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Powerpoint Master slides and Accessible text

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From: Ilana Gordon
Date: Mar 7, 2023 9:35AM

Hello gurus,

We're stuck on an issue with regard to how Powerpoint treats text and
graphics on master pages.

*Question:* Is there a way to create a PowerPoint template that allows
content to only read once and be immediately accessible on newly inserted
slides?
*Context:* We’ve been asked to make an accessible PPT template, meaning
that it’s accessible both before use and after users have created a PPT
from the template. The template is using master slides in order to have
multiple layouts ready to add to the presentation, and we’ve made these as
accessible as possible.
The issues are having everything available in the Selection Pane and/or
Outline View (required by HHS standards) versus a) having things read
multiple times or b) having to retype text in placeholders.
JAWS will read content in the slide master in its entirety before it reads
anything from the slide instance itself; if a master slide is inheriting
content from another master slide, it will read from the higher level
master slide, then the lower level master slide, then the slide itself. So
if there’s a footer with 2 logos and a link that’s been inherited from 2
levels of a slide master, it’ll read the footer content 3 times, the first
two times before everything on the main slide, which is not the desired
reading order.
In order not to repeat, content would have to only be on the master slide
or on the actual slide, not both. We tried doing this by using placeholders
on the master slide, which would then make the actual content available on
the slide itself, but that would require users to retype the text in the
text placeholders, since they would actually be showing default/sample text
before that. The same would probably be true of the logos, that they would
have to be inserted by the user and then have alt-text applied, which is
not their preferred solution.
If possible, we’d like to help our clients still be able to insert new
slides, rather than copying and pasting pre-formatted compliant slides. Is
there a way to do this that will both have all the content accessible and
compliant while simultaneously not reading multiple copies of the content?

--
Ilana Gordon
CEO
Word Wizards, Inc
8609 2nd Avenue, Unit 406-B
Silver Spring, MD 20910
*v.*301-986-0808 *fax.*301-986-0809
*Direct: 240-380-2639*
www.wordwizardsinc.com