Have you ever been asked to find a technology solution for *flailing-arms-make-it-better*?!? Or attempted requirements gathering only to get a detailed explanation of how to do a task in the current system?
As anyone who has done requirements gathering can tell you, it’s a bit of an art form. (Yes, pun intended in the title!)
You want to meet the needs of the people who will use the solution, but it can be challenging to understand the needs of people who may not know how to articulate them in ways that translate well to technical specifications. While business process mapping is not an uncommon part of requirements analysis, it can be hard to get started if you’re new to it and hard to know how to get the necessary information.
This session I presented at the 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference will break down ways to map workflows and get the information you need to write up effective requirements.
Apologies if you came here expecting that I was a playground designer, although there are people who make accessible play areas!
Are you typically creating slides that you’ll present online? In person? (This photo was taken before someone else’s presentation at a conference several years ago.)
There is no perfect way to make things 100% accessible to everyone because people are different. I state that upfront as a reminder to myself as much as to anyone else that this work is not perfect, that it is messy, and that none of this should stop us from working to make things more accessible to more people right now.* I do not and I am not going to get everything right. I’m sure I’ve failed on a lot of these points in previous slide decks and I will continue to make mistakes. None of these tips are foolproof, and this list is not exhaustive. Perhaps you’ll read it and say you knew all these things already—and that you have some things to teach me! (Which would be great! Please do.) But, hey, maybe some of this will be new to some people. So, I will continue on with my imperfect notes on how I’ve been trying to make my slides more accessible.
Some of these things I learned from the speaker guide for NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference, some from a class in graduate school on making information accessible (taught by the awesome Dr. Renee Hill!), some from independent learning about accessibility, and some things by trial and error.
The context of this post is creating slides that I’m preparing to present, such as for a conference talk, as opposed to other purposes. Although I may sometimes mention things related to presenting, the focus will be on the slides themselves. I most often use PowerPoint, so I mention some specific things in the version of the program I have, so if you have a more recent version or use something else for creating slides, those functions might be called something else or work a little differently.
Here are some things I’ve been learning and working at incorporating in my slides:
Always check the template (and any other colored elements you are choosing) to ensure you have sufficient color contrast. Unfortunately, those default templates are not necessarily accessible – even when they are labeled as such. You’ll want to check things like the color contrast for people who are colorblind or have low vision. If you like to create your own templates, start with a color palette that has sufficient contrast. Of note, color contrast is not only about the colors, but sometimes about the size and font weight. Black text on a white background will work at any legible size, but certain color combinations that are readable at font size 40 will not be readable by everyone at a font size 20. While it’s not perfect, if your combination doesn’t work if printed in grayscale, you should probably adjust the color palette.
Make sure every slide has a title. Occasionally, I will not use the template title area, or because I am not using a template, it is unclear which text is the title of the slide. While it might be obvious to a sighted person, it’s important to make sure someone using a screen reader would be able to use titles to help navigate through the slides. In PowerPoint, if you turn on “Check accessibility,” an Accessibility tab will be added to the ribbon at the top. You use the button for setting the slide title to set a specific text box to be the slide title.
Include an agenda and let people know what point in the presentation they’re at. This is more of a presentation tip, but it’s helpful to orient people to what’s going to be covered and to give people a sense of where they are in the agenda. This can be especially helpful for people with cognitive or learning disabilities, but it’s helpful to everyone. I usually include a slide with a numbered list of the topics or sections, and then each section starts with a section header slide that references the section number and where we are in the presentation. (If it’s hard for me to break it out this way, then it probably means the presentation needs some further organization.)
In this example of a section header slide, the title of the section, “What is service design?” follows “1 / 5” to indicate that this is the first of five sections in the presentation.
Use a font size of at least 18, but preferably larger! Using a larger font size also prevents you from putting too much text per slide, as slide are intended to be presented. If you truly need to write that much, you are writing a report! Or at least an article or blog post. They’re fine formats, but they are formats that meant to be read at your own pace instead of at the speed at which someone is giving a presentation.
