Reading a Presentation

Module 6.1: Reading a Presentation When you open an existing presentation, you land in a list of slides called the Normal view. Down arrow once to move to the second slide. Your screenreader will tell you the title of that slide and say, “2 of 22,” indicating that you have landed on the second slide in a presentation with 22 slides, or whatever the total number is. Continue Down arrowing to hear more titles. You can press the home and end keys to get to the first and last slides in the presentation, respectively. To read the full presentation, press the F5 key to open the Slide show view. Regardless of where your cursor is in the list of slides, pressing F5 will always open the Slide Show on the first slide. The entire text of the first slide should then be read to you. Sometimes when y

Creating Slides in the Slide Area Pane

Module 6.2: Creating Slides in the Slide Area Pane Individual slides are created and edited in the Slide area pane. Similar to a window on a house, a pane is a module of a window. The PowerPoint screen is partitioned into several panes. Move between them by pressing F6 and Shift F6. With your current focus in the Slide area pane, press F6 to move between the following panes: the Status bar, the Toolbar, the Upper ribbon, the Slide thumbnails pane, and wrap back to the Slide area pane. For the moment, the Slide notes pane does not appear. The Slide thumbnails and Slide notes panes will be discussed later in this Module. It can be confusing to follow instructions in the abstract. we suggest that you read through each module here and then use the information to prepare a presentation.

• The Title Slide (25 min)
• Other Slide Layout Types (44 min)
• Inserting Pictures and Alt Text (46 min)
• Inserting Audio and Video Clips (21 min)
• Inserting Links into a Presentation (12 min)

Slide Thumbnails Pane

Module 6.3: Slide Thumbnails Pane Each slide is prepared and edited in the Slide area pane. In the Slide thumbnails pane, you can delete, copy, and move slides that you have already created. The Slide area and Slide thumbnails panes are adjacent, so you can move back and forth between them by pressing F6 and Shift F6. In the Slide thumbnails pane, down and Up arrow through your slides. You will hear the title of each slide. Using standard windows keystrokes, it is easy to edit the presentation. To Delete a slide, after up or Down arrowing to it, press the Delete key. No confirmation is requested. The slide simply disappears. To move a slide elsewhere in the presentation order: Up or Down arrow to the slide to select it. Press Control X to cut it to the Clipboard. Up or Down arrow to

Slide Notes pane

Module 6.4: Slide Notes pane You can add notes to provide more details to your presentation. These notes can serve as reminders of the things you want to say during your talk. Because they are included in the PowerPoint file, they can be sent to meeting participants so they have them for future reference. They can also be printed out for hard copy distribution. Visually, the Slide notes pane appears directly below the Slide area pane as a large edit box. Slide notes are not visible to audiences while presentations are being given. The Slide notes pane does not initially appear when you cycle through the panes with the F6 key. To make it appear, press F6 until you hear Toolbar Spellcheck. Tab once to the Slide notes button and press Enter or the Spacebar. Continue pressing F6 to get to t

Formatting Considerations

Module 6.5: Formatting Considerations PowerPoint is primarily a visual medium for conveying ideas to audiences. This module discusses the most important aspects of overall presentation and individual slide formatting. Getting a presentation to look right can be challenging for screenreader users. our advice is to take your best shot, but always have a sighted colleague check your work. Screenreaders don’t always give you accurate information about presentation appearance.

• Themes (54 min)
• Background Colors (10 min)
• Changing Font Color (13 min)
• Transitions (37 min)
• Understanding Placeholder Size and Position (49 min)

Reading Inaccessible Graphics with JAWS PictureSmart

Module 6.6: Reading Inaccessible Graphics with JAWS PictureSmart Released in March 2024, the JAWS PictureSmart with Generative AI feature enables you to quickly get detailed image descriptions encountered in various places, including graphics in PowerPoint presentations. For instructions on initial enabling of this feature Once enabled, to get an image in a PowerPoint slide described, do the following: While in the Slide area pane, Navigate to a slide containing an image. Maximize the window by pressing Alt and the Spacebar together, followed by X. Tab to the placeholder containing the image to give it focus. Press the layered keystroke Insert and the Spacebar together, followed by P C. A tick-tock sound plays to indicate that results are being generated. After processing, a new window o

Practical Tips for Creating and Delivering Presentations

Module 6.7: Practical Tips for Creating and Delivering Presentations Especially when new to PowerPoint, thinking about presentation content, slide type choice, moving around between placeholders and editing text, and manipulating the awkward JAWS spellcheck workaround can be too much to juggle all at once. Consequently, you may prefer to create content in Word, edit it and spellcheck it there, and then copy and paste the text into PowerPoint. That way, you can initially focus on preparing your text in a more familiar typing and editing environment. To make it easy to navigate through your slides, as well as keep track of how many you have, think about marking up each slide title with headings in Word. Don’t bullet text in Word because this will be done automatically when you copy the text