Presentation Makeover

Overview

Most students have sat through a slide deck with tiny yellow text, a paragraph per slide, a mystery statistic, and a photo pulled from somewhere. In this activity, teams get a printed "before" deck made by fictional students and give it a full makeover: one idea per slide, readable fonts and contrast, alt text for images, credit for every image and fact, and a clear note on any AI-generated image. Then each team presents the revised version in 60 seconds. The point is that a presentation is communication, and honest, accessible design is part of communicating well.

Objectives

• Students will identify at least eight clarity, accessibility, and sourcing problems in a mock slide deck and explain why each one matters to an audience.
• Students will redesign slides using one idea per slide, readable fonts, strong contrast, and descriptive alt text.
• Students will credit every image and factual claim, remove or replace unsupported statistics, and disclose AI-generated images with a clear label.
• Students will present a 60-second revised version and explain one design choice they made for their audience.

Step by step

1. 10–5 min

   Hook

   Five seconds per slide

   Project or hold up Slide 2 of Handout A for five seconds only, then hide it. Ask: "What was the main point?" Most students can't say. Then ask: "What got in the way?" Collect answers: too many words, can't read the color, too small. Say: "Today you're a design team. Your client made this deck. Your job is to make it work for every person in the audience, and to make it honest."

   Facilitator noteKeep the fictional authors off the hook: the goal is to fix the slides, not mock the people who made them.

2. 25–15 min

   Explore

   Audit the "before" deck

   Teams read Handout A and use Handout B to mark every problem they find, slide by slide. They sort each problem into one of four lenses: Clarity (one idea, fewer words), Access (contrast, font size, alt text, color alone carrying meaning), Honesty (sources for facts, credit for images), and AI (disclosing AI-generated images). Teams aim to find at least eight problems.

   Facilitator noteStudents often miss the color-coded chart on Slide 4. If the only difference between the bars is red versus green, some viewers can't tell them apart. Labels fix it.

3. 315–21 min

   Model

   Think aloud: fixing Slide 3

   Model a makeover of Slide 3 (the garden statistic) out loud. "The claim is 'Gardens make students 50% happier!' Source: 'the internet.' I can't trace that, so I can't keep it as a fact. I have three honest options: find a reliable source and cite it, change it to our own evidence ('In our survey of 42 classmates, 30 said they'd join a garden club'), or cut it. Now the image: it's AI-generated, so I add a small label: 'Image created with an AI tool.' Then alt text: 'Raised garden beds with tomato plants beside a school building.' I describe what matters, not every pixel."

   Facilitator notePoint out that the survey numbers in your model are part of the fictional deck. Students should use only evidence they can actually trace or collect.

4. 421–37 min

   Create

   Make it over

   Teams rebuild the deck, either sketching new slides on paper or editing the shared copy in a slide app. Required: a clear title slide with the team's names, no more than one main idea per slide, readable font size and strong contrast, alt text written for every image, a credit line for every image and fact, a disclosure label on every AI-generated image, and a final Sources slide. Teams may cut slides; fewer is often better. They use Handout B as a final check before they present.

   Facilitator noteCirculate and ask, "Who is this slide for? Could someone in the back row read it? Could someone using a screen reader understand the image?"

5. 537–49 min

   Practice

   60-second pitches

   Each team presents its revised deck in 60 seconds. After each pitch, one listener team scores it with Handout C and gives one "glow" and one "grow." Presenters end by naming one design choice they made for their audience, for example: "We moved the details into speaker notes so the slide has just one sentence."

   Facilitator noteWith many teams, run pitches in parallel pods of three teams so everyone presents and everyone gives feedback.

6. 649–55 min

   Reflect

   What changed and why

   Each student writes on an exit slip: "The change that helped the audience most was… The change that made the deck more honest was… One thing I'll do differently on my next project is…" Ask two or three volunteers to share.

   Facilitator noteLook for specific reasons ("yellow text failed contrast"), not just "it looks better."

Adaptations

Grades 6–7

Reduce the deck to four slides and focus on three fixes: one idea per slide, alt text, and credit lines. Provide sentence starters for alt text: "A photo of… showing…"

Grades 11–12

Add a slide with a complex chart and have teams redesign it for accuracy (labeled axes, a source, a baseline that doesn't exaggerate), then write a speaker-notes script.

Emergent bilinguals

Let teams pitch in pairs with one speaker and one pointer, and allow a bilingual title slide. Pre-teach contrast, credit, alt text, and disclose with visuals.

Students with IEPs or 504 plans

Offer a partially redesigned deck as a starting point and let students present by recording audio or pointing to slides while a partner reads.

Pairs well with

• Digital Accessibility Readiness AssessmentBackground for teachers on accessible documents and slides.
• Data Display Patterns field guideUseful for the chart redesign extension.