Accessibility and Image Quality in a Public-Sector Funding Proposal
A public-sector team is finalizing a 30-slide funding proposal that will be posted as a PDF and presented live. One slide contains a five-step process drawn as 12 grouped shapes with gradient fills and drop shadows, pasted as a single group; it has no alt text. The 14-point body callouts are #8C8C8C on white, while the 24-point bold title is #767676 on white. A logo was inserted and resized by dragging a side handle, so it looks stretched. A photo of a construction site has the caption text baked into the image, and the reading order announces the process group before the slide title. The accessibility checker flags missing alt text, but the designer wants to mark everything decorative to clear the warnings. The proposal must meet WCAG 2.1 AA and be readable by a screen reader.
1. Evaluate the two text colors against WCAG 2.1 AA and state the corrections you would make.
Read the worked answer
WCAG AA requires 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text, defined as at least 18-point regular or 14-point bold. Contrast is computed from relative luminance, not from how dark the gray looks.
#8C8C8C on white is roughly 3.3:1. At 14-point regular it fails the 4.5:1 threshold. #767676 on white is roughly 4.5:1; at 24-point bold it easily passes the 3:1 large-text threshold.
Fix the body callouts by darkening to about #767676 or darker, or using black, and recheck every place where the gray sits on a tinted panel rather than pure white. The gradient fills and drop shadows can lower effective contrast at icon edges, so verify non-text contrast at 3:1 for meaningful boundaries. Do not treat 14-point bold as a loophole unless it truly is bold and you are willing to defend the 3:1 threshold; use 4.5:1 for body text. Recheck after PDF export, because color profiles can shift.
2. How do you handle alt text, the 12-shape group, and reading order without simply marking everything decorative?
Read the worked answer
Mark as decorative only what conveys no information. The five-step process conveys sequence and meaning, so it is not decorative.
The better fix is structural: add the five steps as a real numbered list or table next to the graphic, then mark the shape graphic decorative so a screen reader user gets the content once, in text. If the graphic must carry the meaning alone, ungroup it and give each icon alt text that names the step, plus one overall description. You can use Merge Shapes > Union to turn each icon into a single editable shape, which reduces object count, but keep a copy because merging destroys the individual parts.
Reading order is controlled through the Selection Pane. PowerPoint reads objects in stacking order, back to front, so the process group being announced before the title means it sits behind the title in the stack. Move the title to the back-most position and step through the arrows until the order matches the visual sequence. Verify with Narrator or another screen reader, not just the accessibility checker.
3. The logo is stretched and the construction photo has its caption baked in. What corrections do you make, and what are the limits when exporting to PDF?
Read the worked answer
For the logo, use Picture Format > Reset Picture & Size to restore the original proportions, then resize from a corner or set only the height and let the width follow. Dragging a side handle changed the aspect ratio, and no amount of repositioning fixes that. Keep a master copy of the logo at high resolution so repeated resizing does not degrade it.
For the photo, the baked-in caption is invisible to screen readers and becomes unreadable when the image is scaled. Put the caption in a text box, give the photo alt text describing what matters in the image, and mark it decorative if the caption already carries the meaning. Avoid using photos as backgrounds for live text.
On PDF export, choose Save as PDF > Options > Document structure tags for accessibility and then test the PDF with a screen reader. PowerPoint's PDF tags and reading order are not always perfect, so you may need to repair the reading order in a PDF editor before posting.