the visual presentation of the text

We use essential cookies to make Venngage work. By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.

Manage Cookies

Cookies and similar technologies collect certain information about how you’re using our website. Some of them are essential, and without them you wouldn’t be able to use Venngage. But others are optional, and you get to choose whether we use them or not.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are always on, as they’re essential for making Venngage work, and making it safe. Without these cookies, services you’ve asked for can’t be provided.

Show cookie providers

• Google Login

Functionality Cookies

These cookies help us provide enhanced functionality and personalisation, and remember your settings. They may be set by us or by third party providers.

Performance Cookies

These cookies help us analyze how many people are using Venngage, where they come from and how they're using it. If you opt out of these cookies, we can’t get feedback to make Venngage better for you and all our users.

• Google Analytics

Targeting Cookies

These cookies are set by our advertising partners to track your activity and show you relevant Venngage ads on other sites as you browse the internet.

• Google Tag Manager
• Infographics
• Daily Infographics
• Graphic Design
• Graphs and Charts
• Data Visualization
• Human Resources
• Training and Development
• Beginner Guides

Blog Graphic Design

15 Effective Visual Presentation Tips To Wow Your Audience

By Krystle Wong , Sep 28, 2023

So, you’re gearing up for that big presentation and you want it to be more than just another snooze-fest with slides. You want it to be engaging, memorable and downright impressive. 

Well, you’ve come to the right place — I’ve got some slick tips on how to create a visual presentation that’ll take your presentation game up a notch. 

Packed with presentation templates that are easily customizable, keep reading this blog post to learn the secret sauce behind crafting presentations that captivate, inform and remain etched in the memory of your audience.

Click to jump ahead:

What is a visual presentation & why is it important?

15 effective tips to make your visual presentations more engaging, 6 major types of visual presentation you should know , what are some common mistakes to avoid in visual presentations, visual presentation faqs, 5 steps to create a visual presentation with venngage.

A visual presentation is a communication method that utilizes visual elements such as images, graphics, charts, slides and other visual aids to convey information, ideas or messages to an audience. 

Visual presentations aim to enhance comprehension engagement and the overall impact of the message through the strategic use of visuals. People remember what they see, making your point last longer in their heads. 

Without further ado, let’s jump right into some great visual presentation examples that would do a great job in keeping your audience interested and getting your point across.

In today’s fast-paced world, where information is constantly bombarding our senses, creating engaging visual presentations has never been more crucial. To help you design a presentation that’ll leave a lasting impression, I’ve compiled these examples of visual presentations that will elevate your game.

1. Use the rule of thirds for layout

Ever heard of the rule of thirds? It’s a presentation layout trick that can instantly up your slide game. Imagine dividing your slide into a 3×3 grid and then placing your text and visuals at the intersection points or along the lines. This simple tweak creates a balanced and seriously pleasing layout that’ll draw everyone’s eyes.

2. Get creative with visual metaphors

Got a complex idea to explain? Skip the jargon and use visual metaphors. Throw in images that symbolize your point – for example, using a road map to show your journey towards a goal or using metaphors to represent answer choices or progress indicators in an interactive quiz or poll.

3. Visualize your data with charts and graphs

The right data visualization tools not only make content more appealing but also aid comprehension and retention. Choosing the right visual presentation for your data is all about finding a good match. 

For ordinal data, where things have a clear order, consider using ordered bar charts or dot plots. When it comes to nominal data, where categories are on an equal footing, stick with the classics like bar charts, pie charts or simple frequency tables. And for interval-ratio data, where there’s a meaningful order, go for histograms, line graphs, scatterplots or box plots to help your data shine.

In an increasingly visual world, effective visual communication is a valuable skill for conveying messages. Here’s a guide on how to use visual communication to engage your audience while avoiding information overload.

4. Employ the power of contrast

Want your important stuff to pop? That’s where contrast comes in. Mix things up with contrasting colors, fonts or shapes. It’s like highlighting your key points with a neon marker – an instant attention grabber.

5. Tell a visual story

Structure your slides like a storybook and create a visual narrative by arranging your slides in a way that tells a story. Each slide should flow into the next, creating a visual narrative that keeps your audience hooked till the very end.

Icons and images are essential for adding visual appeal and clarity to your presentation. Venngage provides a vast library of icons and images, allowing you to choose visuals that resonate with your audience and complement your message. 

6. Show the “before and after” magic

Want to drive home the impact of your message or solution? Whip out the “before and after” technique. Show the current state (before) and the desired state (after) in a visual way. It’s like showing a makeover transformation, but for your ideas.

7. Add fun with visual quizzes and polls

To break the monotony and see if your audience is still with you, throw in some quick quizzes or polls. It’s like a mini-game break in your presentation — your audience gets involved and it makes your presentation way more dynamic and memorable.

8. End with a powerful visual punch

Your presentation closing should be a showstopper. Think a stunning clip art that wraps up your message with a visual bow, a killer quote that lingers in minds or a call to action that gets hearts racing.

9. Engage with storytelling through data

Use storytelling magic to bring your data to life. Don’t just throw numbers at your audience—explain what they mean, why they matter and add a bit of human touch. Turn those stats into relatable tales and watch your audience’s eyes light up with understanding.

10. Use visuals wisely

Your visuals are the secret sauce of a great presentation. Cherry-pick high-quality images, graphics, charts and videos that not only look good but also align with your message’s vibe. Each visual should have a purpose – they’re not just there for decoration. 

11. Utilize visual hierarchy

Employ design principles like contrast, alignment and proximity to make your key info stand out. Play around with fonts, colors and placement to make sure your audience can’t miss the important stuff.

12. Engage with multimedia

Static slides are so last year. Give your presentation some sizzle by tossing in multimedia elements. Think short video clips, animations, or a touch of sound when it makes sense, including an animated logo . But remember, these are sidekicks, not the main act, so use them smartly.

13. Interact with your audience

Turn your presentation into a two-way street. Start your presentation by encouraging your audience to join in with thought-provoking questions, quick polls or using interactive tools. Get them chatting and watch your presentation come alive.

When it comes to delivering a group presentation, it’s important to have everyone on the team on the same page. Venngage’s real-time collaboration tools enable you and your team to work together seamlessly, regardless of geographical locations. Collaborators can provide input, make edits and offer suggestions in real time. 

14. Incorporate stories and examples

Weave in relatable stories, personal anecdotes or real-life examples to illustrate your points. It’s like adding a dash of spice to your content – it becomes more memorable and relatable.

15. Nail that delivery

Don’t just stand there and recite facts like a robot — be a confident and engaging presenter. Lock eyes with your audience, mix up your tone and pace and use some gestures to drive your points home. Practice and brush up your presentation skills until you’ve got it down pat for a persuasive presentation that flows like a pro.

Venngage offers a wide selection of professionally designed presentation templates, each tailored for different purposes and styles. By choosing a template that aligns with your content and goals, you can create a visually cohesive and polished presentation that captivates your audience.

Looking for more presentation ideas ? Why not try using a presentation software that will take your presentations to the next level with a combination of user-friendly interfaces, stunning visuals, collaboration features and innovative functionalities that will take your presentations to the next level. 

Visual presentations come in various formats, each uniquely suited to convey information and engage audiences effectively. Here are six major types of visual presentations that you should be familiar with:

1. Slideshows or PowerPoint presentations

Slideshows are one of the most common forms of visual presentations. They typically consist of a series of slides containing text, images, charts, graphs and other visual elements. Slideshows are used for various purposes, including business presentations, educational lectures and conference talks.

2. Infographics

Infographics are visual representations of information, data or knowledge. They combine text, images and graphics to convey complex concepts or data in a concise and visually appealing manner. Infographics are often used in marketing, reporting and educational materials.

Don’t worry, they are also super easy to create thanks to Venngage’s fully customizable infographics templates that are professionally designed to bring your information to life. Be sure to try it out for your next visual presentation!

3. Video presentation

Videos are your dynamic storytellers. Whether it’s pre-recorded or happening in real-time, videos are the showstoppers. You can have interviews, demos, animations or even your own mini-documentary. Video presentations are highly engaging and can be shared in both in-person and virtual presentations .

4. Charts and graphs

Charts and graphs are visual representations of data that make it easier to understand and analyze numerical information. Common types include bar charts, line graphs, pie charts and scatterplots. They are commonly used in scientific research, business reports and academic presentations.

Effective data visualizations are crucial for simplifying complex information and Venngage has got you covered. Venngage’s tools enable you to create engaging charts, graphs,and infographics that enhance audience understanding and retention, leaving a lasting impression in your presentation.

5. Interactive presentations

Interactive presentations involve audience participation and engagement. These can include interactive polls, quizzes, games and multimedia elements that allow the audience to actively participate in the presentation. Interactive presentations are often used in workshops, training sessions and webinars.

Venngage’s interactive presentation tools enable you to create immersive experiences that leave a lasting impact and enhance audience retention. By incorporating features like clickable elements, quizzes and embedded multimedia, you can captivate your audience’s attention and encourage active participation.

6. Poster presentations

Poster presentations are the stars of the academic and research scene. They consist of a large poster that includes text, images and graphics to communicate research findings or project details and are usually used at conferences and exhibitions. For more poster ideas, browse through Venngage’s gallery of poster templates to inspire your next presentation.

Different visual presentations aside, different presentation methods also serve a unique purpose, tailored to specific objectives and audiences. Find out which type of presentation works best for the message you are sending across to better capture attention, maintain interest and leave a lasting impression. 

To make a good presentation , it’s crucial to be aware of common mistakes and how to avoid them. Without further ado, let’s explore some of these pitfalls along with valuable insights on how to sidestep them.

Overloading slides with text

Text heavy slides can be like trying to swallow a whole sandwich in one bite – overwhelming and unappetizing. Instead, opt for concise sentences and bullet points to keep your slides simple. Visuals can help convey your message in a more engaging way.

Using low-quality visuals

Grainy images and pixelated charts are the equivalent of a scratchy vinyl record at a DJ party. High-resolution visuals are your ticket to professionalism. Ensure that the images, charts and graphics you use are clear, relevant and sharp.

Choosing the right visuals for presentations is important. To find great visuals for your visual presentation, Browse Venngage’s extensive library of high-quality stock photos. These images can help you convey your message effectively, evoke emotions and create a visually pleasing narrative. 

Ignoring design consistency

Imagine a book with every chapter in a different font and color – it’s a visual mess. Consistency in fonts, colors and formatting throughout your presentation is key to a polished and professional look.

Reading directly from slides

Reading your slides word-for-word is like inviting your audience to a one-person audiobook session. Slides should complement your speech, not replace it. Use them as visual aids, offering key points and visuals to support your narrative.

Lack of visual hierarchy

Neglecting visual hierarchy is like trying to find Waldo in a crowd of clones. Use size, color and positioning to emphasize what’s most important. Guide your audience’s attention to key points so they don’t miss the forest for the trees.

Ignoring accessibility

Accessibility isn’t an option these days; it’s a must. Forgetting alt text for images, color contrast and closed captions for videos can exclude individuals with disabilities from understanding your presentation. 

Relying too heavily on animation

While animations can add pizzazz and draw attention, overdoing it can overshadow your message. Use animations sparingly and with purpose to enhance, not detract from your content.

Using jargon and complex language

Keep it simple. Use plain language and explain terms when needed. You want your message to resonate, not leave people scratching their heads.

Not testing interactive elements

Interactive elements can be the life of your whole presentation, but not testing them beforehand is like jumping into a pool without checking if there’s water. Ensure that all interactive features, from live polls to multimedia content, work seamlessly. A smooth experience keeps your audience engaged and avoids those awkward technical hiccups.

Presenting complex data and information in a clear and visually appealing way has never been easier with Venngage. Build professional-looking designs with our free visual chart slide templates for your next presentation.

What software or tools can I use to create visual presentations?

You can use various software and tools to create visual presentations, including Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, Adobe Illustrator, Canva, Prezi and Venngage, among others.

What is the difference between a visual presentation and a written report?

The main difference between a visual presentation and a written report is the medium of communication. Visual presentations rely on visuals, such as slides, charts and images to convey information quickly, while written reports use text to provide detailed information in a linear format.

How do I effectively communicate data through visual presentations?

To effectively communicate data through visual presentations, simplify complex data into easily digestible charts and graphs, use clear labels and titles and ensure that your visuals support the key messages you want to convey.

Are there any accessibility considerations for visual presentations?

Accessibility considerations for visual presentations include providing alt text for images, ensuring good color contrast, using readable fonts and providing transcripts or captions for multimedia content to make the presentation inclusive.

Most design tools today make accessibility hard but Venngage’s Accessibility Design Tool comes with accessibility features baked in, including accessible-friendly and inclusive icons.

How do I choose the right visuals for my presentation?

Choose visuals that align with your content and message. Use charts for data, images for illustrating concepts, icons for emphasis and color to evoke emotions or convey themes.

What is the role of storytelling in visual presentations?

Storytelling plays a crucial role in visual presentations by providing a narrative structure that engages the audience, helps them relate to the content and makes the information more memorable.

How can I adapt my visual presentations for online or virtual audiences?

To adapt visual presentations for online or virtual audiences, focus on concise content, use engaging visuals, ensure clear audio, encourage audience interaction through chat or polls and rehearse for a smooth online delivery.

What is the role of data visualization in visual presentations?

Data visualization in visual presentations simplifies complex data by using charts, graphs and diagrams, making it easier for the audience to understand and interpret information.

How do I choose the right color scheme and fonts for my visual presentation?

Choose a color scheme that aligns with your content and brand and select fonts that are readable and appropriate for the message you want to convey.

How can I measure the effectiveness of my visual presentation?

Measure the effectiveness of your visual presentation by collecting feedback from the audience, tracking engagement metrics (e.g., click-through rates for online presentations) and evaluating whether the presentation achieved its intended objectives.

Ultimately, creating a memorable visual presentation isn’t just about throwing together pretty slides. It’s about mastering the art of making your message stick, captivating your audience and leaving a mark.

Lucky for you, Venngage simplifies the process of creating great presentations, empowering you to concentrate on delivering a compelling message. Follow the 5 simple steps below to make your entire presentation visually appealing and impactful:

1. Sign up and log In: Log in to your Venngage account or sign up for free and gain access to Venngage’s templates and design tools.

2. Choose a template: Browse through Venngage’s presentation template library and select one that best suits your presentation’s purpose and style. Venngage offers a variety of pre-designed templates for different types of visual presentations, including infographics, reports, posters and more.

3. Edit and customize your template: Replace the placeholder text, image and graphics with your own content and customize the colors, fonts and visual elements to align with your presentation’s theme or your organization’s branding.

4. Add visual elements: Venngage offers a wide range of visual elements, such as icons, illustrations, charts, graphs and images, that you can easily add to your presentation with the user-friendly drag-and-drop editor.

5. Save and export your presentation: Export your presentation in a format that suits your needs and then share it with your audience via email, social media or by embedding it on your website or blog .

So, as you gear up for your next presentation, whether it’s for business, education or pure creative expression, don’t forget to keep these visual presentation ideas in your back pocket.

Feel free to experiment and fine-tune your approach and let your passion and expertise shine through in your presentation. With practice, you’ll not only build presentations but also leave a lasting impact on your audience – one slide at a time.

.css-1qrtm5m{display:block;margin-bottom:8px;text-transform:uppercase;font-size:14px;line-height:1.5714285714285714;-webkit-letter-spacing:-0.35px;-moz-letter-spacing:-0.35px;-ms-letter-spacing:-0.35px;letter-spacing:-0.35px;font-weight:300;color:#606F7B;}@media (min-width:600px){.css-1qrtm5m{font-size:16px;line-height:1.625;-webkit-letter-spacing:-0.5px;-moz-letter-spacing:-0.5px;-ms-letter-spacing:-0.5px;letter-spacing:-0.5px;}} Best Practices The #1 rule for improving your presentation slides

by Tom Rielly • May 12, 2020

When giving presentations, either on a video conference call or in person, your slides, videos and graphics (or lack of them) can be an important element in helping you tell your story or express your idea. This is the first of a series of blog posts that will give you tips and tricks on how to perfect your visual presentations.

Your job as a presenter is to build your idea -- step-by-step -- in the minds of your audience members. One tool to do that is presentation graphics, such as slides and videos.

Why graphics for your presentation?

A common mistake is using slides or videos as a crutch, even if they don’t actually add anything to your presentation. Not all presentations need graphics. Lots of presentations work wonderfully with just one person standing on a stage telling a story, as demonstrated by many TED Talks.

You should only use slides if they serve a purpose: conveying scientific information, art, and things that are hard to explain without pictures. Once you have decided on using slides, you will have a number of decisions to make. We’ll help you with the basics of making a presentation that is, above all, clear and easy to understand. The most important thing to remember here is: less is more.

Less is so much more

You want to aim for the fewest number of slides, the fewest number of photos, the fewest words per slide, the least cluttered slides and the most white space on your slides. This is the most violated slide rule, but it is the secret to success. Take a look at these examples.

As you can see in the above example, you don’t need fancy backgrounds or extra words to convey a simple concept. If you take “Everything you need to know about Turtles”, and delete “everything you need to know about” leaving just “turtles”, the slide has become much easier for your audience to read, and tells the story with economy.

The above example demonstrates that a single image that fills the entire screen is far more powerful than a slide cluttered with images. A slide with too many images may be detrimental to your presentation. The audience will spend more mental energy trying to sort through the clutter than listening to your presentation. If you need multiple images, then put each one on its own slide. Make each image high-resolution and have it fill the entire screen. If the photos are not the same dimensions as the screen, put them on a black background. Don’t use other colors, especially white.

