I asked a question to the collective wisdom of my LinkedIn connections recently, and it sparked a great conversation and research into accessible presentation software. Here’s what I found comparing accessibility features of some of the major presentation software platforms: AhaSlides, Poll Everywhere, Mentimeter, and Slido.
AhaSlides
The most shared tool, AhaSlides, seems to be missing some critical accessibility features. Compounding on that, there isn’t anything about accessibility I can find in their online knowledge base or community platform. Specifically, I had trouble finding any way that I could add ALT text to the images in my presentations in AhaSlides, a critical component of my presentations. I also couldn’t find information on how accessible the participant interface was with assistive technology or keyboard navigation. I will have to do a bit more testing and reach out to AhaSlides for more information.
Poll Everywhere
While it wasn’t exactly the kind of tool I was looking for, Poll Everywhere surprised me with having their VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) readily available! From their page on accessibility, they outline their features (keyboard navigation, text alternatives for media, and built-in compliant color contrast, among others) and provide the full document for download. Poll Everywhere is more of a tool to add interactivity to an existing presentation built in other software (PowerPoint, for example) than it is to create an entire presentation from scratch, but I’ll definitely be seeing what I can do with this new tool!
Slido
Honorable mention goes to Slido – while it wasn’t as robust a tool as I wanted, it seems somewhat accessible. They also have a VPAT available on their accessibility help page, but it highlights where some of the accessibility features fall short. For example, they don’t completely support ALT text for images and some of their text and non-text elements do not meet contrast ratio requirements. They do, however, outline some of the ways to use Slido with assistive technologies and keyboard navigation.
Mentimeter
While I was sad about some other features going away, I don’t think I’ll be able to leave my trusted Mentimeter just yet, because I believe they accel in accessibility over the other full presentation software platforms I researched. Not only can I add my ALT text, I get a warning on every slide where I haven’t done so! The built-in color contrast checker is very handy too – again, a warning shows up on my slide designer, and in my presentation accessibility report. (Yes, this exists!) Mentimeter also provides a full accessibility statement and VPAT, and help and blog articles about accessibility features as they are developed.
Final Decision
I was quite impressed with Poll Everywhere, and even though I was looking for a tool to create my entire presentation with instead of an embeddable option, I think it’s worth my time to explore this software further. For now, however, I’ll be staying with Mentimeter until my annual renewal comes up. Nothing else comes close for accessible presentation software, if you’re looking for slide/content creation tools as well.
But maybe we’ll revisit this topic in a few months? In the meantime, I used Mentimeter for my ATD TechKnowledge session and it was well received, so I’ll be sticking with it.