Grackle for Google Slides / Carolyn Quintero

Grackle for Google Slides: Designing Inclusive Presentations

Introduction and Housekeeping

Welcome, everyone! I’m excited to talk to you today about Grackle for Google Slides, Designing Inclusive Presentations. This is a crucial part of our broader university web strategy, and it’s all about ensuring that the presentations we create and share are usable by every member of our community.

So, before we get started, here are some housekeeping things to keep in mind. First of all, if you haven’t already, please mute your microphones. This will help limit background noise as we go through today. I will make this presentation available on the Boise State Accessibility website on the on-demand webinars page, hopefully, by the end of the week, if not sooner.

If you do have questions, we will try our best to answer them at the end of the session, so please, don’t submit to the Google Slides audience tool. We tried that, and there were some quirks, so please just use the chat feature in the Zoom meeting, and my assistant, Ciera, will moderate all of that at the end. She’s going to keep track of those questions as we go, so we can answer them at the end. If we run out of time, I will provide those questions, the answers to the questions on the on-demand webinar page when I share this.

I also have a bunch of Grackle Slides resources available on the Boise State Accessibility page as well, so if you go to Boise State Accessibility and select the resources and tutorials page, you’ll find all the information that we’re going to cover today for Grackle Slides. If you missed last week’s webinar on Grackle Sheets, there are resources there as well for Grackle Sheets. There is also a resource on Google Slides, so things to keep in mind as you’re building it accessibly from the start. Those are all available on the Boise State Accessibility website. So with that, let’s go ahead and get started.

Presenter and On-Campus Accessibility Resources

My name is Carolyn Quintaro, and I am the manager of web accessibility on the University Web Strategy team, and I have helped guide the institution’s digital compliance and inclusion efforts, specifically for our public-facing web content since 2017.

My educational background includes a Master of Arts in Technical Communication and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication, and I earned both of those at Boise State. My approach to accessibility is not just compliance. I think of accessibility as a critical element, ensuring every step in the content process works for everyone.

So it has to work for our content creators as well as our end users. And sometimes we really have to work together to find solutions to make sure that it is meeting everyone’s need. And I really love that part of my job, so if you have questions as we go through today, please ask them, because I love helping you guys come up with solutions.

But I am not the only resource available on campus to help with this initiative. We do have additional support available in our Office of Compliance and Ethics.

Christine Dobson is our new Digital Accessibility Compliance Officer, and if you have questions about the new accessibility requirements, or if you would like to schedule a time for the compliance staff to explain regulations or provide basic accessibility training, you can contact their office at accessibility at boisestate.edu, or call (208) 426-1256. Again, they can help with compliance questions, they can do some software testing and answer general basic, general accessibility questions.

And for faculty support, if you have questions or to set up a consultation for faculty support and resources in making course materials accessible, including requesting a course review, you can contact Jeremy Harper in the community engagement and belonging.

And that email is belonging at boisestate.edu, and the phone number is 208-426-6156. And again, that’s for faculty consultation and support to review accessible course materials or to request a course review. So there’s lots of resources. We are trying to figure this all out together and developing resources as we go, so you are not alone as you have questions about this initiative.

Legal Compliance and Anticipating Model of Accessibility

So, our commitment to accessibility is really rooted in legal compliance, specifically Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA. This update was published on April 24th, 2024. The new digital accessibility guidelines apply to public institutions like Boise State University. These guidelines require that all of our digital content, including websites, apps, digital documents, presentations, course materials, they must be accessible. It does not matter who is accessing it, it must be accessible.

If it is providing current services, programs, and information. So that’s really the key. And this covers content stored in password-protected systems, like my Boise State, Canvas, or where Google Slides live, Google Drive. The deadline for meeting the WCAG 2.1 Level 8 compliance standards is April 24th, 2026, so it’s coming up pretty quickly. The good news is, this is also the compliance standard we require on BoiseState.edu, and we’ve been actively working towards since 2016-2017. So our web content is in really good shape, but where we’ve missed some of our compliance requirements are in these password-protective systems, like our Google Slides. And so that is what this webinar is really going to focus on.

