Tips for Equal Access Presentations

A few suggestions for making your presentation accessible to each member of your audience.

• Allow access to front row seats for persons with disabilities.
  
• If possible, adjust the lighting for persons with visual disabilities. Ask what works best for them.
  
• Make aisles accessible so participants using wheelchairs/scooters do not have to sit in the back of the room.
  
• Clear the aisles of obstacles for persons with visual and mobility disabilities.
  
• Control background noise to the greatest possible extent.
  
• Speak in well-paced, well-modulated tones. Monitor rate and volume.
  
• Avoid turning your back to the audience while speaking. People may be depending on lip-reading.
  
• Repeat questions aloud before answering them.
  
• Accompany overhead transparencies, posters, Power Point presentations, etc. with verbal description. Be sure to read what is on the screen.
  
• Avoid relying solely on oral presentations and gestures to illustrate a point, or using visual points of reference (e.g., "this" and "that" or "here" and "there"). Read or describe what you are pointing to.
  
• Having your handouts available on disk and/or having a large-print version of your handouts available will be helpful to persons with low vision (enlarging font to 18 point bold or enlarging each page 130-150% on 14" X 17" sheets of paper would be ideal).
  
• Have transparencies available in hard copy for close examination.
  
• Use clear, vivid, legible, sharp high-contrast handouts. Avoid using dark ink on dark paper, fancy fonts, or extremely small print.

 

Excerpted from "On the Road to Access" by Nancy L. Badger, Ph.D. and Karen A. Meyers, Ph.D., published in the American College Personnel Association's Developments, June 1998.

 

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