Accessible and engaging presentations

Most of us have the experience of attending long presentations that leave us feeling drained. Learn how to prepare and give accessible and engaging presentations.

How to prepare the presentation

Here are some tips to incorporate while preparing a presentation, to help keep it engaging and accessible.

Plan with your goals in mind

The purpose of your presentation should be clear. List your objectives, including the impact you want to have on your audience. Do you just need to communicate information, or are you trying to persuade them? What is relevant to the audience? Why should they listen to you? You can state the outcomes of your presentation at the beginning of your presentation to show the audience you care what they think and want to deliver a positive impact.

Using visual aids like a PowerPoint

You should be the main focus of your presentation, not your slides! It can be more engaging for a presenter to talk from memory. This makes the presentation feel more like a conversation with the audience. However, as this is not always possible in the business sphere, we have put together some tips to help you make your presentations more visually appealing and attention-grabbing.

Maximum 7 items per slide

Have you heard of ‘The Magical Number 7’? This is a paper written by George A. Miller of Harvard University in 1956. It hypothesises that humans have a cognitive cap which allows only a few pieces of information in our working memory at once. Since it was published, further studies have been conducted to show that sometimes things can be more complicated than that, but the main point still holds up.

Human brains have trouble processing 7 or more items at once. To make sure your audience is not overwhelmed by information, try to keep the number of items on each slide of your PowerPoint to 6 or 7. For instance, you might have six bullet points. The text in the bullet points should also be as concise as possible.

Calls to action

While planning, make sure the purpose of your presentation will be clear to the audience. Once you’ve finished presenting, your audience may be left thinking ‘Ok, so now what?’. You should come up with some concrete steps to help them put the content to use and include them near the end of your presentation. The clearer your instructions are, the more easily they will be able to use your information in the way you want them to.

It can also be helpful to remind the audience of why your presentation should be important to them personally. You could prepare a story to demonstrate a problem or a need for action. If you can create something emotionally moving it will be even more effective.

Preparing for accessibility

People with disability have a right to access presentations. But accessibility can be beneficial to everyone, not just those with disability. Making content clear, concise, easy to hear and see, and available in multiple formats, will allow participants to get the most out of your content.

When creating materials for a presentation, aim to meet at least level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). You should add alternative text to images and mark up headings. Slides should have a consistent design, good contrast and minimal content in a large font. The less text you put on a slide, the easier it is for everyone to understand. Text should also be written in plain language. Include an overview at the start and a summary at the end to make information more digestible.

Provide digital materials in multiple formats in advance so participants can be familiar with the materials before the presentation. Avoid providing materials in PDF format because these may not be accessible even when tagged. Customisable text like HTML or a Word document is preferable. Later, you can provide audio recordings and transcripts of the presentation.

Make sure you are using an accessible remote meeting platform if you are giving your presentation online. Arrange for service providers like captioners and interpreters where needed.

How to give the presentation

Here are some tips to incorporate while you are presenting to help keep it engaging and accessible.

Engagement

Once you have the attention of your audience, how do you maintain engagement?

Audience engagement can start off relatively high and drop throughout the course of a speech or presentation. This doesn’t mean that the content isn’t important, but humans tend to lose focus after a while due to our short attention spans.

To keep people interested, you can include content that is:

Insightful or new. Provide the audience with a fact or idea that they may never have heard before. Something which will provoke an emotional response, like a surprising statistic.
A story or joke. Our brains are naturally engaged by stories. Even better if you can make it humorous. Stories can be an easy way to get your audience to remember bits of information.
A question. While a stream of information allows your audience to listen passively, asking questions can help your listeners to remain alert and responsive.

Ask a question to encourage audience participation. You can find out what your audience already knows, create a more interactive environment, encourage a variety of voices and you may even learn something new yourself!

Accessibility

Technology can go a long way to help make your presentation accessible. Invest in a good microphone and ensure your internet connection is stable. Both of these things will improve the clarity of your voice.

Speak clearly and slowly, using simple language. Take short breaks to allow people to process information, especially when switching between topics. Make sure you are presenting from a place that is visible to everyone in the room or online.

If someone asks a question either in-person or online, it may not be audible to everyone, so repeat the question before you
answer it.

Finally, be flexible and accommodating. Participants may have requirements you weren’t aware of and weren’t able to plan for. Following these accessibility tips will make your presentations more inclusive but it will be easier to cater for someone if you ask them about their specific needs. Make sure to communicate with participants beforehand so nobody is excluded. For example, ask participants if they have any special requirements on the registration form.

Redundancy effect

When possible, you should avoid reading out text written on a presentation slide. There is a cognitive effect known as the ‘split attention effect’ or the ‘redundancy effect’. When the same information is presented in 2 formats the brain must deal with twice the cognitive load, both listening and reading. To reduce this load, the brain avoids processing both streams of information. This means that audience members might retain less of your content.

Although presentation slides might make it easier for audience members to take notes, the redundancy effect means there is a higher probability they will forget the content of your presentation. If you speak more slowly or allow note-taking breaks you can avoid this issue and maintain engagement and retention.

For more information and demonstrations of public speaking techniques, we recommend the following videos:

The 3 magic ingredients of amazing presentations | Phil Waknell

How to avoid death by PowerPoint | David JP Phillips

How to engage an audience | Padraig Hyland

How to present to keep your audience’s attention | Mark Robinson