And while compliance is really the floor, that’s where it’s rooted, our goal is to shift the focus from accessibility to beyond it. So this is to move from an accommodating model to an anticipating model. The current accommodating model is much more reactive. A user has to report a barrier and request access. That can lead to time delays, frustration, and lost engagement. And in the worst case scenario, the barrier is never fixed. But with the anticipating model, you’re much more proactive. We empower ourselves to build for accessibility from the start. This leads to fewer delays, less mental effort for the user, and a higher likelihood of engagement, all things we want at Boise State. And accessible design helps everyone, whether we’re using a screen reader or we’re just browsing on a mobile device. When it’s accessible, it just works, and we want to remove those barriers before they ever become an issue. So, that is our goal at Boise State University, but how do we start?

The 3R Strategy: Remove, Replace, or Remediate

If you attended the Grackle Sheets webinar, you’re going to see a lot of similarities in our approach to this. So, the first thing you want to do for any kind of document you’re reviewing is to ask, am I going to remove this? Am I going to replace this? Or am I going to remediate it?

So, when you’re thinking about, you know, putting your content into different buckets, if you want to remove it, some of the questions you should ask is, do we still need these slide presentations? Is the information current? Is it accurate? Is it from a presentation we gave 5 years ago, and is not really needed? Can we take it down off the website? If you need to replace it, some of the things you should ask yourself is, is this the best format? Could we move it to something like a web page, or maybe a video? Or is there some other kind of format that would be more accessible than taking the time to remediate the slides presentation? And then finally, if it does need to be in that version, it does need to be in the slides, maybe it’s a template or something that people are copying to maybe create a poster or to do something with, then we need to remediate it. So these are the ones that people are going to be actively going through this content. We need to make sure that it’s accessible and there’s no barriers in the content itself.

So, to reiterate, if we are removing, these are the easiest to take care of, because we are removing the link, we are unsharing the slides, and then you are archiving as needed based on your department needs. We want to remove all these first, because then we don’t have to worry about doing something with them. So once you’ve removed them all, then you can work on the content that needs to be replaced. So this means converting the content to a different format, putting it on a web page, making it an accessible PDF, for example. That could be a more accessible version, publishing it as a different presentation, something like that. Once you’ve converted the content, remove that link. Unshare it, archive as needed.

And then finally, once you’ve taken care of those two buckets, the next bucket of content you want to take care of is the remediate stage. For Grackle Sheets, I recommended making a copy of your content. For Grackle, or for Google Slides, this is optional, because some of the fixes that you’re going to make in your Google Slides may not be as extensive as a spreadsheet. So this is optional. If you determine that, you know, this is just, like, two things I need to add alt text to, no need to make a copy. If it’s pretty significant and you need to make some significant changes, absolutely make a copy first. That’s going to make it much easier for you to make those structural changes and then publish that accessible version. So, for these ones, I’d really recommend running a Grackle Slides report first to kind of see how severe is it, what kind of issues are there? And then, if it’s necessary, make that copy. Go through, fix the issues, and then publish that accessible version. And then, if you’ve made a copy, archive that old version.

Introducing the Grackle Slides Accessibility Checker

So, for those documents that you need to remediate, you need to make the Google Slide Presentation accessible. The tool that you’re going to use is Grackle Slides. This is an accessibility checker specifically for Google Slides.

And it’s very easy to launch. If you saw the Grackle Slides, or the Grackle Sheets presentation, it is the exact same process. Let me find my mouse here. There we go. You go to extensions, this is a Grackle extension, select Grackle Slides and launch. And the Grackle Slides accessibility check will be on the right-hand side of the screen, and it is divided into five different checks, and it’ll give you a quick overview of, kind of, what’s the status of this presentation? Are there lots of errors? Are there lots of warnings? Things like that.

