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Re: Powerpoint Master slides and Accessible text

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From: Karen McCall
Date: Mar 7, 2023 10:14AM

Do you have an example of this?

I use Slide Master view to create custom layouts that can then be used in a presentation by going to the Home Ribbon, Insert Layout and the newly created and named layout is available in Normal view and as part of a PowerPoint presentation.

Any text added to a slide master is part of the background and should not be read by adaptive technology. Content that is to be read by adaptive technology should be on the slide canvas while in Normal view. If default placeholders are used to create the custom layouts, then the contents of those placeholders will appear in Outline view to the left of the slide canvas. If text boxes are used, it will not. You can create custom slide layouts using Text, Content, Picture or Table placehodlers.

The caveat to this is that accessible content is added to the default placeholders. It is possible to add inaccessible content to those placeholders...or any editable object on a slide.

Header and Footer information should be added through the Insert, Slide Number, Header, Footer tools, not on the slide master. In the Selection Pane or Reading Pane, have the slide number read before the header, footer, date information so that once someone hears the slide number, they can skip to the next slide once they've heard the header/footer/date information.

Not sure that answers your questions. I'd need to see what you mean in order to provide more information.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Ilana Gordon
Sent: Tuesday, March 7, 2023 11:36 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Powerpoint Master slides and Accessible text

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
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