Your slides will be much more effective if you use the fewest words, characters, and pictures needed to tell your story. Long paragraphs make the audience strain to read them, which means they are not paying attention to you. Your audience may even get stressed if you move on to your next slide before they’ve finished reading your paragraph. The best way to make sure the attention stays on you is to limit word count to no more than 10 words per slide. As presentation expert Nancy Duarte says “any slide with more than 10 words is a document.” If you really do need a longer explanation of something, handouts or follow-up emails are the way to go.

Following a “less is more” approach is one of the simplest things you can do to improve your presentation visuals and the impact of your presentation overall. Make sure your visuals add to your presentation rather than distract from it and get your message across.

Ready to learn more about how to make your presentation even better? Get TED Masterclass and develop your ideas into TED-style talks.

© 2024 TED Conferences, LLC. All rights reserved. Please note that the TED Talks Usage policy does not apply to this content and is not subject to our creative commons license.

How it works

For Business

Join Mind Tools

Article • 12 min read

Creating Effective Presentation Visuals

Connecting people with your message.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Apple® founder Steve Jobs was known widely for his great presentations. His unveiling of the iPhone® in 2007 is considered to have been one of his best presentations ever, and, if you were one of the millions who watched it online, you'll know why. The presentation was engaging, and passionate.

Jobs was particularly well known for building his presentations around powerful visual aids. He knew that slides are most effective when they tell a story rather than convey information, so his visuals were simple, elegant, and image-based. They complemented and reinforced his message, and they never competed with him for his audience's attention.

You don't have to be Steve Jobs to give a great presentation, but you do need great visuals. They convey a powerful message about your ideas and your brand, so it's essential to get them right. In this article, we'll look at how you can create effective presentation visuals – slides that connect your audience with your message.

Why Simplicity Speaks Volumes

The saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" is popular for a good reason: the human brain processes information more effectively when it is accompanied by images, or by short, memorable statements. This means that when you use simple, image-based slides to support your message, your audience can better grasp the information you're communicating.

However, many people use too many slides, or they build presentations around visual aids that are word-heavy or excessively complex.

These kinds of visual aids can negatively affect your presentation. Let's look at some examples:

• You're trying to convince the board to support a new product idea. Your slides are made up of graphs, numbers, and blocks of text from top to bottom, and board members spend most of their time reading the slides instead of listening to you. The result? You don't make a real connection, and your passion for the project is lost on them. They vote unanimously not to take the idea forward.
• You're pitching to a promising potential client. You spent a lot of time creating your slides, using many colors, animations, and fonts. However, the slides are so complex that your client has trouble understanding them. She leaves the presentation feeling overwhelmed and tired, and avoids using your firm because she fears, subconsciously, that dealing with your firm in the future could be similarly draining.
• You're giving a presentation to your department to highlight its good work. You want to feature everyone, so you make a slide detailing each person's accomplishments. Your department has dozens of people, so by the end, your team cares more about leaving than their results.

Now think about what happens when you use simple and engaging visuals. Instead of generating confusion or exhaustion, your slides create a positive connection with your audience. People might not remember exactly what you said, but they will remember a powerful image. They'll recall the positive emotions that they experienced during your presentation, and they'll start to associate your brand with clear, intelligent communication.

The results will be profound. You'll win new clients, convince colleagues to act on your ideas, and earn recognition for your team members' hard work. In short, you'll make positive impressions that will remain in people's minds long after the details of your presentation have faded.

Creating Great Visuals

Your visual aids have one job: to support your presentation . However, it takes considerable time, creativity, and effort to develop slides that do this well. Use the tips below to make the most of your preparation time.

1. Be Consistent

A common mistake is choosing different colors and fonts for each slide. This can confuse your audience and divert attention away from your message. Stay consistent with your slides, so that they form part of a seamless whole.

First, choose colors carefully, as color will affect your presentation's mood and tone. Also, think about the space that you'll be presenting in. If the room will be dark (with lights off), choose a darker background color, such as dark blue, black, or gray, with white or light-colored text. If the room will be light (with lights on or plenty of ambient light), choose a white or light-colored background, with black or dark-colored text.

You also need to match color with the tone and message of your presentation. Bright colors convey energy and excitement, while darker colors may seem more conservative and serious. Align the color palette you choose with your subject matter.

Microsoft® PowerPoint and Apple's Keynote are the most widely used presentation packages. They feature useful templates and tools, and most people are familiar with the layout of their presentations.

However, cloud-based presentation tools have features and templates that might be new to your audience, increasing the potential impact of your presentations.

2. Consider Culture

Before you create your visuals, make sure that you understand your audience. This is especially true if you're presenting to a culturally diverse group.

For example, not everyone reads from left to right, and people from some cultures may consider a particular color offensive or bad luck in business settings (look out for examples of this in our Managing Around the World articles). Additionally, jargon or slang may cause confusion with your audience.

When designing your visuals, use images and photographs that reflect the culture to which you're speaking. If you're presenting to a culturally diverse group, use pictures and images that reflect this diversity.

And keep graphics and phrases simple; remember, not everyone in the room will be a native English speaker. Whenever possible, use images to replace bullet points and sentences.

Our article on Cross-Cultural Communication has more tips for communicating with an ethnically diverse group.

3. Use Images Intelligently

When Steve Jobs unveiled the MacBook Air® , he needed to show just how small this new laptop was. The audience wasn't going to remember that it was 0.68 x 11.8 x 7.56 inches; those numbers don't create an emotional response. Instead, he showed them that the MacBook Air would fit easily into a standard manila envelope. This was a powerful way to show its size.

This kind of creativity is essential when choosing images. Your audience has probably seen plenty of bad clip-art and too many pictures of cross-cultural handshakes. Brainstorm creative, clever approaches with your imagery, and look for photographs or illustrations that tell a story in a less obvious way.

Thoughtful images will keep your audience engaged, reinforce your professionalism, and make a lasting impression.

4. Break Complex Data Down

When you have to communicate complex data or large chunks of information, avoid putting it all on one slide, as your audience may struggle to take in all of the details. Instead, either summarize the information, or split it up over several slides.

You can also use handouts to communicate complex information. Handouts allow your audience to look at data closely. This is especially important when you're presenting to analytical people, such as engineers, scientists, or finance professionals. They are trained to be skeptical about data, and a handout will give them a closer look. Once again, this kind of attention to the needs of your audience will highlight your professionalism and support your message.

5. Keep It Simple

Each slide should focus on one idea or concept. This allows your audience to grasp quickly what you want to communicate. Keep your text to a bare minimum (10 words or fewer if possible), and, where you can, use an image to convey a message rather than words: for example, consider using a graph instead of a list to show changing trends. Each slide should take three seconds or fewer to process. If it takes longer, the slide is probably too complex.

It can sometimes be helpful to follow a clear structure when creating your presentation; for example, if it is focused on a document or process with which audience members are familiar. This will help them make connections between your content and their existing knowledge.

Avoid bulleted lists whenever possible; they make it too easy to put several ideas on one slide, which can be overwhelming for your audience. If you do need to use bullets, don't use sentences; instead, simply list the fact, statistic, or idea you want to communicate. Then use your narrative to educate the audience about what these mean.

To simplify the wording on your slides further, highlight the key word in every sentence.

Next, look at the layout of your slides. Aim to use a plain background and plenty of blank space: this will help to focus audience members' eyes on your message. Avoid decorating slides with background pictures, logos or patterns that could distract attention.

Last, consider using blank slides when you need the audience's complete focus; a blank slide is equivalent to a pause, and it will add drama, tension, and focus to your words.

Many people underestimate how much time they need to set aside to prepare for a presentation. They'll spend days creating content and visuals but only a few hours practicing. Allow extra preparation time to hone your message and feel fully confident in your presentation.

First, take our interactive quiz, How Good Are Your Presentation Skills? to get an idea of how well you speak. Our articles on Delivering Great Presentations and Better Public Speaking contain tips and strategies that will help you communicate with clarity and intention.

When you practice your presentation, use your visuals. You should be able to glance at each slide and know exactly what you want to say.

If you're not confident in creating your own slides, think about outsourcing the task to a professional. This can be a smart option when a lot is at stake, or when you don't have the technical skills to create the type of presentation you want.

Consider using an outsourcing service such as Elance , Guru , or PeoplePerHour to find a suitable professional.

If you do, keep in mind that managing a freelancer requires a different approach from managing a regular staff member. Be clear about the project details, communicate your goals for the presentation, and set deadlines that give you plenty of time to revise and add as necessary.

Presentations that are too complex or lengthy can undermine your message. To create better visuals, do the following:

• Stay consistent.
• Consider culture.
• Use images intelligently.
• Break down complex data.
• Keep it simple.

If the stakes are high with your presentation and you don't feel confident with your technical skills, consider outsourcing slide preparation.

"iPhone," "Apple," "MacBook Air," and "Keynote" are trademarks of Apple Inc. (see www.apple.com ). "Microsoft" and "PowerPoint" are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation (see www.microsoft.com ). We have no association or connection with these organizations.

You've accessed 1 of your 2 free resources.

Get unlimited access

Discover more content

Expert Interviews

The Art of Public Speaking

With Professor Steve Lucas

Great Presentations

Add comment

Comments (0)

Be the first to comment!

Team Management

Learn the key aspects of managing a team, from building and developing your team, to working with different types of teams, and troubleshooting common problems.

Sign-up to our newsletter

Subscribing to the Mind Tools newsletter will keep you up-to-date with our latest updates and newest resources.

Subscribe now

Business Skills

Personal Development

Leadership and Management

Member Extras

Most Popular

Newest Releases

SWOT Analysis

SMART Goals

Mind Tools Store

About Mind Tools Content

Discover something new today

How to stop procrastinating.

Overcoming the Habit of Delaying Important Tasks

What Is Time Management?

Working Smarter to Enhance Productivity

How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?

Boosting Your People Skills

Self-Assessment

What's Your Leadership Style?

Learn About the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Way You Like to Lead

Recommended for you

A practical set of dos and don'ts for succeeding at negotiating.

What to Do and What Not to Do in the Main Phases of a Negotiation

Business Operations and Process Management

Strategy Tools

Customer Service

Business Ethics and Values

Handling Information and Data

Project Management

Knowledge Management

Self-Development and Goal Setting

Time Management

Presentation Skills

Learning Skills

Career Skills

Communication Skills

Negotiation, Persuasion and Influence

Working With Others

Difficult Conversations

Creativity Tools

Self-Management

Work-Life Balance

Stress Management and Wellbeing

Coaching and Mentoring

Change Management

Managing Conflict

Delegation and Empowerment

Performance Management

Leadership Skills

Developing Your Team

Talent Management

Problem Solving

Decision Making

Member Podcast

Human-Computer Interaction pp 104–124 Cite as

Visual Presentation of Text: The Process of Reading from a Psycholinguistic Perspective

• Leo G. M. Noordman  
• Conference paper

222 Accesses

The aim of this chapter is to give an insight into the reading process and an overview of the psycholinguistic research on reading. It will focus on the so-called higher-order processes that take place while the reader is reading a text; the cognitive aspects of information processing. Factors that affect these processes will be discussed. These include factors inherent in the text as well as factors external to the text. These issues are discussed in the first part of the chapter, an overview of visual perception in reading. The subsequent discussion of textual factors is organized from smaller units to larger units: words, sentences, texts. Finally, some extratextual factors in text processing are discussed. This order of discussion is selected only as a convenient way of presentation; it does not imply that the reading process takes place in this order.

• Word Recognition
• Rapid Serial Visual Presentation
• Reading Speed
• Text Processing
• Reading Process

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Buying options

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Unable to display preview.  Download preview PDF.

Anderson R.C. & Pichert J.W. (1978). Recall of previous unrecallable information following a shift in perspective. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior , 17, pp. 1–12.

Article   Google Scholar  

Anderson R.C., Pichert J.W. & Shirey L.L. (1983). Effects of the reader’s schema at different points in time. Journal of Educational Psychology , 75, pp. 271–279.

Bartlett B.J. (1978). Top-level structure as an organizational strategy for recall of classroom texts . Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University.

Google Scholar  

Borland R. & Flammer A. (1985). Encoding and retrieval processes in memory for prose. Discourse Processes , 8, pp. 305–317.

Bouma H. & de Voogd, A.H. (1974). On the control of eye saccades in reading. Vision Research , 14, pp. 273–284.

Broek P. van den & Trabasso T. (1986). Causal networks versus goal hierarchies in summarizing text. Discourse Processes , 9, pp. 1–15.

Brown G. & Yale G. (1983). Discourse analysis . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Brown C.M., Marslen-Wilson W.D. & Tyler L.K. (in preparation). Contextual factors in word recognition.

Carpenter P.A. & Daneman M. (1981). Lexical retrieval and error recovery in reading: A model based on eye fixations. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour , 20, pp. 137–160.

Cirilo R.K. & Foss D.J. (1980). Text structure and reading time for sentences. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour , 19, pp. 96–109.

Clark H.H. & Clark E.V. (1977). Psychology and language . Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, New York.

Cocklin T.G., Ward N.J., Chen H.C. & Juola J.F. (1984). Factors influencing readability of rapidly presented text segments. Memory and Cognition , 12, pp. 431–442.

Fodor J. A. (1983). Modularity of mind . M.I.T. Press, Cambrigde, MA.

Fodor J.A. & Garrett M.F. (1967). Some syntactic determinants of sentential complexity. Perception and Psychophysics , 3, pp. 453–461.

Forster K.I. (1970). Visual perception of rapidly presented word sequences of varying complexity. Perception and Psychophysics , 8, pp. 215–221.

Goodman K.S. (1970). Reading: a psycholinguistic guessing game. In: Theoretical models and processes of reading . H. Singer & R.R. Ruddle (Eds.). International Reading Association, Newark.

Gould J.D. & Grischkowsky N. (1984). Doing the same work with hard copy and with cathode-ray-tube (CRT) computer terminals. Human Factors , 26, pp. 323–337.

Graf R. & Torrey J.W. (1966). Perception of phrase structure in written language. American Psycological Association Convention Proceedings , pp 83–84.

Halliday M.A.K. (1967). Notes on transitivity and theme in English: II. Journal of Linguistics , 3, pp. 199–244.

Haviland S.E. & Clark H.H. (1974). What’s new? Acquiring new information as a process in comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour , 13, pp. 512–521.

Juola J.F., Haugh D., Trast S., Ferraro F.R. & Liebhaber M. (1985). Reading with and without eye movements . Paper presented at the third European conference on eye movement, Dourdan, France.

Juola J.F., Ward N.J. & McNamara T. (1982). Visual search and reading of rapid serial presentation of letter strings, words and text. Journal of Experimental Psychology, General , 11, pp. 208–227.

Just M.A. & Carpenter P.A. (1980). A theory of reading: From eye fixations to comprehension. Psychological Review , 87, pp. 329–354.

Kintsch W., Kozminsky E., Streby W.J., McKoon G. & Keenan J.M. (1975). Comprehension and recall of text as a function of content variables. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour , 14, pp. 196–214.

Kleiman G.M. (1975). Speech recoding in reading. Journal of Verbal Language and Verbal Behaviour , 14, pp. 323–339.

Kruk R. & Muter P. (1984). Reading of continuous text on video screens. Human Factors , 26, pp. 339–345.

Levy B.A. (1978). Speech processes during reading. In: Cognitive psychology and instruction . A.M. Lesgold, J.W. Pellegrino, S.D. Fokkema & R. Glaser (Eds.), Plenum Press, New York.

Mandler J.M. & Johnson N.S. (1977). Remembrance of things parsed: story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology , 9, pp. 111–151.

Marslen-Wilson W.D. & Tyler L.K. (1975). Processing structure of sentence perception. Nature , 257, pp. 784–786.

Marslen-Wilson W.D. & Welsh A. (1978). Processing interactions and lexical access during word recognition in continuous speech. Cognitive Psychology , 10, pp. 29–63.

McClelland J.L. & Rumelhart D.E. (1981). An interactive activation model of content effects in letter perception: Part 1. An account of basic findings. Psychological Review , 88, pp. 375–407.

McConkie G.W. (1978). Where do we read? Paper presented at the Psychonomic Society meetings, San Antonio.

McKoon G. & Ratcliff R. (1980). The comprehension processes and memory structures involved in anaphoric reference. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour , 19, pp. 668–682.

Meyer D.E., Schvaneveldt R.W. & Ruddy M.G. (1974) Functions of graphemic and phonemic codes in visual word recognition. Memory and Cognition , 2, pp. 309–321.

Milne R.W. (1982). Predicting garden path sentences. Cognitive Science , 6, pp. 349–373.

Muter P., Latremouille S.A., Treurniet W.C. & Beam P. (1982). Extended reading from continuous text on television screens. Human Factors , 24, pp. 501–508.

Potter M.C. (1984). Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP): A method for studying language processing. In: New methods in reading comprehension research . D.E. Kieras & M.A. Just (Eds.).

Rayner K. (1977). Visual attention in reading: Eye movements reflect cognitive processes. Memory and Cognition , 4, pp. 443–448.

Rayner K. (1978). Eye movements in reading and information processing. Psychological Bulletin , 85, pp. 618–660.

Reicher G.M. (1969). Perceptual recognition as a function of meaningfulness of stimulus material. Journal of Experimental Psychology , 81, pp. 274–280.

Reiser B.J. & Black J.B. (1982). Processing and structural models of comprehension. Text , 2, pp. 225–252.

Thorndyke P.W. (1977). Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse. Cognitive Psychology , 9, pp. 77–110.

Thorndyke P.W. (1979). Toward a model of text comprehension and production. Cognitive Psychology , 9, pp. 77–110.

Vonk W. & Noordman L.G.M. (1984). Reader’s perspective and encoding of text . Paper presented at the 26. Tagung experimentell-arbeitender Psychologen, Nürnberg.

Vonk W., Noordman L.G.M. & Kempff HJ. (1984). Tekstbegrip en inferenties: wordt tijdens het lezen meer begrepen dan dat er Staat? In: Het Leesproces . A.J.W.M. Thomassen, L.G.M. Noordman & P.A.T.M. Eling (Eds.), Swets and Zeitlinger, Lisse.