So you can quickly skim the check to see what you need to focus on. The slides report, like I mentioned, is broken into five sections: Presentation, Slides, Tables, Elements, and Contents. Presentation, that is going to give the overall structure. Does your document, does your slide presentation have a title? Does it have the language set? The slides check is looking for things that are related to the presentation structure and navigation. Are your slide titles unique? Are there empty slides, for example? The tables check, this is going to look for data organization and table structure, so it is going to tell you if there are merged cells, if there are empty cells. And you’ll have to tag your tables using Grackle Slides. That’s just something that Google does not have built in natively yet. The elements check will check all of your visual elements, so your images, your shapes, things like that, your charts, graphics, things like that. You will have the opportunity to add a descriptive alt text, or mark them as decorative artifacts. It also checks list structure and looks for empty text boxes. And the content section, that’s really going to focus on readability and visual design, so it is going to check for things like high color contrast, or fine print or overly styled text.

Like Grackle Sheets, I recommend you working backwards, and this is really a good tip for any kind of accessibility checker. The way they are organized is usually the biggest issues related to the document down to smaller issues. So when you start working on any kind of an accessibility check, it’s always helpful to start at the end and work to the beginning. Because this is going to let you go from the more granular text issues to the visual elements, then fix the tables, then focus on the slides, and then the presentation. And a lot of the times, as you fix issues in these more granular sections, you fix some of the issues in the larger presentation overall.

Deep Dive: Using the Grackle Slides Checks

Content Checks (Trailing Lines, Inline Styles, Color Contrast)

The content section includes four different areas. So, it includes fine print should be avoided, high color contrast should be used, inline style changes may lack clear meaning, and empty trailing lines could be removed. So, starting at the end, empty trailing lines could be removed. This is a very easy check, and it’s also a very easy error to introduce into your content. I do this a lot because I’m quick to hit the enter key. It’s also not easy to find, because they’re empty lines. So, the reason these are difficult, and you can see lots of little paragraph tags, the reason these are difficult is if there are empty lines and trailing lines, it can sound like a blink to a screen reader user, so it can help stop the logical flow of information. So if you have empty trailing lines, they usually do not adjust the visual design of the slide at all. It is just removing an empty line. So, I selected paragraph. Let me pause that for a second. So, what I’m trying to do here is I’m trying to look for the keyboard shortcut for show non-printing characters. That’s an option in Google Docs. It will show you anytime you have those paragraph spaces. But in Google Slides, this is not an option, because it’s a completely different system. So you can’t rely on those visual cues to find those empty trailing lines. So Grackle Docs is really good at making those visible. So you select paragraph. Find the empty line, and hit delete. And that will remove all of those different ones. And then you can recheck and keep going until they’re all gone. So that is a very easy thing you can do to make your content sound a little more clear and a little better as your users are going through that. So then you can recheck and keep going.

The next check is inline style may lack clear meaning. Pause this for a second so I don’t get ahead of myself. So, inline styles are formatting adjustments applied directly to specific words or phrases, rather than using, like, a master style or theme style. So this could be bolding a section of text. This could be changing a color on a section of text, maybe to make it appear like it’s important, or it’s crucial, or it’s a warning. So we’re trying to assign some meaning just by changing the style of the text. And where that can be an accessibility error is if that information is very important and it’s not being conveyed in an alternative text way. People who are non-visual, who are listening with a screen reader, they’re going to miss it. So we want to be very intentional about what we’re providing for users. So, if you have emphasis in your text, you can add an alternative text description to explain the meaning. So, to find that, you select the text box that has the emphasis. In this case, there is a bolded word. I cannot tell you why this one word was bolded and the others weren’t. Most likely because it is the first one in the string of text. And if you took the bold off of this, for example, Grackle Sheets or Grackle Slides may flag it again for each individual one. So, there’s some limitations that you need to keep in mind as you’re going through this. The main thing is, is this information being bolded to emphasize something important? And if it is, then maybe add an alternative text description to provide some of that meaning. Or provide the information in the speech itself as you’re presenting the information. So, the way you would do that is use that tag feature in Grackle Slides, so you can select tag and either… If there is no important meaning, you can mark this as an artifact, or you can add a short alternative text description. This is going to completely depend on the type of content and your audience, and what you’re trying to convey. Most of the time, you may be able to skip this one and just call it, mark it as an artifact. It really just depends on the content. But if you need to add a short alt text description, this is the only way to do this with this Grackle Slides tool. And then you select update, and then that will clear that issue out.

