Speaker 1: This video on creating accessible and engaging presentations is brought to you by AHEAD. In this video our aim is to give you the knowledge and tools to enable you to put together an engaging presentation which is accessible to as many as possible and during the course of this video we'll cover fonts and colour, slide design, using images and videos, presentation delivery and presentation content. Let's start with some basic tips to ensure that everyone can access the information you want to get across. Firstly, share your slides with your audience a few days in advance. This one simple action is a game changer for many in your audience as it allows them to prepare appropriately. Many people like to explore some concepts beforehand so they are not confused on the day. Others like to print slide handouts so they can make notes directly on them. Some will bring a laptop with the slides preloaded so they can follow the presentation from there and easily make digital notes that they can quickly file. For users with visual impairments it allows them to make large print versions or use technology to zoom in and out of the slides as necessary. If sign language interpreters are being used, any information they can be sent beforehand is vital in helping them to provide a quality service. So you can see there's a myriad of reasons why it's essential and important to provide your slides to your audience in advance. In terms of slide design, it's recommended to use an absolute minimum of 24 point font size and to always use simple sans serif fonts. Serifs are the elaborate tails and ornamentation that you see on fonts like Times New Roman and some find them much harder to read than sans serif fonts like Arial and Verdana which are simpler and cleaner. Additionally create good font contrast by ensuring that you use dark coloured text on plain light coloured backgrounds and avoiding placing text over images. If you are using bullet points it can be useful to alternate the colour of each point between two dark but distinguishable colours like a dark grey and a dark blue for legibility. When it comes to text on slides, less is more so do not overcrowd your slides with text and try to keep them visually uncluttered. The aim is to provide instructive outlines on your slide content rather than micro essays. Remember the slides are for your audience not you so avoid the trap of containing notes for you to remember on them and instead use the slide notes facility in PowerPoint if necessary to add extra memory queues visible only to you or bring along good old fashioned paper notes to jog your memory if that works better for you. Additionally it's good to support text with images where appropriate but be sure that the image holds some relevance to the content on the slide. When using statistics in your presentation avoid putting up complicated data tables and charts unless absolutely necessary and instead ask yourself how much does the audience need to know for this presentation. You might find you can distill the key information into a much simpler more easily digestible visual. Remember you can always add links or more information for curious souls to explore later in more detail. It's important to state that if you are using visuals to transmit information you should also verbally transmit that information since you may have someone with a visual impairment in the audience or even just someone at the back of the room who forgot their glasses. So when you pick an image for a slide ask yourself is this just a visually pleasing supporting image or is it transmitting something that I need to verbally convey to someone who can't see it. Equally for those in the room who may be deaf or hard of hearing it's important that you remember to face the audience at all times if possible and not to cover your mouth when talking since many rely on lip reading to support verbal comprehension. It's also useful not to speak too fast if you can. This will be helpful for any non-native speakers in the room and is vital for sign language interpreters and captioners in giving them adequate time to carry out their role should they be present. Video is an excellent format to bring theory and practice to life through the sharing of stories and experiences in your presentation. Just be sure not to play videos which are too long. As a rule of thumb your absolute max video length should be 2.5 minutes per 15 minutes of presentation. So if you have a 30 minute presentation then you can show a video up to 5 minutes in length but generally 2 to 4 minute chunks work best. It's very important that when using video you ensure that captions are provided to support those who are deaf or non-native speakers. This can also help more generally in ensuring everybody can understand what is being said in your video if for example the sound system you are using is not up to scratch. If it's your own video you can use YouTube to upload a typed transcript which YouTube will automatically sync and turn into timed closed captions for you. Just google it to find out how. When searching for videos on YouTube you can easily filter the results to show only those which have proper captions already uploaded helping you to select a more accessible video for your presentation. Now let's take a look at the presentation content. If you are going to give a clear and understandable presentation then it's good to start by ensuring that you yourself are clear on what you are trying to achieve and what takeaways you want the audience to leave with. If appropriate these aims and objectives can then be translated into an introductory slide for your presentation so you can be clear with your audience on what is ahead and ensure everyone is on the same page, a bit like how we introduced this video. Once you have established the goal of your presentation you can then plan the best way to achieve it. Structuring your presentation and thinking about how to get your message across, one of the most important factors to think about is how to keep your audience engaged throughout. The golden rule here is to mix it up. Don't present for too long with the audience passively listening without allowing them opportunities to participate more actively. For shorter presentations you can get your audience participating by using simple methods like asking for a show of hands in answer to a question, asking them to post ideas on post-its up on the wall which others can view after the session, setting them a topic for a 2 minute discussion with the person next to them or engaging them with live online feedback tools like Kahoot. For longer sessions try to build in some group activities where topics are discussed or challenges are worked on together. When implementing this type of group work it's a good idea to verbally describe the challenge and write it up on a slide or provide it on a handout if possible so that people can refer back to it throughout the task if necessary. These types of activities engage different parts of the brain and adding them to your session will make for a much richer learning experience for your audience. Additionally don't try to cover too much. It's better to get your key messages across in a simple and memorable way rather than having twice as much content but having to rush through it or even worse running out of time. In the spirit of mixing it up don't spend too long on any one format. For instance let's imagine you are delivering a 1 hour session on, you've guessed it, making engaging presentations. You could start with a 5 minute icebreaker activity, follow it with 20 minutes of verbal presentation with slides and images which deliver information about the practice suggested in this video and the theory behind why these practices work. Next you could move on to a 15 minute group activity which attempts to place that information in a real world situation and challenges the audience to think critically and act on their new found knowledge and to learn from their peers in the process. An example would be to give them a topic and ask them to design an engaging and accessible workshop schedule on it. You could follow that with a 5 minute video showing some real life feedback from people who have been at sessions designed like this and educators who have used these practices to give context on why it's important to be accessible and engaging. You could then deliver a 5 minute sum up of the key points touched on in the session and provide an outline of resources to explore further before using the last 10 minutes for a Q&A session and a next steps exercise which asks the audience to reflect on how they are going to use the knowledge gained in their own practice. It's always good towards the end of a session to signpost resources for further exploration either in a slide or soft copy document which you can share with participants. So now you've got the basics it's time for you to go and design an engaging and accessible lecture, conference presentation or workshop for yourself. Many of the tips here have been influenced by the Universal Design for Learning framework. For more information on the framework visit ahead.ie.uk