So, again, this I would say, kind of with this yellow, goes back to that first point of having a light background. So, you're looking to turn feedback into action, we probably would want to, you know, not have this yellow version in our templates.

I'm curious about this contrast. Again, I don't have the tools up. I don't have too many windows open. But if somebody is on, has those tools readily available, be great to maybe post and see like what these combos are? And how close? And also, we have any suggestions? I do know that orange is a very interesting accessibility color. Can be tricky to understand and decipher, for contrast. Alright, great. (UNKNOWN) says current slide has a contrast of 5.0:1. And I'm assuming that's the red to the orange. So, that does pass double A but fails triple A. So, that's great. So, that would be the red. This will be great, because we can save the chat and understand this information for later. So, again, it's kind of a working session here. Back to this yellow, I'm curious about this one. Where is it even worth doing the contrast, because we're not recommending to have such a lighter background? Yeah, avoid bright yellow. So, let's just move beyond that. How about the blue and yellow versus the blue and white for headlines?

While we're waiting for those numbers, (UNKNOWN) asks, I know there are online tools for testing websites, but which tools are available for testing presentations locally? That's a great question. And also, OK, great. Some good information again in the chat. Yeah, if somebody wants to update either the Google doc or throw into the chat, I'll probably take a lot of this from the chat and pull that into the Google Doc later. But I use some online tools and I typically do like a screenshot and iDropper. I'm old school but I do know there's some applications. I don't have any recently. Fairly recently got a new laptop and didn't get those tools and on this machine. So, yeah, hopefully those tools will be shared and in coming. Also, afterward, (UNKNOWN) I can, we can put those in the document and if you sign your name at the top of this. If you also want to maybe add your email, just a good way that we can have a follow up afterward. Or if you're more comfortable, we can just check back on this document knowing that we'll be living in updated.

Anyway, let's go back to the chat. So, (UNKNOWN) says, I presume the watermark is not visible to those with lower vision. Back to this. You know, I would agree with that. But in this case two, it's decorative. So, it's not terribly necessary for what's going on. So, I'd love to hear other's thoughts. But for me, it's OK for decorative to possibly be lost, and not necessarily hit all the audience. But I don't... have thoughts on decorative images in general, and like alt text and things like that. And for me, and this is opinion only. You know, because decorative images, if they don't convey meaning, but I'll give my thoughts first, is if they do convey meaning, and they add to the value of the content you're creating, I think it's important to like for the alt text meant to convey what that meaning is. But if it is purely decorative and adds absolutely no value, you know, if it's the same with or without that image, I think it's OK that they're not there. You know, that's just my opinion only.

You know, what I mean, but if we go back to like, you know, guidelines and success criteria, you know, it's kind of that same thing. They're much looser with decorative images than I am, because I have that, like, if it conveys emotion and that's what you're trying to get across, then certainly it's important. But with I think our theme here, I don't know, if I think that that's important to convey. would agree. The point of this is a title slide and the presenter. So, the relevant information does have contrast, can be approved, improved to triple A. But regardless, it's yeah. There's a comment from me, yes, everything on the slide should have value or else distraction and competing for attention. So, based on that statement, I'm understanding that maybe all slides should just be blank. And a recommendation for the slide would be to get rid of. If you can't see it, it is I believe in ink print from Alice in Wonderland of the Mad Hatter himself. So, I'd love to hear opinions if it's just heavy and solid colors, because the focus is on slide in presenting in less decorative.

Comment from (UNKNOWN) says, I feel that images can add visual appeal, but only if properly incorporated. I agree with that. Like I do, I try and I admit that I don't always live up to my values that most of the images I have on my slides are decorative. But if they, I do try to put a note in my speaker notes to describe the image verbally for people who can't see them. But at times, if it is just like a picture of a cat, sometimes I'll let that skip because I'm just adding for a warm and fuzzy feeling, you know, but I certainly agree that if there is context in an image, we should be verbally describing them because we don't have the luxury of alt text when we give a presentation. responded, people are visual and could lose interest with just constant slides of text. That's true. is true. But we also have to think about if we're including everybody, we have people who can't see our slides in general, you know, I presented many accessibility conferences where 75% of the people are visually impaired, you know.