For high color contrast, all of your colors need to be easily readable between the background and the foreground. And one thing I have noticed with Grackle Slides is this may have a high… you may have a lot of false positives. For example, this one all has the hex code for black and black. So, the background color of this text box is black, and the text itself is black. And when you go searching for it, it looks like this is a page number. So when I highlight the information in there, I can see that it’s the number 17. Well, one thing to do if you’re just using it to hide this content, you could delete it from the slide. If it doesn’t need to be there visually, instead of trying to hide it with color contrast, with color, like, making it white and white, for example, you could just delete it from the slide. Or, you could adjust the alternate or the color, so that you have a good color contrast. So this would be black, and then I’m going to change the text to white, and then that will clear up the error.

Another time that you may see kind of a false positive for this high color contrast used is if you have white text and a white background, but in your template, there could be a shape between them, Grackle Slides is still reading the background color of the slide and the foreground color for the text, and it may not register that there is a shape. You just need to adjust and figure out where it is at, and adjust accordingly.

So for those empty lines, keep your text boxes clean. Use that backspace and delete key to remove all the trailing lines. And as much as you can, don’t use enter.

Elements Check (Alternative Text and Artifacts)

And select the Add Alternative Text tag. And you want to write a concise description that conveys the information and purpose. And then for all those decorative elements, you really want to artifact them, so and the only way you can do that is by using Grackle Slides. So, use Grackle Slides. Find the element. Tag as mark as artifact. And this signals to the screen reader to skip them. And this is really essential because you don’t want all that extra stuff on the slide to slow down the logical reading flow. So, for example, on this slide, I have these gray boxes to highlight the specific information I’m talking about. That is going to be marked as an artifact, because it’s really there just for a visual signal. And I don’t want it to have an alternative text description that says as someone is listening to the content.

Tables Check

The tables check is going to be very similar to any other table check you’ve used with Grackle Sheets or Grackle Docs, or Grackle Slides. The main thing is it’s got to find the tables, tag them, and then make sure they don’t have merged or empty cells. So, to find your tables, I recommend starting with empty cells first. Expand the use of empty cells is not recommended to find those cells with empty text. Or to find those empty cells. So, you can add text to your empty cell. Again, use at your discretion. It could be that this template needs to have a table that other people add the content to. But if it needs to have content, just add that text in. And then be mindful of your text colors as well. And then I can update, and my table is taken care of.

Main takeaway for any table you add in your documents, in your spreadsheets, in your presentations and whatever you were working on. Keep them simple, and really avoid complex layouts. Don’t merge or leave cells empty, and always have a single clear row of header cells at the beginning. You may also have column headers as well. So, those are the main takeaways for tables. If you have complex tables, try as much as you can to break it into smaller tables, or break it into multiple slides. You could use a simpler format. If you do have a lot of complex data, for example, in a chart, and you can’t have the complex or the complex table in your presentation, you could always provide a link to the original source data.

An option that you could do to add that so screen reader users know it was an intentional design purpose. If you don’t need it, you can delete it, and then that check will be marked as okay.

Slides and Presentation Checks (Unique Titles, Language, Reading Order)

All slide titles should be unique, and this is because slide titles are used for navigation, and if you have slide titles that have multiple titles in it, it could be difficult to navigate through this presentation successfully. So, for example, just to demonstrate this, I made a copy of the thank you slide. This is very common when you’re working in slides. You may need to duplicate a slide and then adjust the text. So, if you have done that, and maybe forgot to change some of your text, this is a great editing check. So, I’m going to perform the same function. I’m going to cut the text, the 20% text, and then I’m going to delete that title element, and repaste the text as just a plain old text box. And now, I shouldn’t have that error because it’s not conflicting. And just because I have a feeling when I recheck that 40%.