Wilensky R. (1983). Story grammars versus story points. Behavioral and Brain Science , 6, pp. 579–623.

Download references

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Free University, P.O. Box 7161, 1007 MC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Gerrit C. van der Veer

Institute for Experimental Psychology, University of Groningen, Kerklaan 30, 9751 NN, Haren, The Netherlands

Gijsbertus Mulder

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1988 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper.

Noordman, L.G.M. (1988). Visual Presentation of Text: The Process of Reading from a Psycholinguistic Perspective. In: van der Veer, G.C., Mulder, G. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-73402-1_8

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-73402-1_8

Publisher Name : Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

Print ISBN : 978-3-642-73404-5

Online ISBN : 978-3-642-73402-1

eBook Packages : Springer Book Archive

Share this paper

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Introduction to Web Accessibility

WebAIM Training

Contrast and Color Accessibility Understanding WCAG 2 Contrast and Color Requirements

You are here: Home > Articles > Contrast and Color Accessibility

Introduction

Contrast and color use are vital to accessibility. Users, including users with visual disabilities, must be able to perceive content on the page. There is a great deal of fine print and complexity within the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2 that can easily confuse web content creators and web accessibility evaluators. This article pulls together the terms and principles needed to understand WCAG 2 requirements for contrast and color.

Defining Colors

Colors can be defined in a few ways. For example, this shade of blue may commonly be defined in three different ways in webpage styles:

• rgb (97, 97, 255) : The amount of red, green, and blue that form a color are each presented as a number between 0 and 255.
• #6161FF : This is a "hexadecimal" format where the red/green/blue values are presented as a combination of six letters or numbers. Typically called "Hex," this is a very common format in webpages.
• hsl (240, 100%, 69%) : Hue, saturation, and lightness map more closely to the way people perceive colors. Changing the "lightness" of a color will change its contrast ratio to another color.

Alpha, which is the opacity or transparency of a color, will also impact contrast. Alpha is presented as a number between 0 (completely transparent) and 1 (completely opaque). Reducing the alpha for an element will reduce its contrast because you are allowing an underlying color to bleed through.

WCAG 2 "Contrast Ratio"

In WCAG 2, contrast is a measure of the difference in perceived "luminance" or brightness between two colors (the phrase "color contrast" is never used in WCAG). This brightness difference is expressed as a ratio ranging from 1:1 (e.g. white on white) to 21:1 (e.g., black on a white). To give a frame of reference, on a white background:

• Pure red (#FF0000) has a ratio of 4:1. I am red text.
• Pure green (#00FF00) has a very low ratio of 1.4:1. I am green text.
• Pure blue (#000FF) has a contrast ratio of 8.6:1. I am blue text .

If text and background colors are swapped, the contrast ratio remains the same.

Three success criteria in WCAG 2 address contrast:

1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)

1.4.6 contrast (enhanced).

• 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast .

One additional success criterion, 1.4.1 Use of Color , references the contrast ratio as part of the requirement for links that are differentiated by color alone.

We will review these four success criteria in detail.

This Level AA requirement reads:

The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, except for the following: Large Text:   Large-scale text and images of large-scale text have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1; Incidental: Text or images of text that are part of an inactive user interface component, that are pure decoration, that are not visible to anyone, or that are part of a picture that contains significant other visual content, have no contrast requirement. Logotypes: Text that is part of a logo or brand name has no contrast requirement.

Here are some examples of text with almost exactly 4.5:1 contrast.

• Gray (#767676) on white
• Purple (#CC21CC) white
• Blue (#000063) on gray (#808080)
• Red (#E60000) on yellow (#FFFF47)

For many of us, some of these combinations are not very readable. That is why 4.5:1 is the minimum required by WCAG..

You cannot round a contrast ratio up to 4.5:1. For example, #777777—a commonly-used shade of gray with a 4.47:1 contrast ratio—does not meet this requirement

Images of text

These contrast requirements also apply to text within a graphic, called "images of text" in WCAG 2.

The white text in the image below has insufficient contrast.

Outline and halo

Text effects, like outlines, can impact perceived contrast. WCAG 2 states that the color of a text outline or border can be used as the text or foreground color when measuring contrast.

A text glow/halo around the letters can be used as the background color.

There are three exceptions to the 4.5:1 contrast requirement: large text, incidental text, and logotypes.

Large text is easier to read, so the contrast requirement is reduced to 3:1. WCAG defines large text as text that is 18pt and larger, or 14pt and larger if it is bold.

For example:

• Gray (#949494) 18 point text on white
• Purple (#C86ff1) 14 point + bold text on white
• In web pages, pixels are much more common for text size than points. 18 points maps to 24 pixels and 14 points to approximately 18.67 pixels.
• In CSS, bold text typically has font-weight:bold , or font-weight:700 or greater.

Images of text have the same requirements, but it can be difficult or impossible to measure text size or font weight in an image.

WCAG 2.0 defines four types of "incidental" text that are not required to meet the contrast requirements.

• Inactive: An inactive element, like a disabled Submit button ( Submit ), is identified visually by its lower-contrast state.
• Pure decoration: Decorative text that is not meant to be read. An example of this might be a picture of a bookshelf on a library homepage. The titles of the books are not meant to be read by the user.
• Not visible to anyone: Text that is meant to be hidden, like an invisible skip link would not need to meet any contrast requirements until it becomes visible.
• Part of a picture that contains significant other visual content: Text that is not an important part of the information in the image, like a name tag on the shirt of a person in a photo of a party, does not need to meet any contrast requirements.

As a rule of thumb, text that would be part of the image's alternative text should probably meet contrast requirements while text that would not be added to alternative text can usually be considered incidental.

Text that is part of a logo or brand name has no contrast requirement. If we look back at the example of an image of text used earlier, the amazon music logo would be exempt.

Not mentioned

A couple important contrast considerations are not mentioned in 1.4.3.

Gradients, background images, and transparencies

Text over gradients, semi-transparent colors, and background images still need to meet contrast requirements, but WCAG does not provide any guidance on how to measure their contrast. We recommend usually testing the area where contrast is lowest.

Color changes on hover, focus, etc.

Text sometimes changes color while the user interacts with it using a mouse or keyboard. CSS can be used to define hover, focus, or active states for interactive elements. There is no mention of special consideration for these changes in text color, so text in all these states must meet the same contrast requirements (and must be evaluated independently).

The only difference between this Level AAA success criterion and Level AA 1.4.3 is that contrast requirements are more stringent. It requires 7:1 contrast for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text. Although higher contrast is often recommended, Level AA conformance is the requirement within common laws and standards, so we focus on 1.4.3 requirements throughout this article.

1.4.11 Non-text Contrast

WCAG 2.1, published in June 2018, moves contrast requirements beyond text. 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast (Level AA) reads:

The visual presentation of the following have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 against adjacent color(s): User Interface Components: Visual information required to identify user interface components and states, except for inactive components or where the appearance of the component is determined by the user agent and not modified by the author; Graphical Objects: Parts of graphics required to understand the content, except when a particular presentation of graphics is essential to the information being conveyed.

There is one notable difference in how contrast requirements are applied. Contrast requirements in WCAG 2.0 are between text and background, but 1.4.11 requires contrast of at least 3:1 against adjacent color(s) " which means you may need to measure contrast in more than one place. A non-text element may have different contrast on one side than the other (like a wedge in a pie chart), or it may contain different-colored components that need 3:1 contrast with each other.

A triangle-shaped icon with an exclamation mark is used to alert the user to something important.

This graphic is composed of two important shapes—the exclamation mark and the triangle (usually reserved for alerts like these). That means there are 2 contrast ratios to consider:

• The contrast ratio between the white exclamation mark and the red triangle, which is over 3:1
• The contrast ratio between the red triangle and the gray background, which is less than 3:1.

This icon does not meet 1.4.11.

User Interface Components

There are two types of non-text elements that 1.4.11 says must have 3:1 contrast. The first are "User Interface Components," which are controls for distinct functions. For example, in a group of linked social media icons, each icon is a distinct user interface component.

Each state of the component must also have 3:1 contrast. States are temporary changes in a component, usually because of a user interaction, such as hovering with a mouse or tabbing with a keyboard.

When a user hovers over a custom checkbox, it turns bright blue (#00B0F0).

This checkbox has 2.5:1 contrast in the hover state, so it fails.

Except when "determined by user agent"

If you use the default styles provided by the browser, then these contrast requirements do not apply.

In Chrome, the default border for a text box has 2.4:1 contrast:

This outline is well below the 3:1 threshold, but since this color was "determined" by the browser and was not customized by the author, it is exempt. Because of the low default contrast, we recommend using CSS to increase the contrast for text boxes and other form inputs.

The most common example of a low contrast "state" is the an outline that appears when an element has keyboard focus. For example, a bright blue outline would be fairly distinctive on a white background but less visible against some colors, and can be almost invisible against a bright blue background.

This bright blue outline was a common for several years, especially in Chrome. Now, the keyboard outline in Chrome and Edge has both a dark and white line, giving it good contrast against any background. Firefox and IE use a dotted black line, which will have low contrast on a dark background. Instead of worrying about changing browser support, use the CSS :focus and outline properties to customize a focus indicator that always has at least 3:1 contrast while also matching your site design and aesthetics. While designing or testing these outlines, pay close attention to areas like headers and footers that often have different background colors.

If there is no visible indication of keyboard focus, this is a failure of 2.4.7 – Focus Visible (Level AA) .

Graphical Objects

The second type of non-text element covered in this success criterion are "graphical objects". There are a couple key terms within this definition.

"Required to understand the content"

For something to be defined as a graphical object that needs 3:1 contrast, it must be "required to understand the content."

A Twitter icon that is a link would need 3:1 contrast. But if the link also includes the word "Twitter" (with at least a 4.5:1 contrast ratio), then the icon is no longer required to understand the content, so it does not have any contrast requirement.

"…except when a particular presentation is essential"

Certain types of images may need to be presented in lower contrast so they don't lose meaning or purpose. A heat map must use low-contrast colors so that underlying page is still visible.

Real-life imagery, like photos and screenshots, also fall into this category. So do logos.

1.4.1 Use of Color

WCAG 2 does not prohibit any specific color or color combination, such as red and green. The previous success criteria require that text and non-text elements have sufficient contrast. Success Criterion 1.4.1, a Level A requirement, prohibits using color alone to present meaningful content or instructions. It reads:

Color is not used as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element.

In this table of school assignments, the only indication that an assignment is missing or late is a background color. This is inaccessible to someone who is blind, and it may be confusing or inaccessible to someone who is colorblind or overrides page colors. This fails 1.4.3.

One way to address this is to add a second column for the status of the assignment (missing, complete, or late). You can still use color to reinforce information as long as color is not the only way this status is presented. In fact, it makes the information more accessible to users who can see the color difference.

Form instructions and errors

Color is often used in forms to identify required fields and form errors.

For example, a required field that is left empty may be given a red border.

The red border is not enough on its own. The form field will also need an icon,

or an inline error message:

Color-only identification of links

WCAG 2 contrast and color rules overlap in one place: when color is used as the only way to identify a link. This does not apply to every link on a page. For example, links in the header of a webpage are understood to be links based on their position in the page, the use of whitespace, and often by a distinct font. This requirement refers to places where body text and link text appear together and where color alone is used to identify links (meaning the underline has been removed). For optimal accessibility and usability, maintain the underline on links.  Otherwise two conditions must be met:

• 3:1 contrast between the body text and the link text.
• A "visual cue" (not just a color change) that appears on mouse hover and keyboard focus. The most common way to meet this is to underline the link on hover and focus.

These requirements are in addition to the 1.4.3 text contrast requirement of 4.5:1. Meeting all three of these requirements simultaneously can be difficult.

A form ends with a line of text that reads: "By submitting this form, you agree to our Terms of Use." The dark gray (#2E2E2E) body text has 13.6:1 contrast on a white background. The blue (#0079AD) "Terms of Use" link has 4.8:1 contrast, so text meets the contrast requirements.

...but there is only 2.8:1 contrast between the body text and the link text. A slightly lighter shade of blue (#0081B8) would provide just over 3:1 contrast between the link and the body text:

... but now it has less than 4.5:1 contrast with the background! With these text and background colors, it is impossible to use non-underlined links and also meet the WCAG guidelines.

This becomes increasingly difficult if the links change color on hover or focus each of the colors in these states must also have at least a 4.5:1 contrast ratio difference with the background. WCAG 2.0 and Link Colors on the WebAIM blog explores the WCAG requirements for link colors in more depth.

Visual Representation of Texts

In-class exercise.

Many students find working in the visual mode a productive change. Thes two related exercises help students better understand challenging texts and prepare to write a paper on them. You may find that one or another works better in your class, or you may choose to use both, at different points in the semester. This activity also works well with online tools such as Jamboard and may be of special interest when teaching remotely; see a Jamboard variation handout here .

multimodality; metacognition; reading strategies; audience; visual mode; creativity; group activity; collaboration; mind map; concept map; research question

Exercise 1: Creating Visual Schema for Texts

Students create a list of best practices for understanding a text and then apply these strategies to a challenging text to represent it visually for an audience that is interested in but unfamiliar with it. This exercise helps students to better understand a challenging text by simplifying its abstract concepts into images. It also makes explicit reading strategies that students can transfer to other contexts.

To apply effective systems of thinking from a previous text as a way to formalize analytical habits

• Individual Reflections
• What in-class activities (discussions, small group activities, writing prompts) helped you to organize your understanding of our previous texts? Why?
• How can you generalize these activities so that you can apply them to any text?
• Group Discussion : Share your answers with your small group and create a list of “best practices” for understanding a challenging text. Consider the following questions to begin organizing your ideas:
• What general key terms/concepts need defining? (Your reader is unfamiliar but interested.)
• What background information needs to be summarized to provide context?
• What structural information (how the book is organized, sections, etc.) is necessary?
• What kinds of evidence does the text draw on?
• Creative Activity
• Create a visual schema for our text to help an unfamiliar reader understand it.
• As you create your visual schema, try to balance general and particular information.
• Be creative with your schema; you have complete freedom.
• After your group has finalized your schema, you will present it on the chalkboard, poster board, or via a free idea mapping tool like MindMup or LucidChart or another program and share it with the class.

Student Samples

The image above shows a chalk-drawn flower on a classroom blackboard, with words written on the parts of the flower representing different elements of the text.

The image above shows a pencil and marker sketch on a large sheet of paper, with symbols and quotes from the text.

Here’s a downloadable version of this activity to distribute to students.

Exercise 1.5: Creating Visual Schema for Texts (Jamboard edition)

The images above show an image of a “sticky note” Jamboard with directions (directions text also available here ) and a sample of a Jamboard schema with sticky notes, images, and words to represent a text

Exercise 2: New Perspectives on Interpreting and Connecting Texts

This brainstorming activity asks students to visually represent class readings in order to generate a research question and potential ways to answer it. It ends by asking students to write an elevator story about their essay’s possible direction.

To spark new ways of thinking about how to generate a research question; to visualize connections between various texts; to strengthen concepts of narrative in argumentative writing

• Visualize : In any pictorial form you’d like, without using words other than the title of each text, express the main issues/themes for 1-2 of our texts. Ideas: comic strips, symbols and numbers, maps, stick figures, etc.
• Make Connections : Look at the story-images you created for the text(s):
• What larger themes/problems surfaced? 
• Which images resonate most strongly for the text(s)?
• Are there patterns and repetitions in your images?
• Consider one issue that appears in your visualization: What is the text saying about this issue? 
• Create a Research Question and Answer
• What question do you want to ask about one problem/issue found in the text(s)?
• What is the text’s response? (As in, what is/are the text(s) saying about this problem?)
• Write an Elevator Story : Finally, imagine telling a 15-second story of the ideas you’ve generated in this activity. This is all hypothetical for now, but that’s fine; it will help you begin to imagine your paper.

2024’s Must-See Visual Presentation Examples to Power Up Your Deck

Anh Vu • 05 Apr 2024 • 6 min read

Keep on reading because these visual presentation examples will blow your boring decks away! For many people, delivering a presentation is a daunting project, even before it turns to hybrid and virtual displays due to the pandemic. To avoid the Death By PowerPoint phenomenon, it is time to adopt new techniques to make your presentations more visual and impressive.

This article tries to encourage you to think outside of the slide by providing essential elements of a successful visual presentation, especially for the new presenter and those who want to save time, money, and effort for the upcoming presentation deadline.

Table of Contents

What is a visual presentation.

• Types of Visual Presentation Examples

How to Create a Visual Presentation

• What Makes a Good Presentation Visual?

Frequently Asked Questions

How ahaslides supports a good visual presentation.

As mentioned before, you need a presentation tool to make your presentation more visual and engaging. The art of leveraging visual elements is all intended visual aids make sense and kick off audiences’ imagination, curiosity, and interest from the entire presentation.

The easiest way to create interaction between the presenter and the audience is by asking for rhetorical and thought-provoking quizzes and quick surveys during the presentation. AhaSlides , with a range of live polls , live Q&A , word clouds , interactive questions, image questions, creative fonts, and integration with streaming platforms can help you to make a good visual presentation in just a second.

• Types of Presentation
• College Presentation
• Creative Presentation Ideas
• AhaSlides Free Public Templates

Start in seconds.

Get free templates for your next interactive presentation. Sign up for free and take what you want from the template library!

So, what are the visual presentation examples? When providing as much information as possible, many presenters think that text-heavy slides may help, but by contrast, they may lead to distraction. As we explore the characteristics of good presentations, illustrations and graphics play an important role in delivering compelling content and turning complex concepts more clearly, precisely, and instantly to understand. A visual presentation is the adoption of a range of visual aids on presentation to ensure information is easier to understand and memorize. 

