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Re: PowerPoint shapes' alt text

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From: Steve Green
Date: Sep 19, 2024 11:54AM

This is a known issue and there isn't a fix for it other than to use images instead of shapes. I did a lot of research into making PowerPoint files accessible and it showed that NVDA works really badly with it. In fact, it's so bad that users really shouldn't be using NVDA to read PowerPoint files unless they just contain text and images (not even links).

User agent support for PowerPoint is so bad that I strongly advise against distributing PowerPoint files. If you really have to, you need to be aware that there are a load of accessibility issues that you can't fix. And it's even worse on mobile devices.

If you can't use HTML, the best (or least worst) option is to use PDF, although I can see that would be difficult for your application.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd