A Powerful Tool to Make PowerPoint STEM Contents Accessible

Date & Time

Tuesday, March 14, 2023 - 3:20 PM PST  

Location

Orange County 1-2  

Description

In many cases, print-disabled students hardly access important technical parts such as math formulas, diagrams and tables included in STEM educational materials created with Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT), which are commonly used in online lectures. We have recently developed a powerful tool to realize a systematic-processing mechanism for adding alt texts/aloud reading with a TTS (text-to-speech) voice into PPT STEM contents: so-called "an add-on" for PPT by making use of VBA (Visual Basic for Application). It allows you to automatically/systematically convert inaccessible technical parts into various accessible forms such as an image object with an alt text/an audio object (aloud reading) and place them in the PPT slide. Infty software: "InftyReader" (an OCR system for STEM) and "ChattyInfty" (an accessible STEM-document editor) carry out the conversion automatically in the background. In case that a math formula is not in PPT, you can create it directly in ChattyInfty (which is easily done in an intuitive manner) and insert that formula into the PPT slide together with alt text or aloud reading generated by ChattyInfty. Otherwise, you may start with a PDF source; at first, you convert a math formula in PDF into a ChattyInfty form once with InftyReader OCR and then, insert it into PPT. If a lecture script (narration) is prepared in ChattyInfty, you can add the speech presentation generated by ChattyInfty to each slide and convert entire PPT into an accessible MP4 video.

This Presentation Link is provided by the Presenter(s) and not hosted by the Center on Disabilities at CSUN. The Center on Disabilities has confirmed, as of March 24 2023, content linked is relevant to the presentation, but has not been reviewed for accessibility nor will the Center on Disabilities attempt to remediate any accessibility issues in the linked content. Please contact the Presenter(s) with any accessibility concerns.

 

Audience

• Higher Education
• K-12 Education

Audience Level

Intermediate  

Session Summary (Abstract)

Our new tool: an add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT) allows you to make any technical part included in PPT slides for STEM education be accessible. Accessible slides also can be made easily from a PDF source.  

Primary Topic

Education  

Secondary Topics

• Blind/Low Vision
• Digital Accessibility
• Product Demonstration

 

Session Type

General Track  

Presenters

• Katsuhito Yamaguchi
  Nihon University
• Toshihiko Komada
  Nihon University
• Toshihiro Kanahori
  Tsukuba University of Technology

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