Accessibility Checker - Limitations

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Accessibility Checker Limitations: Still Needs That Human Touch!

The Accessibility Checker is a good starting point, but it is essential to recognize that there are limits to what any automated tool can detect. You will need to check your presentation to ensure the proper access strategies are applied to your content.

You can not rely on the Accessibility Checker as the sole means of addressing accessibility in your presentation. The following are Accessibility Checker limitations to consider. 

 

Although the Accessibility Checker can review a PowerPoint and generate a list of all accessibility errors, the Accessibility Checker cannot identify if meaningful alternate text is provided from the slide's context.

That is where you come in. 

For example, if the alternate text of a picture in PowerPoint is "image1.jpg", the Accessibility Checker will mark that picture accessible even though it is not descriptive enough.

It is still effective practice to individually check images for appropriate alternate text based on the context of the slide. 

 

 

Screen readers will interpret each slide in a particular order. It is important to manually verify the order in which each slide is arranged to ensure the information makes sense when read aloud. Later we'll discuss how using the pre-built templates can automatically define proper reading order. You'll also learn an easy trick to check the reading order of slides manually. 

 

An important aspect of color for both low vision and colorblind users is sufficient contrast between foreground (text or graphics) and the background. Unfortunately, the Accessibility Checker cannot automatically determine which slides have adequate contrast. We'll discuss this more in detail later in the micro-course.