Do you have an important presentation coming up? Or do you need to write a report and share it with your team soon? You'll certainly put a lot of thought into how you craft your message so that you communicate it effectively to everyone you need to reach. But what if that includes people with disabilities? Will your presentations, documents, and other communications be accessible to people with disabilities? Over 1 billion people worldwide have a disability, and 70% of the time they are non-apparent. At some point, most of us likely will face some type of temporary, situational, or permanent disability. So, whether you realize it or not, it is very likely that some of the people you need to communicate with have a disability.
With digital transformation accelerating and remote and hybrid work here for the long term, it's more important than ever to make your presentations, documents, and other shared content accessible. Fortunately, awareness and interest are growing. So much so that an entire conference on this topic started up last year and just completed its second event in November: The Design + Accessibility Summit 2021. Microsoft had the honor and privilege to participate in the conference to educate people about creating accessible content, connect with them, take in their feedback, and learn from the incredibly talented and passionate people presenting and attending. Of the 23 excellent sessions, six focused on Microsoft Office apps, and three of those were presented by Microsoft engineers. And while the event is over, you can still register for access to the presentation and Q&A video recordings, chat, and handouts until November 15, 2022. Microsoft will be participating in a new event on March 10-11, 2022, The Design + PowerPoint Summit, which will also dive in to how to make your presentations accessible.
Making communications accessible is a partnership between technology providers such as Microsoft and you, the people creating the content. Microsoft has made a 5-year commitment to help decrease the gap in education, employment, and access to technology for people with disabilities around the world. This includes investment in tools that make it easier to be inclusive, such as the Accessibility Checker, PowerPoint Live in Teams, the Accessibility ribbon in PowerPoint, which is available to Office Insiders on Windows and Mac, and desktop users of PowerPoint for the web, and many others (see What’s New in Microsoft 365 Accessibility to learn more). Your know-how and compassion are needed together with these tools to make the documents and other content we depend on accessible.
To help get you started on your journey of making your content accessible, we are providing one of the sessions from the conference below as well as on the MSFTEnable YouTube channel:
Use the links below to download the handout and sample presentation.
Continue the conversation by joining us in the Microsoft 365 Tech Community! Whether you have product questions or just want to stay informed with the latest updates on new releases, tools, and blogs, Microsoft 365 Tech Community is your go-to resource to stay connected!
Posted at https://sl.advdat.com/3IZC6iM