And so, we're invited to not have slides in our presentations because most of the audience can't see them. So, it goes back to that. And I'm risking, like opening up a can of worms here, as inclusion is hard. It's hard to include absolutely everybody, you know, like, if I don't have slides and I am doing a disservice for those people who do need that visual context, you know. So, there's this balance and I admit, I find it, it's a hard balance for me even, you know, because I do present in the accessibility realm. to that, possibly giving a technical presentation where you are discussing code, you are describing certain things like techniques. So, for example, if I was talking about HTML, CSS, you know, I might feel compelled on a slide to discuss poor HTML markup and then, you know, good HTML markup. So, again the point of the talk context is everything, right? So, it does get challenging to that. So, I wouldn't necessarily want to have, open up my, you know, HTML editor I'd want to make sure that it's large enough and has enough contrast and I'm able to speak through it.

So, people don't quickly see it and take away, you know, the point that this is, I'm giving this example and it is a poor example. And I'm going to give you a second example, that it's a good example. When I say those things, there's got to be some visual to say, don't do this but do this and they need to convey that out to you. So, also it's just difficult to like do I say left bracket you know HTML space. You want to describe everything on the screen, but providing enough context. (UNKNOWN) also wrote but should be possible to be inclusive without sacrifice. Again, you know, it is balance and this is a great conversation. Very, very tricky. So, how do you present a PowerPoint template for somebody like myself that would be tempted to do technical conversation versus somebody else with a different conversation? Trying to encompass all. Provide enough examples. To have good examples versus what should be avoided. I do know that there are some, you know, again, visual ways to say do this but don't do this So, maybe that should be a part of this template, to make it clear what would be considered a good, not only just provide templates and slides, but provide examples and more context.

Kind of is what I'm gleaning from here but again open for discussion. Feel free to speak up or put in the chat. got a question. And this comes from a just from PowerPoint my personal experience, I am somewhat visually impaired. I'm not like legally blind, so, I don't know braille or anything. But my experience at conferences is often and maybe not as much at MidCamp, but at some web conferences I've definitely, you know, I usually sit, you'll usually find me sitting in the front of a conference. In the front row, in the intersession room and kind of looking at the slides, cause that's where I need to be to see them very well. But even sometimes, even when I'm sitting in the front, I sometimes find that, you know, the font is just too small for me to read still. And there's a number of ways to work around that. I think, you know, sometimes somebody will say here's a link to, you know, the slides on my website and so, I'll just pull it up on my phone or my tablet or whatever, you know, my computer that I have with me.

But I think there's a number of, you know, I think that would be a question maybe it's like, how good is the, or how big do you really want the font size to be? And I think it also depends, you know, too on like what kind of, you know, how big of a screen you actually have in the room where you're presenting and you're doing it in person too. So, I think there's a lot of variables in there to some extent. But, when I try to make presentations and I haven't done a very, you know, I haven't made any sort of template, but I've definitely tried to use some, you know, pretty basic keynote or PowerPoint presentations things. And usually, the font size is pretty big and that's one thing at least for me that is kind of important. Because I have been to some times where it's like 90% of the slide is just, you know, a big image and then in the bottom corner there's like bullet points in like, very tiny font that's not that great of contrast. And, you know, I mean that's what you're hopefully helping with by saying, hey, use this template, you know.

But yeah, I was wondering does any of these recommendations that you were looking at say like, the font size really should be mostly this big or, you know, I don't know it. I'm not, you know, a very certain case and there are ways like I said to work around that but, you know, I kind of imagine at least that if, you know, at Drupal camp where you have a room full of 300 people, you know, it's like if I can't read it in the front row there's probably someone in the back row that also can't read it either. But maybe that's not the case, I don't know. going to the w3.org, those are all great points (UNKNOWN). So, I don't know if there is a specific font size because as you just saw, I was able to zoom in and out. But I know some of the guidelines that we discussed is that we recommend to people is to describe your images. As they're on the screen describe, you know, to convey what's going on. You know, also for tech words. So, on the screen here I have the speaker resources page where we give some accessibility tips about.

