PowerPoint, groups and accessibility

Making an accessible PowerPoint slide is not as easy as it sounds, despite guidance from Microsoft itself. Sometimes we come across issues that need a bit of research before we figure out the solution.

During a recent webinar, a question about “nested” boxes and alt-text came up, and I have to admit, I was initially confused. I did not understand what was meant by “nested” boxes, but luckily, the participant was willing to send an example slide, and I got to work.

To understand the issue, we first need to establish some of PowerPoint’s quirks. When we add anything to a slide, be it a text box or an image, we are adding an individual box or object.

It is possible to select several of these objects and group them together, creating one big box or group. We might want to do this because we arranged these objects in a certain way and wish to move this arrangement around the slide.

However, what we need to remember is that once we group these objects together, the group is now seen as an individual object in itself. The “nested” boxes our participant referred to were simply the individual objects in the group.

We can ungroup our objects again to gain our individual objects back, but the fact that our group is now read as an individual object is important for screen reader software.

In PowerPoint, screen reader software will read out ungrouped individual objects (such as text boxes and alt-text for images when provided) in the order we set it to. If we group a number of objects, however, some screen readers will only detect the group.

The text inside it, and any images with alt-text, will mean nothing. The screen reader cannot access them. Instead, we could write alternative text for our group, but if there is a lot of information here, this may be counterproductive.

In other words, if you work a lot with groups and worry about accessibility, there are two ways of dealing with this issue.

After grouping your objects into one group, you can put all meaningful content into the group’s alt-text. The objects inside are purely visual; a screen reader will ignore them. This is not very handy if there is a lot of text or information, however.

You can ungroup your objects. Each object becomes separate. Text boxes will be read, so no alt-text is needed, and visual objects can be described with alt-text or marked as decorative. You can use the Reading Order pane to control how it is read.

It was great to see how everyone thought about their own work and accessibility. After all, if we all keep trying, we can make a change.