Accessible PowerPoint (implementation guide)

3.5. Header and footer

The header, footer and slide numbers are created with appropriate placeholders, marked as decorative and free of relevant information.

What is meant by this?

The header, footer and slide numbers in PowerPoint are important elements for orientation, but should not contain any relevant information. Instead, they should be provided with placeholders such as "Date" or "Title".

Placeholders in PowerPoint are predefined text fields or symbols that are automatically filled with specific content, such as slide numbers, date or time. Placeholders can be used in the header and footer to display recurring elements such as the company logo or presentation titles on each slide. Placeholders for slide numbers, for example, give viewers an orientation within the presentation.

The header, footer and slide numbers should be labelled according to their content. In PowerPoint, these can be marked as "decorative" to signalise that they do not contain any essential content for the presentation and can therefore be skipped by screen readers and voice output.

Why is it important?

It is important to keep headers and footers free of relevant information, as screen readers and voice output devices often do not read out information from headers and footers and important information could therefore be overlooked. If headers and footers are read out by screen readers and voice output devices, this disrupts the reading flow because they are read out again on every page

How can I implement/check it?

To design the header and footer with placeholders, proceed as follows, depending on your operating system:

For Mac:

1. Click on "Insert" in the menu bar.
2. Select "Header and footer" there. A pop-up window appears.
3. There you can select what you want to have in the header and footer and whether the content should also be displayed on the title slide.
4. Once you have clicked on "Apply to all", the corresponding text fields will appear on the slides.

You can mark the header and/or footer as decorative. To do this, select the Footer text field. Right-click to open a menu. Select "Display alt text..." and a window will appear on the right-hand side. Select the "Mark as decorative" option there.

For Windows:

1. Click on "Insert" in the menu bar.
2. Select "Header and footer" there.
3. Click on the "Header" and/or "Footer" checkbox.
4. Use placeholders such as "Date" or "Title" and mark the elements as decorative.
5. Click on "Slide number" and select the desired position and formatting.
6. Save your changes.

You can decoratively mark the header and/or footer by selecting the text field of the footer. Right-click to bring up the menu and select the "Display alt text..." option. A window will appear on the right-hand side. Here you can select the option "Mark as decorative".