First bullet was describing images. Next one is just describing vocabulary tech words. So, some people may be joining, that are not familiar with like WWW or whatever else. So, it's always good to explain those terms. Make sure everybody's coming along. And also, we highly encourage people to upload the slides before. There was an interesting comment yesterday in one of the talks about not wanting to upload the slides for fear that people would like work ahead and not be as engaged in the presentation. Again, whether that outweighs, I'd love to hear other people's opinions on if it's better to not share the slides and share them afterwards so people are engaged versus sharing. I know that this tip was the article, or I believe I got it from here most likely, was to share that allows somebody that is unable to participate and or see can download it and experience it in their own way. Whether those color contrasts with that yellow was way too much, then maybe on their own laptop if they were at an in-person event, could make those adjustments just by having dark mode or I something.

So, yeah. Does anybody have any additional thoughts on that? I reference a lot of links when I talk because 45 minutes is so limiting. So, I have a lot of links on my slides and that's the reason I share my slides ahead of time is so other people have clickable access to those links and they can have like a running copy and kind of have a little bit more context to what I can't provide in the selected time period. So, looking back and thinking about the slide deck from yesterday when the presenter said she didn't necessarily like to share, she didn't have any of those links, you know. And a lot of what was on her slides, she provided context in the talk. So, I can see where that talk... Well, I would let that slide if I was giving that talk. I wouldn't necessarily have those slides ahead of time. I do find, you know, even in our opening comments of MidCamp, as (UNKNOWN) is talking, I’m doing my best to provide the links that he's talking about and sharing in the zoom chat so they are actionable is what I’m trying to get at.

So, you're not madly trying to write down or he doesn't have to spell out as he's talking through captioning like what the URL is. So, I agree with that and (UNKNOWN) has a great comment in here. If it's ever a choice on whether or not to accommodate, always choose in preference other people with disabilities. So, that's a great suggestion. Any other comments on that? I’m going to go back to here. I just want to kind of finish through some of the feedback that we have and see where that discussion takes us. So, you know, we talked through some of the color combinations. I don't know if we got through all the color combinations. let me go back. oh, we have the pink one. I think I know the answer to that. that's too bright for contrast. so, let's just say that one's going to go away. feel free to correct me if that's wrong but everything said here. Moving on to the third bullet point on my screen and back to the Google document. Background color should be either dark or fairly muted for better visual cognitive perception and not be bright or intense colors.

Yeah, so, we talked about that. that was also on (UNKNOWN), the Chicago accessibility recommendations. And yeah, the last point is kind of part of what we discuss is the best option is for a solid color background, not to have text on top of images, however faint. Because some decorative backgrounds may have visual appeal, but for others, it creates conflict with clearly seeing or comprehending the text. And an interesting conversation, just as a side note based on that, with a client we were talking with that was doing an ad and some of the text was going down over some other text. And the suggestion was to separate those two, because visually, the designer thought that was really, really cool to kind of have offsetting texts on top of each other. But the cognitive recommendation was it's very difficult to decipher which one's foreground, which one's background, you know, it was a little difficult for the context to understand and just provided a, I believe the term was cognitive load.

Somebody being able to read an experience it. So, from a design standpoint, yes, it creates visual interest, but is it worth the cost of cognitive load on people? You know, interpreting it. And could we reach a wider audience? I think kind of some of the points that I'm reading in the chat is based on some of this feedback, you know. We're putting burden on some people to kind of convey design choices, you know. Is there a way that we can reach that wider audience without asking them for that cognitive burden or to decipher? So, is there any comments or discussion on that? Feel free to speak up. But again, I think, based on just going through this feedback, having it visually up on the screen and talking through it here, I do feel like we can make a better, some really good improvements to the MidCamp template. It would still be good to kind of workshop, I think some good examples and some bad examples and how to put that into the template notice, like the slide. Like use this as a template for something, but it's more descriptive for like, as we're saying, it's more to teach people how and what to do.