IF YOU WRITE IN ALL CAPITALIZED LETTERS FOR VERY LONG PORTIONS OF TEXT, THIS IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR EVERYONE TO READ. That took you an extra moment to read and comprehend, didn’t it?
Leave the bottom 20% of the slide blank so that captions won’t cover up any content. Occasionally you might be presenting within a platform where the captions are not on top of the slides, but if you’re not sure, the bottom is often where captions are placed on a screen. (Unsure if there will be captions? Ask! It doesn’t matter whether you personally need them. Other speakers and attendees might, and they shouldn’t have to ask.)
Include alternative text for images, videos, diagrams, and other visual elements that are relevant. Avoid text in images; simply use the text. (This is inaccessible both to people using screen readers and to people using translation software or other text-based tools.) For videos, you’ll need to consider both captions and video descriptions (a description of what is happening visually) so that the content is accessible to audience members who are blind or D/deaf. You can mark decorative images as decorative and skip the alt text, although it’s worth asking the question of what those images are adding to your presentation.
Plan to describe the images verbally if they’re relevant. Okay this isn’t about the slides, but during the presentation, make sure you verbally describe the visual elements that you created alternative text for. Or if you are demonstrating something live, then describe what you’re doing – like if you were on a cooking show.
Speaker descriptions: Some people say the speakers should describe themselves, and others say this isn’t really useful information. Within the blind community, there are a lot of differing opinions on speaker descriptions. Unless I’m asked to describe myself visually, I tend to use the guideline of whether it is relevant. If the topic is related to career development, then the fact that I am an Asian American woman in my mid-30s is relevant. If I am talking about working remotely, then it makes sense to reference my surroundings. If I am showing people how to create diagrams, then a description of my visual appearance and what sighted people can see in my background feels performative rather than adding anything to an understanding of the topic.
Review the order of object order on your slides. If someone is using a device like a screen reader, you’ll want them to go through everything on your slides in the correct order. An easy way to test this is to use the Tab key to tab through each object (title, text box, image, etc.) on each slide. You can usually right click to move an object forward or backward. (Reading order starts in the back and moves forward to end in the front.)
My process for creating slides
Sometimes it’s difficult to take a collection of tips and figure out how to apply them in practice. My process for creating slides and presentations may be different from yours, but here’s a rough summary of my current process:
Draft learning objectives, usually as a document.
Use the learning objectives to draft an outline, usually in the same document.
Start a new slide file and pick a template.
Check that the template color contrast is sufficient. (Turn on accessibility checker to help me with this if it’s available.)
Edit the template if needed.
Start building out the content in the slides – usually putting the bullet points from the outline as the temporary slide titles.
Work on developing the text and the speaking points in whatever order I can get it to come out in. Usually I put in placeholders for visuals that I need, but also sometimes information that I need to go find. I typically turn off or ignore the accessibility checker during this part.
Lots of iterating, editing, filling in those placeholders, refining speaking points.
Once the visual elements are finalized, I write alternative text. (I usually turn the accessibility back on at this point because it helps me tick off images that need alt text.)
If I forgot to describe something in the speaking points, then I incorporate the description of visuals.
Review and address any other accessibility issues that come up – with the exception of slide order, which I leave until last in case I need to make other changes.
Go through the presentation as a whole, both the slides and practicing the speaking, to make sure everything works together as a whole (and within the allotted time).
Check the slide order by tabbing through each object on each slide and adjusting the object order as needed.
If there’s a method for making the slides available to attendees ahead of the presentation (so they can review as needed, at their own pace, using the appropriate tools, ahead of time), then I do that.
What else? I’m open to learning how to do things better!Email me and let me know if you learned anything new from this post, have suggestions, or what your process looks like for creating slides.