In addition, visual aids can also help to keep presenters on track, which can be used as a cue for reviving a train of thought. They build better interaction and communication between presenters and the audience, making them notice more deeply what you are saying.

Types of Visual Presentation Examples 

Some possible visual presentations include infographics , charts, diagrams, posters, flipcharts, idea board , whiteboards, and video presentation examples. 

An infographic is a collection of different graphic visual presentations to represent information, data, or knowledge intended more visually quickly and clearly to grab the audience’s attention.

To illustrate quantitative data effectively, it is important to make use of graphs and charts. For both business use and research use, graphs and charts can show multiple and complex data in a way that is easy to understand and memory.

When it comes to presenting information systematically and logically, you can use diagrams. A diagram is a powerful tool for effective communication and brainstorming processes. It also is time-saving for people to read and collect information.

A poster, especially a research project poster, provides brief and concrete information about a research paper straightforwardly. The audiences can grab all important data knowledge and findings through posters. 

A flipchart and whiteboard are the most basic presentation aids and work best to supplement lecture slides. Excellent whiteboard and flipchart composite of well-chosen words, and clear diagram will help to explain complex concepts.

A video presentation is not a new concept, it is a great way to spread ideas lively and quickly attract the audience’s attention. The advantages of a video presentation lie in its animation and illustration concepts, fascinating sound effects, and user-friendliness. 

In addition, we can add many types of visual aids in the presentations as long as they can give shapes and form words or thoughts into visual content. Most popular visual aids include graphs, statistics, charts, and diagrams that should be noted in your mind. These elements combined with verbal are a great way to engage the listeners’ imagination and also emphasize vital points more memorable.

It is simply to create more visual presentations than you think. With the development of technology and the internet, you can find visual presentation examples and templates for a second. PowerPoint is a good start, but there are a variety of quality alternatives, such as AhaSlides , Keynote, and Prezi.

When it comes to designing an effective visual presentation, you may identify some key steps beforehand:

Visual Presentation Examples – Focus on Your Topic

Firstly, you need to determine your purpose and understand your audience’s needs. If you are going to present in a seminar with your audience of scientists, engineers, business owners… They are likely to care about data under simple charts and graphs, which explain the results or trends. Or if you are going to give a lecture for secondary students, your slides should be something fun and interesting, with more colourful pictures and interactive questions.

Visual Presentation Examples – Animation and Transition

When you want to add a bit of excitement to a slideshow and help to keep the listener more engaged, you use animation and transition. These functions help to shift the focus of audiences between elements on slides. When the transition style and setting are set right, it can help to give fluidity and professionalism to a slideshow.

Visual Presentation Examples – Devices for Interactivity

One of the approaches that improve communication between audiences and the use of visual aids is using technology assistance. You don’t want to take too much time to create well-designed visual aids while ensuring your presentation is impressive, so why not leverage a presentation app like AhaSlides ? It properly encourages participant engagement with interactive visual features and templates and is time-saving. With its help, you can design your presentation either formally or informally depending on your interest.

Visual Presentation Examples – Give an Eye-catching Title

Believe it or not, the title is essential to attracting audiences at first sight. Though don’t “read the book by its cover”, you still can put your thoughts into a unique title that conveys the topic while piquing the viewer’s interest. 

Visual Presentation Examples – Play a Short Video

Creative video presentation ideas are always important. “Videos evoke emotional responses”, it will be a mistake if you don’t leverage short videos with sound to reel in and captivate the audience’s attention. You can put the video at the beginning of the presentation as a brief introduction to your topic, or you can play it as a supplement to explain difficult concepts. 

Visual Presentation Examples – Use a Prop or Creative Visual Aid to Inject Humour

It is challenging to keep your audience interested and engaged with your audience from the whole presentation. It is why to add a prop or creative visual aid to pull your audience’s focus on what you say. Here are some ideas to cover it:

• Use neon colour and duotones
• Tell a personal story
• Show a shocking heading
• Use isometric illustrations
• Go vertical

Visual Presentation Examples – Rehearsal and Get Feedback

It is an important step to make your visual presentation really work out. You won’t know any unexpected mirrors may come out on D-day if you don’t make the rehearsal and get feedback from a reliable source. If they say that your visual image is in bad-quality, the data is overwhelming, or the pictures are misunderstood, you can have an alternative plan in advance.

What Makes a Good Visual Presentation?

Incorporate visual or audio media appropriately. Ensure you arrange and integrate suitable data presentation in your slides or videos. You can read the guidelines for visual aids applications in the following:

• Choose a readable text size about the slide room and text spacing in about 5-7 doubted-spaced.
• Use consistent colour for overall presentation, visual aids work better in white yellow and blue backgrounds.
• Take care of data presentation, and avoid oversimplification or too much detail.
• Keep the data shown minimum and highlight really important data points only.
• Choose font carefully, keep in mind that lowercase is easier to read than uppercase
• Don’t mix fonts.
• Printed text is easier to read than handwritten text.
• Use the visual to emphasize punctuation in your verbal presentation.
• Say no to poor-quality images or videos.
• Visual elements need to be strategic and relevant.

What well-designed visual aids should have?

To make an effective visual aid, you must follow principles of design, including contrast, alignment, repetition, and proximity.

Why is it important to keep visual aids simple?

Simple ads help to keep things clear and understandable, so the message can be communicated effectively.

What is the purpose of visual aids in the classroom?

To encourage the learning process and make it easier and more interesting so students would want to engage in lessons more.

More from AhaSlides

Table of Contents

Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, audiovisual presentations made easy(-ier): tips for creating an effective powerpoint, prezi, or keynote.

• CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by E . Jonathan Arnett

At some point in your academic or professional life, you’ll have to stand in front of people and give a talk about a subject, and quite often, you’ll be asked to prepare visual materials to accompany your talk. You might prepare handouts, but odds are, you’ll be asked to prepare materials that you can project on a video screen.

The classic version of these projected materials is the overhead transparency, a thin sheet of clear plastic that you can run through a laser printer or write on with special markers; this medium is slowly disappearing, but it’s still around. Sometimes, you might be able to prepare paper documents and project them to a screen via a document camera, but doc cams aren’t entirely common, and they can only present static images. Instead, you’ll usually be asked to create a dynamic presentation using software such as PowerPoint, Prezi, or Keynote. Many other programs exist, including what Google has to offer, but these are the three most common presentation programs.

Each program has its own special abilities and strengths, but they all share common basic principles that you can manipulate to create memorable, effective, and interesting presentations. Here, you’ll learn basic principles to

• select an effective presentation format
• choose readable typefaces
• place visual elements onscreen
• choose colors
• select appropriate backgrounds
• choose visual and audio effects
• deliver a memorable, effective presentation 

Three Major Presentation Formats

You can choose from three basic type of format for a presentation based on PowerPoint, Prezi, or Keynote:

• bullet points
• illustrated points
• speaker’s prop

The format you choose should fit your audience and your presentation’s subject.

Bullet Points. The bullet point format is the default layout that most PowerPoint users and viewers are familiar with. Slides created in this format commonly include a title across the top and a cascading series of bulleted lines of text inside a slide’s main text box. An example of this kind of slide appears below, in Figure 1.

 Figure 1: PPT slide using bullet point format

Bullet point-format presentations have several benefits:

• They are easy to prepare. Just type, press Enter for a new line, and press Tab to create a smaller bullet or Shift+Tab to make a larger bullet.
• They are useful for highlighting important words or naming concepts that an audience needs to learn.
• They project a serious tone.

However, bullet-point format presentations also can be boring, and an overload of words will make your audience cringe. You have probably endured at least one bad PowerPoint in your life, and odds are, that bad presentation used the bullet point format.

Illustrated Points. The illustrated points format is similar, but slides created in this type of presentation focus on pictures, and text appears in a supporting role. An example of this kind of slide appears in Figure 2.

 Figure 2: PPT slide using illustrated points format

Illustrated points-format slides have several benefits: 

• They are excellent for showing conceptual relationships or demonstrating physical relationships between objects.
• People often respond positively to pictures, so illustrated points-format slides also tend to capture viewers’ interest more than all-text presentations do. 

These slides require more detailed preparation, though, and they tend to be more visually “busy,” so if your audience has problems concentrating, or if it’s vital that you highlight important words, you may want a more text-based approach.

 Illustrated points-format slides can also be combined with bullet point-format slides inside the same presentation. See Figure 3 for an example of a PowerPoint that includes both types of slide. 

Figure 3: Combination of bullet points (top) and illustrated points (bottom) slides in one PowerPoint

Speaker’s Prop. The speaker’s prop format is similar to the illustrated points format, but a speaker’s prop almost entirely consists of simple pictures that flash onscreen in rapid sequence. Any text that appears is usually very short, uses a large font, and only appears for a moment.

A speaker’s prop is appropriate for abstract subjects (e.g, the nature of free will), and if it is done well, it can be fascinating and will engage an audience.

However, this type of presentation is often more complex and time-consuming to prepare than a presentation in the other formats, and you run the risk of making it so entertaining that the audience may remember the presentation but forget what you said.

A well-done example of a speaker’s prop presentation appears in this video:

Figure 4: Screen capture of speaker’s prop presentation 

Whichever format you choose, remember that the presentation software is your servant; don’t let it tell you what to do. Always modify a template to suit your needs.

As an excellent example of what not to do, consider Peter Norvig’s classic Gettysburg PowerPoint: http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/ . It’s a satirical example of how an excellent speech—in this case, Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address, widely considered one of the classic speeches in the English language—can be ruined by using presentation software default settings and following a built-in template without modifying it.

How to Choose a Typeface

When you create a presentation, make sure that the fonts you choose are 

• appropriate for the subject and audience
• readable from anywhere in the room
• compatible with the computer you’ll be using for the presentation 

Appropriateness. Each typeface projects a visual “personality” of some sort, and you should match the font with the audience and subject you’re addressing. For example, Comic Sans is a cheerful, happy-looking font and projects a somewhat childlike ethos; it’s a good match for an upbeat subject for a younger audience. In contrast, Times New Roman is a much more serious-looking font and would be appropriate for an older audience discussing a serious subject.

Readability. Not all fonts are equally readable, and you need to pick typefaces that allow your audience to read what’s onscreen from the back of the room. You should choose fonts that 

• have relatively tall lower-case letters
• don’t use extra-thick or extremely thin lines
• have large, open spaces inside the loops, and
• (for a serif font) have large, blunt serifs. 

See Figure 5 for examples of typefaces available in PowerPoint, and consider which fonts are most and least readable onscreen.

Figure 5: Examples of readable and unreadable font choices

Of these twelve fonts, the fonts that are most readable onscreen are Tahoma, Georgia, Trebuchet, and Verdana. In fact, Georgia and Verdana were designed for use onscreen. Of the rest, only Book Antiqua is workable, but the letters’ thin parts can be hard to see onscreen, particularly if the background isn’t a single flat color.

Sans-serif fonts are usually easier to read onscreen than serif fonts are, so consider using a serif font for headings and a sans-serif font for slides’ main text. Also, limit yourself to two fonts. If you use more, the screen will look very busy, and the visual clutter may distract your audience.

Most programs have built-in lists of fonts that you can use. For example, PowerPoint 2013 includes the list of combinations that appears in Figure 6.

 Figure 6: List of built-in font combinations in PowerPoint 2013

Here is a link to a brief YouTube video that demonstrates how to access PowerPoint’s built-in list of font combinations: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/812erramvb8lvjk/AADwNcH2rqBrl_FjJgcxL3gsa/PowerPoint%20built-in%20font%20combinations.mp4?dl=0 .

Feel free to use one of these combinations, but remember that just because they’re built-in doesn’t mean they’re well-chosen or appropriate for your needs. You should always consider changing the default settings.

Compatibility. Not every typeface is available on every operating system, so find out what kind of computer you’ll use while delivering the presentation and choose fonts that will work on that computer.

For example, Helvetica is available on Mac, but it is not available on Windows-based systems; the Windows equivalent to Helvetica is Arial. Thus, if you create a PowerPoint presentation on a PC and then open the file on a Mac, or vice versa, the fonts may not transfer over, and your PowerPoint’s appearance will change, often for the worse.

Here’s a link to a list of fonts shared by Mac and PC versions of Microsoft Office: .

How to Think about Layout

When you place text or pictures onscreen, make sure you 

• apply the CRAP design principles
• avoid clutter
• avoid text overload  

CRAP Principles. The CRAP design principles are Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. In brief, they work like this:

Contrast: If things aren’t in the same category, make them look very different (e.g., use different fonts for slide headings and main text).

Repetition: Make visual elements consistent throughout every slide (e.g., use consistent colors, callout shapes, font sizes, picture and text box locations, background images).

Alignment: Place things on the screen with a purpose. Don’t just plop images and text in random locations (e.g., equalize spaces between multiple pictures, consistently center or left-align text, line up bullets and numbers).

Proximity: Place related items close to each other (e.g., use a narrow space between a name and job title, a picture and its caption, a main bullet item and its related sub-bullet items).

(The CRAP acronym was invented by a graphic designer named Robin Williams [no, not that Robin Williams] and explained in her book The Non-Designer’s Design Book. If you’re interested in visual design, you might find it fascinating.)

When you design your PowerPoint, you should consider using the built-in Master Slide tool to make sure the visual design elements (e.g., fonts, colors, backgrounds, bulleted items’ alignment) follow the Repetition principle. Here is a link to a YouTube video demonstrating how this powerful function works:

Clutter. Keep your presentation’s design and contents relatively simple. 

• Include spaces between lines of text.
• Include spaces between images or other visual elements.
• Make sure that the text is readable.
• Use simple graphics.  

If you overload the screen, your audience will feel overwhelmed, and they won’t be able to follow your ideas.

For example, Figure 7 demonstrates a cluttered information graphic full of “chartjunk.” Its 3-D design is unnecessary, the forced perspective prevents the audience from seeing the towers’ actual heights, the callouts overlap, the towers’ transparency doesn’t provide any information for the viewer, and the beveled edges and shadows are distracting.

Figure 7: Cluttered infographic

Figure 8 shows the same data in a simple, clean infographic that an audience can follow.

 Figure 8: Uncluttered infographic

Similarly, avoid stuffing slides full of text and creating a “wall o’ words” like in Figure 9. Too much text makes a slide difficult to read and will intimidate your audience.

Figure 9: Wall o’ Words

Try to limit a bullet point-format slide to no more than seven bullets, with relatively short entries under each bullet. Of course, you can actually use as many bullets as you want, but only if you follow the CRAP principles very well. (See Figure 10 for an example of a slide that contains ten bulleted points but is still readable.)

Figure 10: Almost but not quite a “wall o’ words”

How to Choose Good Colors

Black-on-white presentations are easy to read, but they’re often very stark-looking, and your audience may not wish to stare at a bright white screen. Thus, you probably will want to use color in your presentation, and you need to choose your presentation’s colors carefully.

Contrast. Pick colors with high luminance contrast—in other words, one color should be much brighter than the other—so that your viewers will be able to read text quickly and with minimal eyestrain. Avoid extremely high color contrast, though, because extremes in color contrast can make text very hard to read. See Figure 11 for examples.

Figure 11: Examples of color and luminance combinations

Similarly, you probably want to avoid pure white text on a black screen; it’s OK for special cases, but for an entire presentation, it’s overwhelming. See Figure 12.

Figure 12: White-on-black slide design

Emotional Impact. Also consider the emotional effect of colors that you choose. The “cool” colors (darker green, blue-green, light blue, dark blue, blue-violet, purple) are calm and soothing, while the “warm” colors (red-violet, red, red-orange, orange, yellow-orange, yellow, yellow-green) are stimulating. Choose colors that are appropriate for the subject and emotional impact of your presentation. See Figure 13 for an example.

Figure 13: Emotional effects of colors

How to Choose Appropriate Backgrounds

Always make your presentation’s background relate to its topic. PowerPoint, Prezi, and Keynote all allow you to choose from built-in or downloadable background “theme” templates; insert and customize solid colors, gradients, or patterns; or import your own image to use as a background for your presentation. You can use any of these options, but whatever option you choose, the background absolutely must mesh with the topic.

For example, if you are speaking about a computer-related subject, the “Organic” PowerPoint theme template would be a very poor choice. (See Figure 14.) It looks like a sheet of paper attached to a piece of wood by a ribbon, and its text uses a serif body font; there’s nothing about the template that suggests “computer technology.” The same theme template would look entirely appropriate for a food-related subject, though.

 Figure 14: Inappropriate and appropriate backgrounds

Also, consider whether the audience has seen the background before. There are only so many built-in theme templates, and chances are that your audience has seen the same background used for a different presentation or has used that same template themselves. In fact, if an event features multiple speakers, sometimes more than one presenter will use the same template, and the audience may get confused and not remember who said what. It is always a good idea to import your own image as a background or to customize templates to fit your needs. See Figure 15 for an example.

 Figure 15: Customized “Apex” template from MS PowerPoint 2010

This brief YouTube video demonstrates PowerPoint’s built-in slide designs and how to access and use its Format Background tool: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/812erramvb8lvjk/AADoikR7jSjHHObIwOKX1qCOa/PowerPoint%20built-in%20backgrounds.mp4?dl=0  

(As noted in the “How to Think About Layout” section, it would be a good idea to use the Master Slide tool when you customize backgrounds in order to make all the slides look uniform.)

Visual and Audio Effects

You can and should use between-slides transitions, within-slide animations, and sound effects, but don’t go overboard. Instead, use subtle effects, use them sparingly, and only use them to support your points.

Visual Effects. Transitions and animations can help you emphasize points, show connections between ideas, or simply capture your audience’s attention and prevent their eyes from glazing over. (See Figure 16 for a screenshot of the animations menu in PowerPoint 2013.)

Figure 16: Expanded list of animations available in PowerPoint 2013

However, if you overload your slideshow with visual effects, or if you choose splashy effects, you will likely encounter several problems:

• Your audience will pay more attention to the moving images than to the subject you’re talking about.
• Your audience won’t be able to tell if an effect means they should pay special attention or if it’s just another effect.
• Effects will take longer than you expect to finish running, or you’ll forget to cue them. You’ll then go silent as you wait for the animations to finish, and your audience will realize you screwed up.
• Effects will introduce a lighthearted note into your presentation and detract from your professional ethos or undermine a serious subject. 

Here is a link to a video that demonstrates how to use PowerPoint’s built-in Animation tool and Animation Pane:

These same cautions apply to Prezi, but Prezi has its own special problems. Instead of switching between slides, you set up a flat “canvas” on which you place text and images, and when you present your talk, Prezi’s camera traces a path between those elements and zooms in on them. (See Figure 17 for an example of paths in Prezi.) Thus, transitions and animations are part and parcel of Prezi, which means it’s doubly important that you control their intensity. 

• Prezi will let you place elements at peculiar angles and then “rotate” the camera to emphasize them. If you rotate the camera too frequently, you’ll make your audience seasick.
• You can locate text or images anywhere on the canvas and set up arbitrary motion paths between them. If you make the camera move long distances between elements, you’ll disorient your audience members.

Here is a link to a brief YouTube video demonstrating motion paths in Prezi:  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/812erramvb8lvjk/AAC9SRhZy9v-CxNmAvQQtlf7a/Prezi%20sample.mp4?dl=0

Figure 17: Numbered sequence indicating a “path” in Prezi

Sound Effects. Audio cues have the same potential benefits and drawbacks as transitions and animations, but they also have several unique problems of their own: 

• Audio clips will sound distorted or tinny unless the computer you are using to present is connected to a good-quality sound system.
• If the audio clip is more than a few seconds long, you’ll need to shout to be heard over it.
• It’s almost impossible to talk over rock or hip-hop. Your voice just can’t compete with the backbeat.
• Music samples longer than a few seconds consume massive amounts of memory, and your file size will be huge.
• Song snippets may be so short that they’re unrecognizable.
• Nobody else likes your taste in music. 

In short, no matter what program you use, keep your presentation’s visual and audio effects relatively simple and use them to support your message. The effects should enhance the presentation; they shouldn’t be the presentation. 

Delivery Techniques

Your slideshow shouldn’t be the main focus of your talk. Instead, YOU and your message are the main focus, and the presentation should support your talk. Don’t hide behind the presentation or use it as a crutch.

Prepare Notes. Write down key phrases on notecards or, if you will have access to a speaker’s computer while you’re talking, the program’s Notes view. It’s not a good idea to write out a line-for-line script because if you read from a script, the presentation will sound stilted. The best presentations are thoroughly prepared but sound ad-libbed.

Whatever you do, DO NOT read every single word on the screen. Your audience members can read, and you’ll only annoy them. See Figure 18 for an example.

Figure 18: Example of Presenter View in PowerPoint

Practice. Run through your talk and slideshow before you stand in front of an audience. Start up the presentation, say what you intend to say out loud, advance the presentation to match your speech, and time yourself. If you don’t practice, your audience will know.

Face Your Audience. Turn your face toward the audience and make eye contact with them when you speak. If you do, the audience will be able to hear you, and they will be more likely to believe what you say.

When you create a PowerPoint, Prezi, or Keynote presentation, be sure to consider the principles discussed in this webtext. You now know how to

• choose an effective presentation format
• identify readable typefaces
• position visual elements onscreen
• pick appropriate colors
• choose relevant, useful backgrounds
• choose effective visual and audio effects
• present memorable, effective audiovisual materials

and you can create a successful presentation that will both capture your audience’s attention and provide the audience with clearly presented, easily-extracted information.

Brevity – Say More with Less

Clarity (in Speech and Writing)

Coherence – How to Achieve Coherence in Writing

Flow – How to Create Flow in Writing

Inclusivity – Inclusive Language

The Elements of Style – The DNA of Powerful Writing

Suggested Edits

• Please select the purpose of your message. * - Corrections, Typos, or Edits Technical Support/Problems using the site Advertising with Writing Commons Copyright Issues I am contacting you about something else
• Your full name
• Your email address *
• Page URL needing edits *
• Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Featured Articles

Academic Writing – How to Write for the Academic Community

Professional Writing – How to Write for the Professional World

Authority – How to Establish Credibility in Speech & Writing

Videography & Photography on demand

10 reasons why you need good presentation visuals Getting your message across with the best visual content

Presentation visuals are one of the most compelling parts of a presentation. Some presenters underestimate the importance of a visual presentation and decide to only speak, or use text slides to back up what they’re saying.

This is a huge mistake – effective visual presentations can have a massive positive impact on your viewers. Almost all information transmitted to the brain is visual (see below), which underlines the effectiveness of visuals in a good presentation.

Here, we will go over the top 10 benefits of using visual content to help you deliver an engaging and memorable presentation.

1. Visuals save you time in preparing your presentation

We understand that creating a great presentation is a demanding and time-consuming process! Why spend hours transcribing your notes onto a PowerPoint presentation when you could use effective visuals that communicate your message better and save you a lot of preparation time? Besides, it’s unlikely audience members will be trying to read a lot of text as they will be focussing on what you are saying. And if they are reading large text slides, they will your speaking. Visuals make it easy for your listeners to follow along and hear you at the same time.

2. Visuals make your presentation more interesting

Everyone has had a bad presentation experience, and it might be said that we’re all suffering from PowerPoint presentation fatigue, to an extent. To avoid casting your audience’s mind back to the experience of fighting to stay awake in a particularly dry university lecture, use photography and video content to keep them hooked. Visuals used correctly can make your presentation a lively and engaging affair.

3. Visuals grab the audience’s attention

The bottom line is, visuals are more likely to grab your audience’s attention. Presentations can be difficult to follow, especially when the information being presented is unfamiliar or challenging. According to the Visual Teaching Alliance , visuals transmit information faster than spoken or written words; we can get the sense of a visual scene in less than 1/10 of a second, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text. With people processing images at lightning speed, it is a mistake to miss out on visuals in your presentation.

4. Visuals help the audience to understand your presentation

Not only is visual content attention-grabbing, but it is a powerful tool for helping your audience to understand your content. The majority of us are visual learners. According to Forbes, 65% of us are visual learners . Considering that much of public speaking is conjuring an image in the audience’s mind by painting a picture with your words – why not cut out the middle man, and use a literal image? Visuals are much more likely to be effective in communicating your message, given that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual .

5. The audience is more likely to remember the content with visuals

The average person only remembers about a fifth of what they hear, and visual aids can improve learning by 400% . Furthermore, a study conducted by Georgia State University found that imagery is an effective way to enhance memory . If you want your audience to remember your presentation once it’s finished, use visual content to embed the information in their mind.

6. Visuals make you an effective communicator

Not everyone is skilled in the art of oratory and that’s okay. You don’t need to have elocution lessons to deliver the perfect presentation. Public speaking is just one element of presentations. as we have already seen, visual content is incredibly important in helping you deliver your speech. If public speaking isn’t your best asset, we have some good news for you. Photographs, infographics, and videos can all be used to help deliver your message and make an engaging and informative presentation.

7. Visuals can be emotive

Sometimes you can describe an emotive scene to someone, and they can acknowledge the emotions but they don’t feel them. Seeing an image is much more evocative than hearing someone describe it. Sometimes, the emotions just don’t register until you can see them with your own eyes. If you want to get your audience to feel something, use photos and videos to make your audience members feel happy, excited, amused, empathetic, sad, or inspired.

8. Visual presentations are more inclusive

Many presenters fall into the trap of assuming everyone in the audience thinks in the same way. When we assume everyone thinks the same way as us, we are discounting the fact that audiences are linguistically diverse, culturally diverse, and neuro-diverse. Because not everyone operates at the same level of comprehension, some of your speech is likely to go over the heads of members of your audience. To help deliver a useful and engaging presentation for everyone, use effective visuals which are more likely to get through to them.

9. Impressive visuals increase your credibility

Using polished, well-constructed photos, videos and infographics is a sure-fire way to increase your credibility. Linking to someone else’s YouTube video or using a generic stock photo doesn’t rouse the same admiration and respect as using your custom-made visual content. Professionally made visuals upgrade the overall look and feel of your presentation as well as sending a message of professionalism and trustworthiness in you and your brand. 

10. Unique visuals make your presentation stand out

If you want to deliver a truly memorable and unique presentation you cannot use the same tired formula. One of the best ways to enhance your presentation to an outstanding quality is to use unique visuals. Custom photography and videography allow you complete creative control over your presentation, which means it will be unique to you and your cause. For maximum personalisation, create your visual content the way you see fit.

We hope you enjoyed our top 10 reasons why you need good presentation visuals!

Splento has experienced experts in visual content; get in touch today if you require any visual content creation , or even if you just have a query.

Contact Splento if you are in need of:

Event Photography and Videography

Professional Headshots

eCommerce Photography and Videography

From Dreams to Reality: Book a Photoshoot and Capture the Magic Unlock the magic of your moments with our guide on booking a photoshoot. Discover tips, planning advice, and the lasting impact of professional photos

Love at first sight: how a ‘dating photographer london’ can transform your profile unlock the secret to a standout online dating profile with our expert tips on hiring a dating photographer in london. elevate your love quest today.

This will close in 0 seconds

Visible Connections: Working With Text and Images

Subject: ELA (English Language Arts)

Lesson Length: 45 mins - 1 hour

Topic: Making connections between written text and a visual presentation of a story

Grade Level: 4

Standards / Framework:

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.7

Brief Description: Students will make connections between fictional texts by creating a visual presentation.

Know Before You Start: This is a great way to check for understanding of a story or drama. Select a current piece of fictional text being read in class to use for this activity.

• How does the comic depict key elements of this familiar story?
• What characters or details from the story are not illustrated in the comic?
• Did they like the movie or book better? Why?  
• Discuss with students how visual presentations of a story or drama can help readers better understand the events and characters within the fictional text.

Have students think about the characters and main events in the current fictional text being read in class. 

Ask students to create a comic of at least three panels that demonstrates the students’ understanding of the specific descriptions and key events in the fictional text.

Share your students' comics in a slideshow or Gallery Walk. 

Ask students to discuss how each comic demonstrates a specific representation of the events, characters, and meaning of the text.

Differentiation:

Allow students to work with a peer model. 

Provide sentence frames for students during closure discussion.

• Allow students to use the voiceover feature to read their comics aloud.

Enrichment Activity: Have students write a detailed description of how their representation demonstrates events, characters, or meaning of the text.

• Comic to print or display: Comic .

Suggested Content Packs:

Suggested Story Starters:

• Five-Finger-Retell-Strategy Template
• Retell Holes With Visual Prompts
• Retell Esperanza Rising With Visual Prompts
• Retell Bud, Not Buddy With Visual Prompts

Related Ideas

World War II Cause and Effect

Students will make cause and effect connections between World War I and World War II.

Make a Connection: My Culture

Students will access and evaluate information about different cultures.

Representing Numbers in Different Ways

Students will learn to represent numbers in different ways by creating a number comic. 

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons
• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

14.1: Organizing a Visual Presentation

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 4324

Learning Objectives

• Identify key ideas and details to create a concise, engaging presentation.
• Identify the steps involved in planning a comprehensive presentation.

Until now, you have interacted with your audience of readers indirectly, on the page. You have tried to anticipate their reactions and questions as all good writers do. Anticipating the audience’s needs can be tough, especially when you are sitting alone in front of your computer.

When you give a presentation, you connect directly with your audience. For most people, making a presentation is both exciting and stressful. The excitement comes from engaging in a two-way interaction about your ideas. The stress comes from the pressure of presenting your ideas without having a delete button to undo mistakes. Outside the classroom, you may be asked to give a presentation, often at the last minute, and the show must go on. Presentations can be stressful, but planning and preparation, when the time and opportunity are available, can make all the difference.

This chapter covers how to plan and deliver an effective, engaging presentation. By planning carefully, applying some time-honored presentation strategies, and practicing, you can make sure that your presentation comes across as confident, knowledgeable, and interesting—and that your audience actually learns from it. The specific tasks involved in creating a presentation may vary slightly depending on your purpose and your assignment. However, these are the general steps.

Follow these steps to create a presentation based on your ideas:

• Determine your purpose and identify the key ideas to present.
• Organize your ideas in an outline.
• Identify opportunities to incorporate visual or audio media, and create or locate these media aids.
• Rehearse your presentation in advance.
• Deliver your presentation to your audience.

Getting Started: Identifying and Organizing Key Ideas

To deliver a successful presentation, you need to develop content suitable for an effective presentation. Your ideas make up your presentation, but to deliver them effectively, you will need to identify key ideas and organize them carefully. Read the following considerations, which will help you first identify and then organize key ideas:

• Be concise. You will include the most important ideas and leave out others. Some concepts may need to be simplified.
• Employ more than one medium of expression. You should incorporate other media, such as charts, graphs, photographs, video or audio recordings, or websites.
• Prepare for a face-to-face presentation. If you must deliver a face-to-face presentation, it is important to project yourself as a serious and well-informed speaker. You will often speak extemporaneously, or in a rehearsed but not memorized manner, which allows for flexibility given the context or audience. You will need to know your points and keep your audience engaged.

Determine Your Purpose

As with a writing assignment, determining the purpose of your presentation early on is crucial. You want to inform your readers about the topic, but think about what else you hope to achieve.

Are you presenting information intended to move your audience to adopt certain beliefs or take action on a particular issue? If so, you are speaking not only to inform but also to persuade your listeners. Do you want your audience to come away from your presentation knowing how to do something they that they did not know before? In that case, you are not only informing them but also explaining or teaching a process.

writing at work

Schoolteachers are trained to structure lessons around one or more lesson objectives. Usually the objective, the mission or purpose, states what students should know or be able to do after they complete the lesson. For example, an objective might state, “Students will understand the specific freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment” or “Students will be able to add two three-digit numbers correctly.”

As a manager, mentor, or supervisor, you may sometimes be required to teach or train other employees as part of your job. Determining the desired outcome of a training session will help you plan effectively. Identify your teaching objectives. What, specifically, do you want your audience to know (for instance, details of a new workplace policy) or be able to do (for instance, use a new software program)? Plan your teaching or training session to meet your objectives.

Identify Key Ideas

To plan your presentation, think in terms of three or four key points you want to get across. In a paper, you have the space to develop ideas at length and delve into complex details. In a presentation, however, you must convey your ideas more concisely.

One strategy you might try is to create an outline. What is your main idea? Would your main idea work well as key points for a brief presentation? How would you condense topics that might be too lengthy, or should you eliminate topics that may be too complicated to address in your presentation?

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Revisit your presentation assignment, or think of a topic for your presentation. On your own sheet of notebook paper, write a list of at least three to five key ideas. Keep the following questions in mind when listing your key ideas:

• What is your purpose?
• Who is your audience?
• How will you engage your audience?

2. On the same paper, identify the steps you must complete before you begin creating your presentation.

Use an Outline to Organize Ideas

After you determine which ideas are most appropriate for your presentation, you will create an outline of those ideas. Your presentation, like a written assignment, should include an introduction, body, and conclusion. These components serve much the same purpose as they do in a written assignment.

• The introduction engages the audience’s attention, introduces the topic, and sets the tone for what is to come.
• The body develops your point of view with supporting ideas, details, and examples presented in a logical order.
• The conclusion restates your point of view, sums up your main points, and leaves your audience with something to think about.

Jorge, who wrote the research paper featured in Chapter 11 , developed the following outline. Jorge relied heavily on this outline to plan his presentation, but he adjusted it to suit the new format.

Planning Your Introduction

In Chapter 12 , you learned techniques for writing an interesting introduction, such as beginning with a surprising fact or statistic, a thought-provoking question or quotation, a brief anecdote that illustrates a larger concept or connects your topic to your audience’s experiences. You can use these techniques effectively in presentations as well. You might also consider actively engaging your audience by having members respond to questions or complete a brief activity related to your topic. For example, you may have your audience respond to a survey or tell about an experience related to your topic.

Incorporating media can also be an effective way to get your audience’s attention. Visual images such as a photograph or a cartoon can invoke an immediate emotional response. A graph or chart can highlight startling findings in research data or statistical information. Brief video or audio clips that clearly reinforce your message and do not distract or overwhelm your audience can provide a sense of immediacy when you plan to discuss an event or a current issue. A PowerPoint presentation allows you to integrate many of these different media sources into one presentation.

With the accessibility provided by the Internet, you can find interesting and appropriate audio and video with little difficulty. However, the clip alone will not sustain the presentation. To keep the audience interested and engaged, you must frame the beginning and end of the clip with your own words.

Jorge completed the introduction part of his outline by listing the key points he would use to open his presentation. He also planned to show various web links early on to illustrate the popularity of the low-carbohydrate diet trend.

Planning the Body of Your Presentation

The next step is to work with the key ideas you identified earlier. Determine the order in which you want to present these ideas, and flesh them out with important details. Chapter 10 discusses several organizational structures you might work with, such as chronological order, comparison-and-contrast structure, or cause-and-effect structure.

How much detail you include will depend on the time allotted for your presentation. Your instructor will most likely give you a specific time limit or a specific slide limit, such as eight to ten slides. If the time limit is very brief (two to three minutes, for instance), you will need to focus on communicating your point of view, main supporting points, and only the most relevant details. Three minutes can feel like an eternity if you are speaking before a group, but the time will pass very quickly. It is important to use it well.

If you have more time to work with—ten minutes or half an hour—you will be able to discuss your topic in greater detail. More time also means you must devote more thought into how you will hold your audience’s interest. If your presentation is longer than five minutes, introduce some variety so the audience is not bored. Incorporate multimedia, invite the audience to complete an activity, or set aside time for a question-and-answer session.

Jorge was required to limit his presentation to five to seven minutes. In his outline, he made a note about where he would need to condense some complicated material to stay within his time limit. He also decided to focus only on cholesterol and heart disease in his discussion of long-term health outcomes. The research on other issues was inconclusive, so Jorge decided to omit this material. Jorge’s notes on his outline show the revisions he has made to his presentation.

You are responsible for using your presentation time effectively to inform your audience. You show respect for your audience by following the expected time limit. However, that does not mean you must fill all of that time with talk if you are giving a face-to-face presentation. Involving your audience can take some of the pressure off you while also keeping them engaged. Have them respond to a few brief questions to get them thinking. Display a relevant photograph, document, or object and ask your classmates to comment. In some presentations, if time allows, you may choose to have your classmates complete an individual or group activity.

Planning Your Conclusion

The conclusion should briefly sum up your main idea and leave your audience with something to think about. As in a written paper, you are essentially revisiting your thesis. Depending on your topic, you may also ask the audience to reconsider their thinking about an issue, to take action, or to think about a related issue. If you presented an attention-getting fact or anecdote in your introduction, consider revisiting it in your conclusion. Just as you have learned about an essay’s conclusion, do not add new content to the presentation’s conclusion.

No matter how you choose to structure your conclusion, make sure it is well planned so that you are not tempted to wrap up your presentation too quickly. Inexperienced speakers, in a face-to-face presentation, sometimes rush through the end of a presentation to avoid exceeding the allotted time or to end the stressful experience of presenting in public. Unfortunately, a hurried conclusion makes the presentation as a whole less memorable.

Time management is the key to delivering an effective presentation whether it is face-to-face or in PowerPoint. As you develop your outline, think about the amount of time you will devote to each section. For instance, in a five-minute face-to-face presentation, you might plan to spend one minute on the introduction, three minutes on the body, and one minute on the conclusion. Later, when you rehearse, you can time yourself to determine whether you need to adjust your content or delivery.

In a PowerPoint presentation, it is important that your presentation is visually stimulating, avoids information overload by limiting the text per slide, uses speaker notes effectively, and uses a font that is visible on the background (e.g., avoid white letters on a light background or black letters on a dark background).

Exercise \(\PageIndex{2}\)

Work with the list you created in Exercise 1 to develop a more complete outline for your presentation. Make sure your outline includes the following:

• An introduction that uses strategies to capture your audience’s attention
• A body section that summarizes your main points and supporting details
• A conclusion that will help you end on a memorable note
• Brief notes about how much time you plan to spend on each part of the presentation (you may adjust the timing later as needed)

Identifying Opportunities to Incorporate Visual and Audio Media

You may already have some ideas for how to incorporate visual and audio media in your presentation. If not, review your outline and begin thinking about where to include media. Presenting information in a variety of formats will help you keep your audience’s interest.

Use Presentation Software

Delivering your presentation as a slideshow is one way to use media to your advantage. As you speak, you use a computer and an attached projector to display a slideshow of text and graphics that complement the speech. Your audience will follow your ideas more easily, because you are communicating with them through more than one sense. The audience hears your words and also sees the corresponding visuals. A listener who momentarily loses track of what you are saying can rely on the slide to cue his or her memory.

To set up your presentation, you will need to work with the content of your outline to develop individual slides. Each slide should focus on just a few bullet points (or a similar amount of content presented in a graphic). Remember that your audience must be able to read the slides easily, whether the members sit in the front or the back of the room. Avoid overcrowding the slides with too much text.

Using presentation software, such as PowerPoint, allows you to incorporate graphics, sounds, and even web links directly into your slides. You can also work with available styles, color schemes, and fonts to give your presentation a polished, consistent appearance. Different slide templates make it easy to organize information to suit your purpose. Be sure your font is visible to you audience. Avoid using small font or colored font that is not visible against your background.

Use PowerPoint as a Visual Aid

PowerPoint and similar visual representation programs can be effective tools to help audiences remember your message, but they can also be an annoying distraction to your speech. How you prepare your slides and use the tool will determine your effectiveness.

PowerPoint is a slideware program that you have no doubt seen used in class, seen in a presentation at work, or perhaps used yourself to support a presentation. PowerPoint and similar slideware programs provide templates for creating electronic slides to present visual information to the audience, reinforcing the verbal message. You will be able to import or cut and paste words from text files, images, or video clips to create slides to represent your ideas. You can even incorporate web links. When using any software program, it is always a good idea to experiment with it long before you intend to use it; explore its many options and functions, and see how it can be an effective tool for you.

At first, you might be overwhelmed by the possibilities, and you might be tempted to use all the bells, whistles, and sound effects, not to mention the tumbling, flying, and animated graphics. If used wisely, a dissolve or key transition can be like a well-executed scene from a major motion picture and lead your audience to the next point. But if used indiscriminately, it can annoy the audience to the point where they cringe in anticipation of the sound effect at the start of each slide. This danger is inherent in the tool, but you are in charge of it and can make wise choices that enhance the understanding and retention of your information.

The first point to consider is which visual aid is the most important. The answer is you, the speaker. You will facilitate the discussion, give life to the information, and help the audience correlate the content to your goal or purpose. You do not want to be in a position where the PowerPoint presentation is the focus and you are on the side of the stage simply helping the audience follow along. Slides should support you in your presentation, rather than the other way around. Just as there is a number one rule for handouts (do not pass them out at the start of your presentation), there is also one for PowerPoint presentations: do not use PowerPoint slides as a read-aloud script for your speech. The PowerPoint slides should amplify and illustrate your main points, not reproduce everything you are going to say.

Your pictures are the second area of emphasis you will want to consider. The tool will allow you to show graphs, charts and illustrate relationships that words may only approach in terms of communication, but your verbal support of the visual images will make all the difference. Dense pictures or complicated graphics will confuse more than they clarify. Choose clear images that have an immediate connection to both your content and the audience, tailored to their specific needs. After the images, consider using only key words that can be easily read to accompany your pictures. The fewer words the better. Try to keep each slide to a total word count of less than ten words. Do not use full sentences. Using key words provides support for your verbal discussion, guiding you as well as your audience. The key words can serve as signposts or signal words related to key ideas.

A natural question at this point is, How do I communicate complex information simply? The answer comes with several options. The visual representation on the screen is for support and illustration. Should you need to communicate more technical, complex, or in-depth information in a visual way, consider preparing a handout to distribute at the conclusion of your speech. You may also consider using a printout of your slide show with a section for taking notes, but if you distribute it at the beginning of your speech, you run the risk of turning your presentation into a guided reading exercise and possibly distracting or losing members of the audience. Everyone reads at a different pace and takes notes in their own way. You do not want to be in the position of going back and forth between slides to help people follow along.

Another point to consider is how you want to use the tool to support your speech and how your audience will interpret its presentation. Most audiences wouldn’t want to read a page of text—as you might see in this book—on the big screen. They will be far more likely to glance at the screen and assess the information you present in relation to your discussion. Therefore, it is key to consider one main idea, relationship, or point per slide. The use of the tool should be guided with the idea that its presentation is for the audience’s benefit, not yours. People often understand pictures and images more quickly and easily than text, and you can use this to your advantage, using the knowledge that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Incorporate Visual Media

Even if you do not use a slideshow to complement your presentation, you can include visual media to support and enhance your content. Visual media are divided into two major categories: images and informational graphics.

Image-based media, such as photographs or videos, often have little or no accompanying text. Often these media are more powerful than words in getting a message across. Within the past decade, the images associated with major news stories, such as the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, the Abu Ghraib prison abuses from 2004 to 2006, and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, have powerfully affected viewers’ emotions and drawn their attention to these news stories.

Even if your presentation addresses a less dramatic subject, you can still use images to draw in your audience. Consider how photographs, an illustration, or a video might help your audience connect with a particular person or place or bring a historical event to life. Use visual images to support descriptions of natural or man-made phenomena. What ideas lend themselves to being explained primarily through images?

In addition, consider how you might incorporate informational graphics in your presentation. Informational graphics include diagrams, tables, pie charts, bar and line graphs, and flow charts. Informational graphics usually include some text and often work well to present numerical information. Consider using them if you are presenting statistics, comparing facts or data about several different groups, describing changes over time, or presenting a process.

Incorporate Audio Media

Although audio media are not as versatile as visual media, you may wish to use them if they work well with your particular topic. If your presentation discusses trends in pop music or analyzes political speeches, playing an audio clip is an obvious and effective choice. Clips from historical speeches, radio talk shows, and interviews can also be used, but extended clips may be ineffective with modern audiences. Always assess your audience’s demographics and expectations before selecting and including audio media.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{3}\)

Review the outline you created in Exercise 2. Complete the following steps:

• Identify at least two to three places in your presentation where you might incorporate visual or audio media. Brainstorm ideas for what media would be effective, and create a list of ideas. (In Section 14.2 , you will explore different media options in greater depth. For now, focus on coming up with a few general ideas.)
• Determine whether you will use presentation software to deliver your presentation as a slideshow. If you plan to do so, begin using your outline to draft your slides.

Planning Ahead: Annotating Your Presentation

When you make a presentation, you are giving a performance of sorts. It may not be as dramatic as a play or a movie, but it requires smooth coordination of several elements—your words, your gestures, and any media you include. One way to ensure that the performance goes smoothly is to annotate your presentation ahead of time.

To annotate means to add comments or notes to a document. You can use this technique to plan how the different parts of your presentation will flow together. For instance, if you are working with slides, add notes to your outline indicating when you will show each slide. If you have other visual or audio media to include, make a note of that, too. Be as detailed as necessary. Jotting “Start video at 3:14” can spare you the awkwardness of searching for the right clip during your presentation.

In the workplace, employees are often asked to deliver presentations or conduct a meeting using standard office presentation software. If you are using presentation software, you can annotate your presentation easily as you create your slides. Use the notes feature at the bottom of the page to add notes for each slide. As you deliver your presentation, your notes will be visible to you on the computer screen but not to your audience on the projector screen.

In a face-to-face presentation, make sure your final annotated outline is easy to read. It will serve to cue you during your presentation, so it does not need to look polished, as long as it is clear to you. Double space the text. Use a larger-than-normal font size (14 or 16 points) if that will make it easier for you to read. Boldface or italics will set off text that should be emphasized or delivered with greater emotion. Write out main points, as well as your opening and closing remarks, in complete sentences, along with any material you want to quote verbatim. Use shorter phrases for supporting details. Using your speaker notes effectively will help you deliver an effective presentation. Highlighting, all capital letters, or different-colored font will help you easily distinguish notes from the text of your speech. Read Jorge’s annotated outline.

Some students prefer to write out the full text of their face-to-face presentation. This can be a useful strategy when you are practicing your delivery. However, keep in mind that reading your text aloud, word for word, will not help you capture and hold your audience’s attention. Write out and read your speech if that helps you rehearse. After a few practice sessions, when you are more comfortable with your material, switch to working from an outline. That will help you sound more natural when you speak to an audience.

In a PowerPoint presentation, remember to have your slides in logical sequential order. Annotating your presentation before submitting it to your audience or your instructor will help you check for order and logical transitions. Too much text or data may confuse your audience; strive for clarity and avoid unnecessary details. Let the pictures or graphics tell the story but do not overload your slideshow with visuals. Be sure your font is visible. Look for consistency in the time limit of your presentation to gauge your level of preparedness.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{4}\)

Begin to annotate your outline. (You will probably add more notes as you proceed, but including some annotations now will help you begin pulling your ideas together.) Mark your outline with the following information:

• Write notes in brackets to any sections where you definitely plan to incorporate visual or audio media.
• If you are presenting a slideshow, add notes in brackets indicating which slides go with each section of your outline.
• Identify and set off any text that should be emphasized.

Key Takeaways

• An effective presentation presents ideas more concisely than a written document and uses media to explain ideas and hold the audience’s interest.
• Like an essay, a presentation should have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
• Good writers structure their presentations on the thesis, or point of view; main ideas; and key supporting details and create a presentation outline to organize their ideas.
• Annotating a presentation outline is a useful way to coordinate different parts of the presentation and manage time effectively.

We use cookies

This website uses cookies to provide better user experience and user's session management. By continuing visiting this website you consent the use of these cookies.

ChartExpo Survey

Top 4 Text Visualization Examples

Extracting reliable and actionable insights into qualitative data, such as keywords, is complex and challenging, especially if you’re starting out.

You can easily get overwhelmed.

You need a tool that can pore through the qualitative data for low-hanging insights. Going manual is not an option.

This is where text visualization charts come in.

The charts use simple text analysis to help you visualize and summarize qualitative data, such as customer feedback and search terms. Below are some of the text visualization charts we recommend you try these:

• Slope Chart
• Sankey Chart

So, how can you access the charts highlighted above?

Google Sheets lack Word and Tag Clouds, Slope, and Sankey Charts.

You don’t have to do away with Google Sheets for other expensive tools. You can supercharge it by installing third-party add-ons to access easy-to-use text visualization charts.

In this blog, you’ll learn the following:

Table of Content:

What is text visualization, why do we need text visualization, text data visualization examples, how do you visualize text data, video tutorial: how to create word cloud in excel, what is the importance of visualization.

Before diving into the main theme, we’ll address the following question: what is text visualization?

Definition : The text visualization chart is the graphical representation of qualitative data frequency, such as keywords or customer feedback.

The graph gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in a source text. The larger the word, the higher its frequency.

You can use the chart to perform exploratory textual analysis by identifying words that frequently appear in a set of interviews, documents, or other text. Also, you can use it to communicate the most salient points or themes in the reporting stage.

Check out the uses of text visualization charts below:

Summarize Large Amounts of Text

Automatically highlight key terms in a series of texts, and categorize text by topic, sentiment, and more, saving hours of reading time.

With a text visualization or data visualization dashboard, you can understand text data at a glance.

Make Text Data Easy to Understand

Our brains process visual data 60,000 times faster than texts and numbers. Text visualization examples effectively simplify complex data and communicate ideas and concepts to team managers.

Find Insights in Qualitative Data

Customer feedback holds a trove of insights. Through text visualization examples, you can get an overview of the features, products, and topics that are most important to your customers.

Discover Hidden Trends and Patterns

You can easily analyze and visualize insights over time to detect fluctuations, and quickly find the root cause.

Extracting reliable insights from qualitative data sets, such as keywords, should never be an Achilles Heel for you. Keep reading because we’ll address the following question: why do we need text visualization?

Text Visualization can help reveal your audience’s thoughts

You can use the chart to understand your audience’s feelings about a topic/situation. Besides, you can leverage the chart to summarize data-driven views. The chart can help you summarize the market feedback using first-hand data.

Quick and informative

You can easily get live feedback from your audience in real-time

Exciting and emotional

The chart can help audiences feel part of your data story.

The Word cloud is incredibly engaging and visually appealing to many audiences. The chart can be an icebreaker or an entry point for a topic of discussion.

Word Clouds are visual

Our brains process visual content 60,000 times faster than texts and numbers. This provides a logical rationale for using the Word Cloud generator to analyze your textual data for actionable insights.

Creating a text visualization is straightforward

Generating text visualization examples is easy to follow. Yes, you read that right. Besides, the chart can provide you with insights into large data sets.

In the coming section, we’ll cover the following: text data visualization examples.

Word Clouds are charts that display insights into qualitative data frequency.

The visualization design gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in a source text. The larger the word, the higher its frequency. You can use the chart (one of the text visualization examples) to perform exploratory textual analysis by identifying words that frequently appear in a set of interviews, documents, or other text.

Also, you can use it to communicate the most salient points or themes in your data stories.

Tag clouds or text clouds are ideal if your goal is to pull out the most pertinent parts of textual data, from blog posts to databases.

You can use the tag cloud as a text visualization tool to compare and contrast two different pieces of text for similarities and differences.

Slope Charts show  transitions, changes over time, absolute values, and even rankings. Besides, they’re also called Slope Graphs.

You can use this chart to show the before and after story of key variables.

Slope Graphs (one of the text visualization examples) can be useful when you have two time periods or points of comparison and want to show relative increases and decreases quickly across various categories between two data points.

The best way to explain the value of and use case for slope graphs is through a specific example.

This chart pack in a lot of information. In addition to the absolute values (the points), the lines that connect them give you the visual increase or decrease in the rate of change (via the slope or direction).

Note: Slope Charts require immense patience to create because you can’t find ready-made templates in most visualization tools.

Whether a slope chart will work in your data story or not depends on the nature of your data. For instance, if many lines overlap, your chart will lose effectiveness. And this is due to clutter.

However, you can overcome the above challenge to some degree by highlighting a single line category that has either increased or decreased over time.

A Sankey Diagram visualizes “a flow” from one set of values to the next. The two items being connected are referred to as “nodes.” The connections are labeled as “links”.

Besides, it’s named after an Irishman, Capt. Matthew Sankey first used them in a publication on the energy efficiency of a steam engine in 1898. Sankey diagrams were initially used to visualize and analyze energy flows, but they’re a great tool to depict the flow of money, time, and resources. Flows in the chart can display energy, materials, fluids, revenue, or costs.

You can use the visualization design to visually show complex processes, focusing on a single aspect or resource that you want to highlight. Besides, the chart offers the added benefit of supporting multiple viewing levels.

Audiences can get a high-level view, see specific details, or generate interactive views.

These visualization charts make dominant contributors or consumers stand out. Keep reading because we’ll address the following in the coming section: how do you visualize text data?

Google Sheets has default charts you can use to extract answers from your data.

However, you’ll never find ready-to-use text visualization examples, such as Word Cloud Charts, for your analysis. The most viable option available for you is installing a particular third-party add-on (we’ll talk about later) to access ready-made text-based charts.

You don’t need to do away with the Google Sheets.