Any other. I see another comment here, I'm going to go ahead and read. (UNKNOWN) says there are no laws that expect something to be visually appealing. That's true. But there are laws on ensuring inclusion of people with disabilities. Absolutely. do always say that Craigslist is the perfectly themed website. But... And I don't just because I'm not a front-end person. But I cannot read light text on dark backgrounds. And so, I have a really hard time with that concept of not having a lighter slide. Most of my slide decks have lighter backgrounds with dark grey, or black or dark green text. So, I'm not sure how I feel about the opposite. And that's it. Just honest me from the gut. I can't read dark mode, you know. So, I'm being exclusive of myself when I create a slide deck with black with light or dark gray print. So, that’s a little bit of a conundrum for me that point. I do have to be honest. am the same. When I got my new laptop, I thought for sure I'd want to go into dark mode. And I was missing things that I had seen before.

I don't know whether it was behavior or for me, this is again, just my personal experience, but I found that when I went to dark mode in certain applications that I had used before, it was a cognitive load on myself to teach myself and I was missing responses to emails, because I was not trained or used to seeing what was going on with that. And also, I just found it a lot harder to decipher menus that I was expecting to see. So, that's why with you looking at my screen right now, I do not have dark mode. Just personal preference. So, (UNKNOWN) has a comment. Yes, some people do not do as well with high contrast or dark mode, because they have been long trained in the opposite. Absolutely. That reminds me of really good (UNKNOWN). I don't know if people know this, but (UNKNOWN) has a really good monthly, I hope I'm getting this right. But it's called (UNKNOWN). And it was with a screen reader. And it was interesting, the person that was maybe if I'm getting this right (UNKNOWN) you can put the link in there.

But what I thought was interesting is a gentleman was giving an overview on a screen reader. And his experience was very interesting, because he went slowly blind. And so, he found his experience where as his vision was going to start using screen readers. And there it is, it's in the chat. I thought that was a really interesting experience from somebody from that experience. Another talk that I've heard was somebody that's been deaf since birth versus losing hearing over time. So, I agree with (UNKNOWN) comment about been long trained in the opposite. There's a difference between having experiencing something in one way versus having it. Having the need for it over time is just a different way. And I think the final thing I'll say about that is just understanding and using new tools. it's always interesting to explore. And we're coming up on time here, but that's another part of today is I find it really good to have these conversations, so I can learn something about how to improve and all the considerations.

So, does anybody have any, some final thoughts here? Or feel free to add into the Google back. (INAUDIBLE) any last thoughts, as we're kind of wrapping up about how to make a presentation accessible. also like say, you work for an agency or an organization and you want the best kind of feedback, like maybe taking it to a accessibility lab. Like how we would do with our websites, you know, local universities have accessibility labs, or also like the lighthouse group. And getting a broader scope of real users versus us who might not have all of these challenges, you know, getting some real, native, real people, you know, in on some of those testings. Especially for using templates from, you know, throughout the year. You know, the same template, but just injecting our own information in there. You know, treat it like a digital asset we do on the web, you know, because it is on the web. advice. Does anybody know of any companies or places to do that? Feel free to put them in the chat or even better put them in this document.

Regardless, I'll try and collect that and put that in there. But I think that's a really good point is to include people and get that direct feedback. So, I will say, again, I really, like in the document, the Chicago digital accessibility and inclusion design meetup is really great. There's some really great assets out here. I know personally, we've used the venue checklist, which has been great. When we were in person at MidCamp, this was a really great checklist. So, it's great that they have their, you know, the presentations about how to give accessible presentations. With that, you know, it's 2:47 I think we can wrap this up. Thanks, everybody. You know, this wasn't a formal presentation. This was a discussion. Really appreciate everybody, you know, participating. What I'll do is I'll take a lot of the comments in chat, put it in this document and I hope y'all learn something about how to improve your slides and let's include everybody with our ideas with presentation. So, thanks so much.