Struggle with the challenge of creating a great experience for your program participants or donors while balancing the needs of staff or volunteers or your organization? Trying to develop a new program, new event, new campaign, new operational capacity – and feel like you’re constantly discovering another missing piece you didn’t have in place?
Service design considers the needs of all stakeholders involved in a service or experience, how to create value both for the user and the provider, and all of the supporting infrastructure or processes needed to make that happen.
In this 30-minute talk from the 2022 Nonprofit Technology Conference, I provide an overview of service design and introduce a core method, the service blueprint, as a way to help you think through and plan what’s needed to deliver the experiences or outcomes you’re hoping to achieve for new and for existing programs.
This year I volunteered backstage (assisted by my cat, Amelia) in addition to presenting.
Once upon a time I went to NTEN’s annual Nonprofit Technology Conferences and came away with all sorts of innovative, savvy, practical tips that I could take back and apply at work—sometimes that week.
These days I do a lot less operational work in my day-to-day and more strategic work (let me know if you need help figuring out any blob shaped problems!). So, while NTCs are still jampacked with practical knowledge exchange and lots of strategic content as well, I find myself reflecting most on the takeaways and questions posed that strike at the soul, why we do what we do and how that should inform what we do, whom we partner with, and the way in which we do our work.
Here are the things that struck me or resonated, and that I am still chewing on.
We have been lied to, and there are people who benefit from us internalizing these lies.
The stories being shared at "A Systemic Look at Imposter Syndrome" — things that resonate with my experiences, things I've seen/heard, things that make me want to burn it all down! #22NTC
There was an excellent session (with Aki Shibuya, Bettina Sferrino, Vanice Dunn, and Tristan Penn) taking a systemic look at imposter syndrome. This is something I’ve long struggled with, always wondering when someone was going to find me out, and I really appreciated a look at the systems that perpetuate this experience and who benefits/is hurt by the belief that this something that people like me need to fix internally.
Are there ways in which we all benefit from learning to trust our own voices and judgment, from gaining experience and the confidence that can come with it? Sure. However, the panel also dug into the organizational practices and dynamics that require we feel inadequate – so that we buy into the idea that we must work more hours to make up for what we lack, so that we question our own judgment while accepting the judgment of others in power, so that we strive harder and harder to reach goal posts being moved further and further away because we were never meant to reach them. These can be practices like not having clear and consistent expectations for performance, and “accountability” that is applied unevenly. And while there are more ways to make a shift if you are a manager who has positional power, anyone can model things like, acknowledging when you don’t know something, and using one’s own privilege where you can.
In the chat for another session, there was a beautifully open exchange between several attendees about the use of identity-first (e.g., disabled people) vs. person-first (e.g., people with disabilities) language. The discussion was around whether it was a way to reclaim “disabled” from being a bad word that we must euphemize, or, whether we should recognize that there are people with disabilities who prefer person-first language. (All of the people involved in this thread of discussion identified as disabled or as having a disability.) One person who grew up hearing it used negatively against them (as someone with a disability), preferred person-first language. Another person questioned the need to remind anyone that they are a person first. It ended with some folks deciding they needed to reflect some more on whether this might be internalized ableism and people acknowledging there may be generational differences and people may be in different places in their journeys.
“Normal is a scam.”
– Alice Wong
The first keynote was a conversation between Amy Sample Ward and Alice Wong, who runs the Disability Visibility Project (which includes a podcast and book of the same name). There was a lot of discussion how access is love, about survival, and about how normal is a scam.
I’ve been working with a coach for my own personal development, and one of the things I’ve been working is on is not judging how I feel, what I want, and generally things about myself. To declare something (or someone) normal or abnormal is both to participate in this judging and to perpetuate the myths about how the things that make us who we are, that these are things that are wrong (or right) with us. Who gains from that?