We recommend you try the ChartExpo add-on for Google Sheets because of the reasons listed below.

ChartExpo does not require coding or programming skills, unlike other data visualization-based add-ons. It has a super-friendly user interface (UI) for everyone to use.

This tool comes pre-loaded with many ready-made charts to offset the missing ones in Google Sheets. Use ChartExpo to produce text visualization examples that are incredibly easy to read and understand.

How to make text visualization examples, such as Slope Charts, should never be time-consuming. Use ChartExpo to overcome this. You’ll learn more about this cutting-edge tool in the next section.

So, what is ChartExpo?

ChartExpo comes as an add-on for Google Sheets.

Essentially, it turns your Google Sheets into a usable data visualization tool capable of delivering hidden insights into your data, irrespective of the size or complexity.

The premium Text Visualization Maker comes with a 7-day free trial period.

The key benefit of ChartExpo is the fact that it produces charts in Excel and Google Sheets that are easy to read and interpret . More so, it allows you to save charts in the world’s most recognized formats, namely PNG, PDF, and JPG.

This section will use a Word Cloud Chart to display insights into the table below.

To Get Started with the text visualization examples, such as Word Cloud Chart, install the ChartExpo add-on for Google Sheets from the link and then follow the simple and easy steps below.

• Click the Extensions button >ChartExpo >Open .

• Click the Add New Chart button to access your fully stocked library of charts.

• Look for “Word Cloud Chart ” in the list.

• Select the sheet holding your data and select the Metrics option. Fill in the numerical numbers (in our scenario, we’ll fill in: the number of sales ).
• Select the Dimensions button and fill in the dimensional data (in our example, we’ll cities ).

• Finish the simple process by clicking the Create Chart button.
• Check out the final chart below.

The most prominent keywords are:

• San Francisco
• Nashville-Davison
• Virginia Beach

In the coming section, we will show you how to create a Word Cloud in Excel.

In the following video, you will learn how to Create a Word Cloud in Excel.

In the coming section, we’ll address the following: what is the importance of visualization?

Rejuvenate Productivity

The different types of charts for representing data we’ll talk about can improve productivity and efficiency in the workplace. In other words, you can leverage data to predict risks, such as declining productivity.

Charts and graphs can help you track productivity metrics in real-time. With a solid business analytics strategy, you can easily point out gaps and improvement areas in your workplace or business.

Personalize Your Offers

Today’s market craves products and services that can meet their individual needs.

One of the benefits of text visualization charts is that they can help you keep track of your target market’s tastes, preferences, and needs. You can leverage data from various attributions, such as social media and websites, to create a reliable persona for the market.

Decision-making Framework

Most companies are still betting on intuition rather than facts and data. 

One of the key reasons for this could be a lack of access to quality data to back decision-making processes. Text visualization examples can help you distill signals from noise in your raw data. And this can save massive amounts of time.

Imagine the competitive advantage you would enjoy by relying on data to make strategic decisions.

What is text analysis used for?

We use graphs, such as Word Cloud Text, to display qualitative data frequency, such as customer feedback during text analysis. The charts give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in a source text.

You can use the chart to perform exploratory textual analysis by identifying words that frequently appear in texts.

Why is text added to a data visualization presentation?

Texts are added to charts and graphs to guide the audience and provide context. Headlines, legends, and other labels provide extra information about the graph.

Headlines provide context under which the audience can use to interpret data. X and y-axes offer extra information, such as measurements used.

Extracting reliable and actionable insights into qualitative data, such as keywords, is easier said than done.

You can easily get overwhelmed, especially if the data is complex and bulky. You need a tool than can pore through the qualitative data for low-hanging insights.

This is where text visualization examples, such as Word Cloud, come in.

The charts use simple text analysis to help you visualize and summarize qualitative data, such as customer feedback and search terms. Some of the text visualization charts we recommend you try these:

So how can you access the charts highlighted above?

Google Sheets lack text visualization examples, such as Word and Tag Clouds. You don’t have to do away with Google Sheets for other expensive tools.

So, what’s the solution?

Download and install third-party apps, such as ChartExpo, to access ready-to-go text visualization examples, such as the Word Cloud Chart.

ChartExpo is an easy-to-use application you can easily download and install in your Google Sheets app. Besides, this tool comes loaded with insightful and ready-made text visualization designs. You don’t need programming or coding skills to visualize your data using ChartExpo.

Sign up for a 7-day free trial today to access easy-to-interpret and visually text visualization charts.

How much did you enjoy this article?

Related articles

Cost Performance Index Examples for Unraveling Efficiency

Navigate landscape of project management with real Cost Performance Index examples. Understand CPI formula & discover its role in early problem detection.

Income vs. Profit vs. Revenue: Mastering the Financial Trio

Explore intricate dance of income vs profit vs revenue in comprehensive guide. Unravel differences, analyze relationships, & gain insights for decision-making.

Project Status Reports Template: Elevate Reporting Game

Elevate project management game with comprehensive guide on project status reports templates. Uncover roadmap to success through streamlined reporting.

How to Create a Chart in Google Sheets in Few Steps?

Transform data into captivating charts effortlessly. Follow our guide on How to Create a Chart in Google Sheets & discover the key to insightful visuals.

Financial Insight: Profit and Loss Statement for a Small Business

Empower your strategy with our detailed profit and loss statement for a small business. Drive growth and enhance financial decision-making.

Understanding WCAG 2.0

Skip to Content (Press Enter)

• Previous: SC 1.4.7 [Low or No Background Audio]
• Next: SC 1.4.9 [Images of Text (No Exception)]

On this page:

Related Resources

• Techniques & Failures

Visual Presentation : Understanding SC 1.4.8

1.4.8 Visual Presentation: For the visual presentation of blocks of text , a mechanism is available to achieve the following: (Level AAA) Foreground and background colors can be selected by the user. Width is no more than 80 characters or glyphs (40 if CJK ). Text is not justified (aligned to both the left and the right margins). Line spacing (leading) is at least space-and-a-half within paragraphs, and paragraph spacing is at least 1.5 times larger than the line spacing. Text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent in a way that does not require the user to scroll horizontally to read a line of text on a full-screen window .

Intent of this Success Criterion

The intent of this Success Criterion is to ensure that visually rendered text is presented in such a manner that it can be perceived without its layout interfering with its readability. People with some cognitive, language and learning disabilities and some low vision users cannot perceive the text and/or lose their reading place if the text is presented in a manner that is difficult for them to read.

People with some visual or cognitive disabilities need to be able to select the color of text and the color of the background. They sometimes choose combinations that seem unintuitive to someone without that disability. Sometimes these combinations have very low contrast. Sometimes only very specific color combinations work for them. Control of color or other aspects of text presentation makes a huge difference to their comprehension.

For people with some reading or vision disabilities, long lines of text can become a significant barrier. They have trouble keeping their place and following the flow of text. Having a narrow block of text makes it easier for them to continue on to the next line in a block. Lines should not exceed 80 characters or glyphs (40 if CJK ), where glyphs are the element of writing in the writing system for the text. Studies have shown that Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters are approximately twice as wide as non-CJK characters when both types of characters are displayed with characteristics that achieve the same readability, so the maximum line width for CJK characters is half that of non-CJK characters.

People with some cognitive disabilities find it difficult to track text where the lines are close together. Providing extra space between lines and paragraphs allows them to better track the next line and to recognize when they have reached the end of a paragraph. It is best if there are several different options, for instance, space-and-a-half and double spacing for line spacing. By space and a half within paragraphs we mean that top of one line is 150% further from the top of the line below it than would be true when the text is 'single spaced' (the default spacing for the font). By Paragraph spacing that is 1.5 times larger than the line spacing we mean that the spacing from the top of the last line of 1 paragraph is 250% farther from the Top of the first line of the next paragraph (i.e., that there is a blank line between the two paragraphs that is 150% of the single space blank line).

People with certain cognitive disabilities have problems reading text that is both left and right justified. The uneven spacing between words in fully justified text can cause "rivers of white" space to run down the page making reading difficult and in some cases impossible. Text justification can also cause words to be spaced closely together, so that it is difficult for them to locate word boundaries.

The resizing provision ensures that visually rendered text (text characters that have been displayed so that they can be seen [vs. text characters that are still in data form such as ASCII]) can be scaled successfully without requiring that the user scroll left and right to see all of the content. When the content has been authored so that this is possible, the content is said to reflow. This permits people with low vision and people with cognitive disabilities to increase the size of the text without becoming disoriented.

The scaling of content is primarily a user agent responsibility. User agents that satisfy UAAG 1.0 Checkpoint 4.1 allow users to configure text scale. The author's responsibility is to create Web content that does not prevent the user agent from scaling the content and that allows the reflow of the content within the current width of the viewport. See Understanding Success Criterion 1.4.4 Resize text for additional discussion of resizing text.

The horizontal scrolling requirement is not intended to apply to small-screen devices where long words may be displayed on a single line and require users to scroll horizontally. For the purposes of this requirement, authors should ensure that content meets this requirement on standard desktop/laptop displays with the browser window maximized. Since people generally keep their computers for several years, it is best not to rely on the latest desktop/laptop display resolutions but to consider the common desktop/laptop display resolutions over the course of several years when making this evaluation.

Wrapping should always be possible as long as words are not so long that a single word is more than half the width of a full screen. Very long URIs may run off the side of an enlarged screen, but they would not be considered text for "reading" and, therefore, would not violate this provision.

This provision does not mean that a user would never need to use horizontal scrolling. It only means that they would not need to use horizontal scrolling back and forth to read a line of text. For example, if a page consisted of two equal sized columns of text, it would automatically meet this provision. Enlarging the page would mean that the first column was completely on screen and the user could just scroll vertically down the page to read it. To read the second column, they would horizontally scroll to the right, where the right hand column would then fit entirely within the width of the screen, and read that column without further horizontal scrolling.

Specific Benefits of Success Criterion 1.4.8:

This Success Criterion helps low vision users by letting them see text without distracting presentational features. It lets them configure text in ways that will be easier for them to see by letting them control the color and size of blocks of text.

This Success Criterion helps people with cognitive, language and learning disabilities perceive text and track their location within blocks of text.

People with some cognitive disabilities can read text better when they select their own foreground and background color combinations.

People with some cognitive disabilities can track their locations more easily when blocks of text are narrow and when they can configure the amount of space between lines and paragraphs.

People with some cognitive disabilities can read text more easily when the spacing between words is regular.

Examples of Success Criterion 1.4.8

The following images show examples of single-spacing, space-and-a-half and double-spaced text in a paragraph.

Examples of glyphs include "A", "→" (an arrow symbol), and "さ" (a Japanese character).

Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.

CSS 2 Box Model

CSS 2 Visual formatting Model

CSS 2 Visual formatting Model Details

About fluid and fixed width layouts

Accessible CSS

Ideal line length for content

Developing sites for users with Cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties

RDFA Primer

MULTIFUNK: Bringing computer-supported reading one step further , Date: April 2002, ISBN: 82-539-0491-6, Author: Gjertrud W. Kamstrup, Eva Mjøvik, Anne-Lise Rygvold og Bjørn Gunnar Saltnes

Effective Monitor Display Design on the ERIC Web portal

Cognitive difficulties and access to information systems - an interaction design perspective ", Peter Gregor and Anna Dickinson, Applied Computing, University of Dundee

Legge, G.E., Pelli, D.G., Rubin, G.S., & Schleske, M.M.:Psychophysics of reading. I. Normal Vision,Vision Research, 25, 239-252, 1985.

Legge, G.E., Rubin, G.S., Pelli, D.G., & Schleske, M.M.:Psychophysics of reading. II. Low Vision,Vision Research, 25, 253-266, 1985.

Osaka,N. and Oda, K. (1991). Effective visual field size necessary for vertical reading during Japanese text processing. Bulletin of Psychonomic Society,29(4),345-347.

Beckmann, P.J. & Legge, G.E. (1996). Psychophysics of reading. XIV. The page-navigation problem in using magnifiers. Vision Research, 36, 3723-3733.

川嶋英嗣・小田浩一 (2003). 読書におけるスクロール方向とウィンドウ幅の影響　日本心理学会第 67 回大会 , 502.

小田浩一・今橋真理子 (1995). 文字認知の閾値と読みの閾値 . VISION, 7, 165-168.

Osaka,N. (1994). Size of saccade and fixation duration of eye movements during reading: psychophysics of Japanese text processing. Journal of Optical Society of America A, 9(1), 5-13.

山中今日子・小田浩一 (2007). 漢字の画数と書体のウェイトが視認性に及ぼす 影響. 視覚学会 2007 年夏季大会ポスター 1p1 Vision, P.167.

Line Length, Volume, and Density

Guidance on accessible publishing

An Accessibility Frontier: Cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties

Cognitive/Perceptual Difference And Good Web Design

6 Surprising Bad Practices That Hurt Dyslexic Users

Design for Dyslexics

Web Design for Dyslexia

Techniques and Failures for Success Criterion 1.4.8 - Visual Presentation

Each numbered item in this section represents a technique or combination of techniques that the WCAG Working Group deems sufficient for meeting this Success Criterion. However, it is not necessary to use these particular techniques. For information on using other techniques, see Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria , particularly the "Other Techniques" section.

Sufficient Techniques

Instructions: Since this is a multi-part success criterion, you must satisfy one of the numbered items for each of the requirements below.

First Requirement: Techniques to ensure foreground and background colors can be selected by the user

C23: Specifying text and background colors of secondary content such as banners, features and navigation in CSS while not specifying text and background colors of the main content (CSS) OR

C25: Specifying borders and layout in CSS to delineate areas of a Web page while not specifying text and text-background colors (CSS) OR

G156: Using a technology that has commonly-available user agents that can change the foreground and background of blocks of text OR

G148: Not specifying background color, not specifying text color, and not using technology features that change those defaults OR

G175: Providing a multi color selection tool on the page for foreground and background colors

Second Requirement: Techniques to ensure width is no more than 80 characters or glyphs (40 if CJK)

G204: Not interfering with the user agent's reflow of text as the viewing window is narrowed OR

C20: Using relative measurements to set column widths so that lines can average 80 characters or less when the browser is resized (CSS)

Third Requirement: Techniques to ensure text is not justified (aligned to both the left and the right margins)

C19: Specifying alignment either to the left OR right in CSS (CSS) OR

G172: Providing a mechanism to remove full justification of text OR

G169: Aligning text on only one side

Fourth Requirement: Techniques to ensure line spacing (leading) is at least space-and-a-half within paragraphs, and paragraph spacing is at least 1.5 times larger than the line spacing

G188: Providing a button on the page to increase line spaces and paragraph spaces OR

C21: Specifying line spacing in CSS (CSS)

Fifth Requirement: Techniques to ensure text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent in a way that does not require the user to scroll horizontally to read a line of text on a full-screen window

G146: Using liquid layout AND using measurements that are relative to other measurements in the content by using one or more of the following techniques:

C12: Using percent for font sizes (CSS) OR

C13: Using named font sizes (CSS) OR

C14: Using em units for font sizes (CSS) OR

C24: Using percentage values in CSS for container sizes (CSS) OR

FLASH33: Using relative values for Flash object dimensions (Flash)

SCR34: Calculating size and position in a way that scales with text size (Scripting) OR

G206: Providing options within the content to switch to a layout that does not require the user to scroll horizontally to read a line of text

Additional Techniques (Advisory) for 1.4.8

Although not required for conformance, the following additional techniques should be considered in order to make content more accessible. Not all techniques can be used or would be effective in all situations.

Using a hover effect to highlight a paragraph, list items, or table cells (CSS) (future link)

Presenting text in sans serif font or providing a mechanism to achieve this (CSS) (future link)

Using vertical (bulleted or numbered) lists rather than inline lists (future link)

Using upper and lower case according to the spelling conventions of the text language (future link)

Providing large fonts by default (future link)

Avoiding the use of text in raster images (future link)

Avoiding scaling font sizes smaller than the user-agent default (future link)

Providing sufficient inter-column spacing (future link)

Avoiding centrally aligned text (future link)

Avoiding chunks of italic text (future link)

Avoiding overuse of different styles on individual pages and in sites (future link)

Making links visually distinct (future link)

Providing expandable bullets (future link)

Show/hide bullet points (future link)

Putting an em-space or two spaces after sentences (future link)

Common Failures for SC 1.4.8

The following are common mistakes that are considered failures of Success Criterion 1.4.8 by the WCAG Working Group.

F24: Failure of Success Criterion 1.4.3, 1.4.6 and 1.4.8 due to specifying foreground colors without specifying background colors or vice versa

F88: Failure of Success Criterion 1.4.8 due to using text that is justified (aligned to both the left and the right margins)

more than one sentence of text

process or technique for achieving a result

Note 1: The mechanism may be explicitly provided in the content, or may be relied upon to be provided by either the platform or by user agents , including assistive technologies .

Note 2: The mechanism needs to meet all success criteria for the conformance level claimed.

on the most common sized desktop/laptop display with the viewport maximized

Note: Since people generally keep their computers for several years, it is best not to rely on the latest desktop/laptop display resolutions but to consider the common desktop/laptop display resolutions over the course of several years when making this evaluation.

This Web page is part of Understanding WCAG 2.0: A guide to understanding and implementing WCAG 2.0 (see the latest version of this document ). The entire document is also available as a single HTML file . See the The WCAG 2.0 Documents for an explanation of how this document fits in with other Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 documents. To send public comments, please follow the Instructions for Commenting on WCAG 2.0 Documents .

Copyright © 2023 World Wide Web Consortium . W3C ® liability , trademark and document use rules apply.

Help | Advanced Search

Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Title: text-driven affordance learning from egocentric vision.

