As a deeply technical person, I have always slightly resented PowerPoint. It can feel like communication with extra steps, or like turning everything into a very basic “See Spot run” version of the world. That said, I am aware that, from a manager’s point of view, when they have so much information thrown across their desk, something neatly laid out and clear can make their job much easier.
However, I have recently been lucky enough to work with someone with significant accessibility needs, and I am now seeing PowerPoint in an even grimmer light.
Often, other forms of communication are asked to be converted into a PowerPoint slide for the sake of presentation, even when the email containing the original data is perfectly readable by everybody. Yet the expectation remains that it has to be fancied up before adult humans are considered capable of coping with it.
This has always struck me as slightly annoying and needless work, but it had never really occurred to me how much of a non-inclusive pain it can be for people with accessibility issues.
A lot of the templates people use for PowerPoint, particularly those from larger vendors, are designed with sheer beauty in mind. They are often created by professional designers, and they can look brilliant. But they can also be an absolute devil to edit if you are not fully able-bodied and a wizard with a mouse. They are often far more like works of art than practical means of communication.
I do appreciate how good a polished PowerPoint slide can look, and I do appreciate the clarity they can sometimes bring. But are they always necessary? Do we need to produce a beautiful slide rather than one that is merely clear, easy to edit, and suitable for communication?
So next time you are adding complex background images and hundreds of little dots to make a Gantt chart, have a think about how someone who only has voice commands would edit it.