It is really important because, again, it makes it so that the language of the presentation is going to match how it sounds when it’s read out. Another limitation to keep in mind is if you have multiple languages in your document. Google right now, does not have a way to identify multiple languages. So, I would recommend if you have a multi-language presentation, to maybe use a tool like Microsoft PowerPoint instead. I believe there is a way to set multiple languages in a presentation.

And then, for presentation title. So, in this example, it is set as checked because there is a title here, but you should always check to make sure that title is accurate. This one is inaccessible presentation demo for Grackle Slides, but I don’t want…

Can drag and drop the structure so that it reads in a different order. In the second slide, it has the alt text for the image before the title. If you want to change that, you can drag the order around, so that it has a logical reading order. So this can be a very helpful step, just to spot check the slide structure to make sure it’s read correctly. And then. You can keep reviewing your slide presentation and make adjustments as you go. And it sometimes will flag errors or potential errors in this as well. So, you may be able to catch some things, and we did not fix everything, so that’s why some of these are saying failure. But it’s another way to check the reading order of your slides.

Going Beyond Compliance and Presentation Tips

So, because we want to go beyond compliance, there are some things to keep in mind. Things that Grackle Slides does not check. It does not check to make people. Who uses assistive technology. Ask them, is the flow of this information logical? Was it easy to navigate from slides to slides? Did it all make sense? And then be mindful of cognitive load. Always prioritize clarity in simplicity, and this will take your content just from being technically accessible to being usable by the largest number of people.

And then, because we’re talking about presentations, always think about how you’re going to be presenting to users. Add a script to the speaker notes. So not only does that help keep you on track for your presentation, it can serve as a really helpful tool to help you caption and transcribe your presentation later. And that can be really important if you want to share this on the web. The web requires captions and transcripts. Well, now you have a presentation that you can make sure is updated and accessible and shared later on. And then present in plain language. So speak clearly, avoid jargon if at all possible.

Questions and Answers (Q&A)

We do have time at the end for questions. So, Ciera, what questions do we have?

Ciera: Hello, Carolyn and everybody. We’ll start from the top. I think just a few questions into the training. Kristen Batten had a question, and maybe a bit more of a request. Yes. She says, “Can you offer some working sessions where accessibility compliance experts are available to answer questions on the go?”

Carolyn: If you are making the style change to signify something, then you need to explain that for all users. So, adding those inline notes, like “Crucial!” and then the information can be a great way to do that, or adding those alternative text descriptions, if it is necessary. Otherwise, a lot of the time, it is just stylistic, and you’re doing it to make, you know, a slight visual emphasis, as opposed to meaning.

Ciera: This point in time, Google may fix it in the future, is to apply a layout that has title on it. Thanks, Carolyn. And there was one more question for Mary about the titling piece. She asked if you could copy and paste a title text box from another slide into the slide that maybe the title is a workaround?

Carolyn: Mary, I would have to test that. I didn’t even think about that, actually. That could potentially be a solution. I would have to test it to verify, because I don’t know if it would still be associated with the slide it came off of, or if it would carry the slide title on to the next one, but that is a great way to test it. So you would just pull up your slide, copy-paste, recheck, and if it checks it off, that is a great test. So, yeah. Lots of ways to troubleshoot some of this stuff.

Ciera: Fantastic.

Carolyn: Add plain language in without having that check.

Ciera: Great points. And it looks like we have one final question that got a couple of likes. From Danya, “Have you checked any complex slideshows that were created in PowerPoint and upload and convert to Google Slides. If you make it accessible in PowerPoint, does that stay in Google?” Sometimes Google Slide, yeah, are more convenient.

Carolyn: They are very complex, and there is no one way to do it correctly, so really it all boils down to what is your audience need, how are you going to be presenting the content, and then how are you going to be presenting the follow-up resources? So, it could be that maybe you have an accessible video of the presentation. And that has captions, that has transcripts, that has accessible alternatives. And then maybe the PowerPoint or the Grackle slides become or the Google Slides just become an additional at that point. So there’s lots of things at play when we’re talking about presentations, and lots of different points to keep them accessible. So, as you’re going through these projects, and you have those kind of questions, send them our way, and we can test them, and see how it works for that specific.