Abstract: Visual affordance learning is a key component for robots to understand how to interact with objects. Conventional approaches in this field rely on pre-defined objects and actions, falling short of capturing diverse interactions in realworld scenarios. The key idea of our approach is employing textual instruction, targeting various affordances for a wide range of objects. This approach covers both hand-object and tool-object interactions. We introduce text-driven affordance learning, aiming to learn contact points and manipulation trajectories from an egocentric view following textual instruction. In our task, contact points are represented as heatmaps, and the manipulation trajectory as sequences of coordinates that incorporate both linear and rotational movements for various manipulations. However, when we gather data for this task, manual annotations of these diverse interactions are costly. To this end, we propose a pseudo dataset creation pipeline and build a large pseudo-training dataset: TextAFF80K, consisting of over 80K instances of the contact points, trajectories, images, and text tuples. We extend existing referring expression comprehension models for our task, and experimental results show that our approach robustly handles multiple affordances, serving as a new standard for affordance learning in real-world scenarios.

Submission history

Access paper:.

• HTML (experimental)
• Other Formats

References & Citations

• Google Scholar
• Semantic Scholar

BibTeX formatted citation

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Code, data and media associated with this article, recommenders and search tools.

• Institution

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs .

Log in using your username and password

• Search More Search for this keyword Advanced search
• Latest content
• Current issue
• For authors
• Hosted content
• BMJ Journals More You are viewing from: Google Indexer

You are here

• Online First
• Acute proximal weakness and paraesthesiae
• Article Text
• Article info
• Citation Tools
• Rapid Responses
• Article metrics

• http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5643-7971 Lucia Maure Blesa 1 ,
• http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4165-5551 Daniel López de Mota Sánchez 1 ,
• http://orcid.org/0009-0001-4150-4665 Olalla Álvarez-Toledo 2 ,
• Elena Montes Fernandez 3 ,
• Montserrat Morales Conejo 4 ,
• http://orcid.org/0009-0007-7763-9434 Teresa Díaz-Cardona 5 ,
• http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5652-516X Laura Olivie Garcia 1 ,
• http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1108-2318 Ivana Zamarbide Capdepon 1 ,
• http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1625-055X Antonio Herranz Bárcenas 1
• 1 Neurology , Hospital Universitario Fundacion Jimenez Diaz , Madrid , Spain
• 2 Internal Medicine Department , Hospital FREMAP Majadahonda , Madrid , Spain
• 3 Neurophysiology Department , Hospital Universitario Fundación Jiménez Díaz , Madrid , Spain
• 4 Internal Medicine Department , Hospital Universitario Doce de Octubre , Madrid , Comunidad de Madrid , Spain
• 5 Rehabilitation Centre , Hospital FREMAP Majadahona , Madrid , Spain
• Correspondence to Dr Lucia Maure Blesa, Neurology, Fundación Jiménez Díaz, Madrid, Spain; luciamaure.lm{at}gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/pn-2023-004082

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request permissions.

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

• GUILLAIN-BARRE SYNDROME

Case presentation

A man in his mid-50s was admitted to hospital after falling and fracturing his L2 and L4 vertebrae. He had a history of intestinal occlusion 20 years before that had resolved with conservative treatment in his country of origin, Peru. CT scan of head, abdomen and pelvis were normal.

He promptly became haemodynamically unstable, developing hypotension (blood pressure 70/40 mm Hg), tachycardia (pulse 134 bpm) and fever (38.7°C), requiring intensive care unit admission for 3 days. An exploratory laparotomy found nothing pathological. His hyponatraemia (119 mmol/L) continued.

Two weeks after discharge from the intensive care unit, he developed numbness of his proximal lower limbs and trunk, progressing after 2 days to proximal weakness of all four limbs, with loss of deep tendon reflexes. He had no sphincter disturbance, facial numbness or weakness, no diplopia or other cranial nerves abnormalities. There was no fever or other features of infection. MR scan of brain showed no acute intracranial pathology and MR scan of spine showed only a fracture of the upper plate of L2.

He was admitted into the neurology department. On examination, he had a tachycardia (100 bpm). There was proximal muscle weakness, with moderate resistance in both arms and only movement against gravity in both legs. Reflexes were reduced in the upper limbs but absent in the lower limbs. He had hypoaesthesia of the trunk and proximal limbs, but no sensory level.

Questions for consideration

What are the most likely diagnoses and what tests would you perform to confirm it?

Diagnostic assessment

With his progressive symptoms of ascending sensory and motor problems affecting the limbs and trunk, with lost tendon reflexes, normal neuroimaging, we suspected Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Table 1 shows his relevant investigation results.

• View inline

Table results

Given the EMG findings and the mild cerebrospinal fluid albuminocytological dissociation, we suspected an axonal form of Guillain-Barré syndrome, and planned his first plasma exchange session.

Only 48 hours after admission into neurology, he developed significant haemodynamic instability (tachycardia 120 bpm and hypotension of 90/60 mmHg) with respiratory distress manifesting as excessive inspiratory muscle use, marked paradoxical breathing and inability to handle secretions or to cough. He required orotracheal intubation and readmission to the intensive care unit. His motor symptoms worsened slowly such that his proximal muscles showed only visible contraction, his distal arms moved against gravity and his distal legs moved against moderate resistance. The sensory alteration and global areflexia persisted.

There was no clinical improvement despite four sessions of plasma exchange on alternate days.

Given his clinical evolution and lack of treatment response, what other diagnosis and/or clinical management would you consider?

Differential diagnosis

Given the lack of improvement and atypical features including proximal sensorimotor distribution and prominent dysautonomia, we considered other causes of weakness after discharge from the intensive care unit 1 and paralytic Guillain-Barré syndrome mimics 2 3 :

Other causes of acute neuropathy:

Thiamine deficiency : although typically with a distal impairment, and rarely causing respiratory muscle weakness (and despite no history of chronic alcohol use), this was possible given the perioperative fasting before clinical onset.

Vasculitic neuropathy : this typically presents with multifocal involvement and focal pain in the area of weakness, and so seemed unlikely. Nevertheless, an autoimmunity panel and chest X-ray were arranged and were normal. Nerve biopsy was considered but postponed.

Malignancy or oncological treatments such as immunotherapy : there was no history of these.

Autoimmune nodopathies , particularly the IgG1 or IgG3 pan-neurofascinopathy, were considered possible.

Toxic and metabolic causes. After excluding more prevalent causes, we considered mainly acute intermittent porphyria and toxic causes such as lead 4 and arsenic poisoning, especially given the prior gastrointestinal symptoms and multisystem involvement.

Refsum’s disease is rare and typically accompanied by cerebellar ataxia and retinitis pigmentosa but was also considered.

Other non-neuropathic causes: traumatic and vascular myelopathy were excluded out by MR scan and MR angiogram of spine. Acute anterior horn cell infections, neuromuscular-plaque disorders and muscle disorders seemed unlikely with this clinical presentation and laboratory results.

Given the prior symptoms of prodromal confusion, abdominal pain, dysautonomia with persistent hyponatraemia, predominant proximal motor involvement and the ‘bathing-suit’ distribution of sensory symptoms, we suspected acute intermittent porphyria.

Question for consideration

When should neurologists suspect acute intermittent porphyria?

How would you diagnose and treat this patient?

Treatment and follow up

Acute intermittent porphyria is a disorder of haem synthesis caused by an inherited partial deficiency in the third enzyme in this synthetic pathway, porphobilinogen deaminase, 5 also known as hydroxymethylbilane synthase ( figure 1 ). This autosomal dominant condition leads to the accumulation of certain precursor chemicals including porphobilinogen and delta-aminolevulinic acid (ALA), presumed to be neurotoxic. Acute attacks can be triggered by inducing ALA synthase-1, the rate-limiting enzyme step, thus causing hepatic overproduction of porphyrin precursors. The pathogenesis is probably mediated through both the neurotoxicity of these precursors and the neuronal reduction in haem proteins.

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Biochemical synthesis pathway of haem in the liver. A series of eight enzymatic processes lead to the intracellular haem synthesis. A main enzyme is ALA synthase-1, whose induction by different drugs or feeding states may lead to overproduction of haem precursors; in acute intermittent porphyria, given the defect in PBGD enzymatic function, these haem precursors may accumulate and cause a clinical attack. ALA synthase-1 is partly inhibited by negative feedback (in green) regulation by haem, and is the therapeutic target of girosivan (in green). Enzymes are in blue, haem precursors in black, AIP in red. AIP, acute intermittent porphyria; ALA, aminolevulinic acid. Created by L Maure with Biorender.com.

Inducers of ALA synthase-1 include certain medications 6 particularly those that induce the cytochrome P-450 enzyme system. Inducing these enzymes depletes haem by increasing its breakdown, diverting its precursors to enzyme synthesis and increasing metabolic demands for haem; the haem depletion in turn induces ALA synthase-1. Other common inducers are alcohol, hormonal imbalance (progesterone), other causes of iron deficiency and dieting, including most hypocaloric nutrition given at regular hospitalisation or, as in this case, peri-operative fasting.

The porphyrias comprise a group of eight disorders of haem synthesis ( figure 1 ), 5 each resulting from a specific enzyme defect in the biosynthesis pathway, and leading to the accumulation of haem intermediates. 7 Acute intermittent porphyria is the acute type most often encountered in clinical practice. While most commonly affecting young woman (80%–90%), it can males and females of all ages.

Neurological symptoms often involve direct central nervous system injury, manifesting as seizures (20%), encephalopathy or neuropsychiatric features, but can also present as a motor-predominant axonal neuropathy. 8 Acute intermittent porphyria should be considered in people with atypical Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Porphyric neuropathy predominantly affects the proximal limbs, especially the upper limbs and is often asymmetrical. Typically, there is associated pain or paraesthesia in a bathing suit distribution involving the torso and proximal limbs. Patients may have a history of abdominal disturbances with non-informative diagnostic workups, prodromal anxiety, confusion or psychosis, prominent dysautonomia and hyponatraemia. All these features again stress the importance of considering porphyria among the differential diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome ( table 2 ).

Differences and similarities between Guillain-Barré syndrome and acute intermittent porphyria

Once clinically suspected, as in this case, acute intermittent porphyria is established from the presentation with a compatible acute clinical syndrome and elevated excretion of urinary porphobilinogen during the attack:

The Hoesch test is a qualitative test that is positive at urinary porphobilinogen concentrations of >9 mg/L. The test requires mixing Ehrlich’s reagent (20 g of p-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde in 1000 mL of 6N hydrochloric acid) with 2–3 drops of the patient’s urine. It is important to protect it from light as porphobilinogen exposed to light can oxidise into porphobilin, giving the urine a darker aspect. The reaction between Ehrlich’s reagent in acid solution and porphobilinogen forms a pink colour ( figure 2 ).

Positive Hoesch test (described in section 4). The pink colour of the urine is formed by the reaction of porphobilinogen and Erlich’s reagent.

Another recommended diagnostic tool is a quantified measure of porphobilinogen . Porphobilinogen increases substantially during an attack to 10–150 times the upper limit of the normal (or 20–300 mg per gram of creatine—normal 0–2). The test can be performed in a random sample with the result normalised per gram of urine creatine; a 24-hour urine collection is not required. Patients with increased urinary porphobilinogen then require further investigations. Note however, that porphobilinogen concentrations can normalise between attacks.

This patient’s porphyrins in a 24 hours urine sample, showed an elevated coproporphyrin 946.49 µg/24 hours (normal ≤150), uroporphyrin 426.60 µg/24 hours (normal ≤50). A spot urine sample showed a positive Hoesch test 9 ( figure 2 ), thus establishing elevated pathogenic concentrations of porphobilinogen in urine.

He had normal blood concentrations of fractionated porphyrins, protoporphyrin IX as well as faecal coproporphyrins, uroporphyrins and protoporphyrins. We excluded lead intoxication, 4 even though this was unlikely.

A suspected acute attack 10 should be treated immediately to prevent the hepatic overproduction of haem precursors. This includes infusing haem preparations, eliminating precipitating factors, high loading with carbohydrate—since dextrose inhibits ALA synthase-1—and giving supportive treatment. Also recommended are (if needed) antiemetics, analgesics and antiseizure medication (levetiracetam or gabapentin). There are promising results in preventing attacks and reducing the frequency and severity of symptoms using gyvosiran, a small interfering RNA therapy that specifically targets ALA synthase-1. 11 We started intravenous glucose and haemin infusions (4 mg/kg for 4 days), and stopped any potential precipitants.

The patient’s respiratory and dysautonomic symptoms gradually improved, and he was discharged from intensive care 10 days after starting specific treatment. His sensory symptoms quickly recovered; however, his motor improvement was slower, with persisting tetraparesis a month after discharge from the intensive care unit. He was admitted into a rehabilitation centre and re-evaluated 3 months later, at which time he could walk without assistance, but with residual upper limb weakness. With continued carbohydrate loading and avoiding porphyrinogenic triggers, he has had no new attacks since.

Acute intermittent porphyria has a variable prognosis. Although the weakness completely resolves in most patients over about 12 months, some do not fully recover. Potential issues (with screening implications) include hypertension, renal insufficiency, chronic pain, depression and an increased risk of hepatocellular carcinoma. It is also important to consider genetic assessment of family members at risk.

A genetic test finally confirmed that this patient had a known pathogenic heterozygotic mutation in hydroxymethylbilane synthase, also known as porphobilinogen deaminase ( figure 2 ), the c.331>A variant, causing his acute intermittent porphyria.

Some types of porphyria may have a higher prevalence than is generally assumed, and neurologists need to maintain a high index of clinical suspicion to diagnose this often treatable disease.

Common errors that might lead clinicians to miss the diagnosis include:

Ignoring clues in the history that may be key clinical information, such as previous gastrointestinal symptoms.

Dismissing symptoms at onset such as mild confusion or pain, and wrongly attributing this to medication side effects or psychosomatic causes.

Overlooking possible triggers before neurological symptom onset.

In this case, two additional unusual features delayed our diagnosis in the first few days, namely the patient’s age and sex, serving as a reminder that porphyria is not exclusive to one demographic. Another unusual feature was the prominent hypotension, given that acute intermittent porphyria more often leads to hypertension. 5

The diagnosis of acute intermittent porphyria is challenging and clinicians must be aware of its varied clinical presentations to avoid its fatal consequences. The prognosis correlates with the time to diagnosis of an acute attack and time to starting treatment. Clinicians clearly need to maintain a high threshold of suspicion, and to include porphyric neuropathy in the differential diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Acute Intermittent porphyria is a rare but treatable cause of predominantly axonal neuropathy; its diagnosis requires a high index of clinical suspicion.

In an acute neuropathy, key clinical information that might suggest acute intermittent porphyria includes abdominal pain (previous or present), mild-to-severe central nervous system involvement including altered affect, confusion and/or seizures, and a predominantly proximal motor neuropathy with bathing-suit distribution of sensory change.

Acute intermittent porphyria is confirmed with a quantified analysis of porphobilinogen, and managed by avoiding precipitant medications and starting intravenous haem as soon as possible.

Further reading

Bissell DM, Anderson KE, Bonkovsky HL. Porphyria. N Engl J Med. 31 de agosto de 2017;377(9):862–72.

Kazamel M, Desnick RJ, Quigley JG. Porphyric Neuropathy: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis, and Updated Management. Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep. 7 de octubre de 2020;20(12):56. 9.

Gandhi Mehta RK, Caress JB, Rudnick SR, Bonkovsky HL. Porphyric neuropathy. Muscle Nerve. agosto de 2021;64(2):140–52.

Data availability statement

All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication.

Consent obtained directly from patient(s).

Ethics approval

Not applicable.

• Wijdicks EFM ,
• Kravale I , et al
• Bissell DM ,
• Anderson KE ,
• Bonkovsky HL
• ↵ The drug database [ Internet ]. 2024 Available : https://www.drugs-porphyria.org/
• Kazamel M ,
• Desnick RJ ,
• Gandhi Mehta RK ,
• Caress JB ,
• Rudnick SR , et al
• Frykholm BC ,
• Pischik E ,
• Kauppinen R
• Balwani M ,
• Ventura P , et al

Contributors LMB attended clinically the patient, collected the data, wrote and edited the draft. DLdMS attended clinically to the patient and helped editing the draft. OA-T, EMF, TD-C, LOG, IZ helped collecting the data and editing the draft. MMC helped in genetic diagnosis. AH was in charge of the patient during hospitalisation and helped collect data and edit the draft.

Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Competing interests None declared.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed by Jon Walters, Swansea, UK.

Read the full text or download the PDF:

Other content recommended for you.

• Porphyria: often discussed but too often missed Ronan O’Malley et al., Practical Neurology, 2018
• Update on the diagnosis and management of the autosomal dominant acute hepatic porphyrias Danja Schulenburg-Brand et al., Journal of Clinical Pathology, 2022
• Diagnosis and management of porphyria Helen Thadani et al., BMJ, 2000
• Molecular characterisation of acute intermittent porphyria in a cohort of South African patients and kinetic analysis of two expressed mutants Philip Fortgens et al., Journal of Clinical Pathology, 2017
• Unexpected presentation of acute porphyria Chiun Khang Kiew et al., BMJ Case Reports, 2021
• ACP Best Practice No 165 A C Deacon et al., Journal of Clinical Pathology, 2001
• Cerebral vasospasm and anterior circulation stroke secondary to an exacerbation of hereditary corproporphyria Stephen Mullin et al., Practical Neurology, 2012
• Pure motor axonal neuropathy triggered by antituberculous therapy in an undiagnosed case of acute intermittent porphyria Masood Uz Zaman Babar et al., BMJ Case Reports, 2017
• Urinary excretion of porphyrins, porphobilinogen and δ-aminolaevulinic acid following an attack of acute intermittent porphyria Joanne T Marsden et al., Journal of Clinical Pathology, 2013
• Acute intermittent porphyria: analgesia can be dangerous Carlos Dias Silva et al., BMJ Case Reports, 2019