Presentations and Posters

Instructions for Pre-recorded Oral Presentations and Posters
Deadline for upload: 1 February 2021
Length of Oral Presentations: 15 minutes

While we may have missed some of you, hopefully many will still be able to use the guidelines below to increase accessibility to presentations.

Oral Presentations

15 minutes, maximum resolution 1920 x 1080 (MP4, FBR, MOV)

Posters

Maximum file size 1 MB (PDF), 110.7 cm (43.6”) width x 62.2 cm (24.5”)

For detailed recording and uploading instructions, please visit Speaker Center following the personalized link provided in the email from 18 January 2021.

Accessibility Guidelines

Please see the guidelines below to help make your talks and posters accessible to all participants. We recognize that this is placing an extra layer of work on presenters under a very strict timeline, so following the guidelines is encouraged but NOT mandatory.

We have CCFFR-SCL team members available if you want help editing auto-generated captions and transcripts. If you send us your VTT file and recording prior to uploading it, we can help edit it and return it to you for checking and final “finessing” before you upload it (see Editing Help below)

Accessibility Guidelines for Preparing Posters and Slides

The Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing provides accessibility guidelines for presentations and research posters, including:

  • Choose a good colour scheme that is discernible for colour blind users (see: http://colorsafe.co/)
  • Use high contrast colours (e.g., dark text on a light background)
  • Make sure slides use more than colour to communicate information (e.g., use bold, italic, underline, asterisks* to convey emphasis in text; symbols or descriptive legend for colour in figures)
  • Provide descriptive text captions for visuals and graphics
  • Provide a QR code that links to a plain text version of the poster

Accessibility Guidelines for Recorded Presentations

In addition to ensuring that your slides are prepared to improve accessibility for participants with visual disabilities (see above), to help make recorded presentations more accessible to hearing-impaired participants and those who are not native English-speakers, please consider including:

  • Text captions that coincide with recorded audio for each presentation slide
  • A QR code that links to a transcript of the presentation
  • Or contact information so that participants can request a transcript or more information

How to Caption Audio Recorded Presentations

If auto-captioning is used, it is important to review and edit the auto-captions for accuracy and grammar. We have CCFFR-SCL team members available if you want help editing auto-generated captions and transcripts.

Depending on the site licence available, platforms such as Kaltura, Camtasia, Zoom, Google Meet, MS Teams have functionality to caption/transcribe presentations during the video rendering process. Below are instructions for a few of the platforms that we’re familiar with; if you would like to kindly lend your expertise on other platforms, please contact Margaret.Docker@umanitoba.ca.

Zoom – We have the most familiarity with auto-captioning on Zoom, although this option requires the Business, Education, or Enterprise license with cloud recording enabled. Note also that the closed captions will appear in 2–3 lines over the bottom 10–15% of your slides. The white text is outlined in black, so the captions will be visible against any slide background. However, we recommend that you avoid putting critical text or images at the very bottom of your slides. See Adding and Editing Closed Captioning to Zoom Recordings or follow the “short version” instructions:

  1. Using the Zoom web portal, go to Settings / Recording; under Cloud Recording, select Audio transcript / Save
  2. Record your presentation using cloud recording
  3. After the recording ends, you will receive an email that lets you know that your cloud recording is available. A second email will let you know when the audio transcript is available; processing of the audio transcript can sometimes take much longer. The emails include links to view your recordings and transcript.
  4. To edit the transcript, open the recording and click the play icon; the transcript will be displayed to the right of the video. Click the pencil icon to edit a phrase, and click the check mark to save changes.
  5. To review the accuracy of the captioning, play your video in Zoom and click on the CC icon at the bottom right of the screen.
  6. To combine the captioning/transcript and video files into a single MP4 file to upload to the conference website, go to the Recordings tab in Zoom and download all the files. The VTT and MP4 files can now be merged using Happy Scribe.

Editing Help

The VTT file containing your transcript/closed captions can also be edited in Notepad, just be sure to keep the .vtt filename extension by using Save rather than Save as when you’re done editing. Editing the VTT file in this manner is very useful if you want someone else to help edit captions. You can send them your VTT file and the “Share recording with viewers” Zoom link to allow them to edit the transcript without accessing your Zoom account or a paid Zoom account. We have CCFFR-SCL team members available if you want help editing auto-generated captions and transcripts (email Margaret.Docker@umanitoba.ca). If you send us your VTT file and recording prior to uploading it, we can help edit it and return it to you for checking and final “finessing” before you upload it.

Microsoft PowerPoint – MS PowerPoint can also be used to simultaneously record and transcribe a presentation. See: Recording Subtitled Presentations. Depending on your version of PowerPoint, the following “short version” instructions should work:

  1. When you are ready to record the audio of your presentation, click the slideshow tab
  2. Check always use subtitles, adjust subtitle settings to mic and desired language output/ position etc.
  3. Click record from beginning in the slideshow tab
  4. This can be paused, or cleared through the same tab if you wish to redo timings
  5. Clicking file-> info, gives an option to compress your media before you save the narrated slideshow as a .mp4

Post-Production Captioning/Transcribing

If you need to caption your presentation recording after you rendered the video, depending on the site license available, platforms such as YouTube and Kaltura can auto-caption/transcribe videos post-production.

Other Resources on How to Make Presentations More Accessible