What do we gain when we accept all of who we are and who others are? I think only then we can imagine the world that Amy invites us in to build together:
"This is a technology conference that is not here to celebrate technology, so feel at ease with every criticism you have. You will be breaking no hearts here." — NTEN CEO @amyrsward#22NTC
Now, lots of people and organizations throw around the word “community” and don’t always back it up with systems and practice. So I loved what keynote speaker Angelica Ross said about community:
"You don't have an automatic ticket just because you identify. The price of community is accountability." – @angelicaross 🔥🔥🔥 #22NTC
Now accountability and grace are not mutually exclusive. But sometimes, when we want people to do better and we know that they can, we can be frustrated and impatient. However, we can’t control what other people will do or think or feel—even as we feel the urgency of helping others see what we can see from where we sit.
"I give people the grace to come to it on their own. I also release myself from responsibility of their outcomes. I can offer resources and opportunities but I cannot control the outcome. …I will release myself from the guilt. The survivor's guilt." – @angelicaross#22NTC
And of course, the penultimate is to actually put our values into practice, and not surprisingly an event full of nonprofit techies is ready to dive in:
The plethora of attendees jumping in to help troubleshoot captions (and copy them into a document as a backup) for this keynote for the couple of people who were having difficulty getting them exemplifies everything I love about the @NTENorg and #NPTech community. #22NTC
Saeed Jones reminded us that there are people in our community who notice how we speak up—or don’t. Are we learning about the struggles of others? How will they know they are safe with us? This can be a form of accountability we practice within ourselves.
Speaking of accountability and actively practicing our values, Ken Montenegro asked a really important question during his session with Colin Boyle about planning for failure:
How can we make sure that decisions that have far-reaching implications are made by the appropriate person rather than whoever is standing in? – @kmontenegro#22NTC
They were talking about the context of a crisis and how sometimes the person making the decision is simply the person who happens to be there in that moment—and how it’s worth pausing to ask whether this decision should be made by this interim person or whether to gather the right people to make this decision first. Although this was about IT disasters, this too can be applied much more broadly. Are the people making the decision the people who understand the implications and who will be impacted by them?
Stories are powerful because of what they allow us to imagine.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the stories we tell about ourselves and that we tell ourselves (and others) about the world.
One really powerful story we often tell is about failure. Do we tell it as a story of catastrophe, of how we have become failures? Or do we view it as falling down while learning to ride a bike, part of the process of learning how to do new things? Is it a pathway to confidence?
"…the cycle of earning, trial and error, failure and mastery in play cycles that we naturally fall into when we play — that is a common part of play, that we try things out, tinker, fail and get up again. …it helps people develop confidence…" – @jnnjavornik#22NTC
Related to the stories we tell (or don’t tell) about failure are the stories we tell ourselves about what we are capable of, and what’s possible. Are we honoring the full potential of who we are?
“If you are ambitious, take pride in the full potential of who you are, then you are regularly extending yourself, trying to take it a little bit further down the road.” A great reminder from @theferocity that fear of rejection/failure is healthy&helps keep us on our toes #22NTC
Speaking of “the full potential of who we are,” the U.S. political divides have lately centered a lot on the power of stories and language and which ideas are okay or not okay. (Judging again!) People are demanding that school boards ban teaching Critical Race Theory, ban saying the word “gay” in schools, and banning books that make them feel uncomfortable. (There are of course, many far more restrictive and persecutive laws being proposed passed across the country—and books and stories and language are part of this broader discourse. There are others who can speak to that better than I can.)
Who gets to see themselves and be seen? Who gets to imagine the future of their dreams?
"I want us to amplify the message that trans kids are kids. They deserve a childhood too. A full childhood. Access to their full imagination." –@angelicaross#22NTC
And, as Saeed Jones pointed out, many people will say they’re “not poetry people” while still pulling out poems for special occasions.
"Wow if we understand poetry as a gift for special occasions or for honoring others, imagine if we gave ourself that gift or honored ourselves with it all the time" – @BettinaSays#22NTC
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