How to Use Symbols & Shapes to Improve Presentations for the Visually Impaired

Using Symbols and Shapes Improves Business Presentations for Everyone

The presentation is a good one. It’s being delivered by a public official I know well and was prepared by a reputable consulting firm. I even recognize the person who designed the slide deck—someone who has completed Communicating with FINESSE® training. It should be perfect, right?

Wrong.

The original PowerPoint slide with all circles.

This example is another reminder of how challenging it can be for technical professionals—engineers, planners, analysts, operators—to turn good content into powerful communication. Even well-trained people fall back into old habits. And this slide illustrates a classic principle: use symbols and shapes, not colors, to make your presentations accessible, understandable, and effective for everyone.

Use Symbols and Shapes, Not Colors

Adding a splash of color feels like an easy way to make your point. For roughly 75 percent of your audience, that’s true. But are you willing to frustrate—or lose—the other 25 percent?

Moving to greyscale demonstrates how the slides can appear to the visually impaired.

Turn off your color settings, or simply print your slide in grayscale. That’s what many people in your audience see every day. This reinforces what we discuss in Helpful Tips on Symbols that Improve PowerPoint Slides—that symbols, patterns, and shapes outperform color alone, especially for people with visual impairments.

Symbols and shapes stand when color fails. And color fails more often than most people realize.

A Quick Checklist

1. Avoid Highlighting

Highlighting may feel intuitive, but it rarely works. Light yellows and pastels often have poor contrast ratios, and highlight blocks usually degrade clarity rather than improve it.

This slide: Check. The slide avoids simple highlighting.

2. High Contrast Ratios

High contrast is one of the most important accessibility requirements. Microsoft and WCAG standards emphasize the importance of symbols having sufficient contrast against their backgrounds. Designers often break this rule by dropping standard icons onto dark backgrounds, or lightening icons so much that they disappear.

This slide: Problem. The dark blue versus magenta contrast is weak and difficult for visually impaired users.

Using shapes significantly improves the depiction for the visually impaired.

3. Consider Using Text

UI/UX principles emphasize that icons should be recognizable, but not all icons translate well to all audiences. Adding single-word text labels often increases clarity and ensures meaning isn’t left to guesswork.

This slide: Check. Text labels are used appropriately.

4. Clarity and Relevance

Symbols and shapes should represent different ideas clearly and immediately. Overly abstract shapes or repeated symbols with different meanings create confusion.

This slide: Problem. Identical circles do not convey distinct concepts or messages.

5. Consistent Style

A professional slide deck uses consistent colors, line weights, and styles. Consistency builds trust, reinforces understanding, and keeps the audience focused on the message—not the design.

This slide: Check. A consistent style is used throughout.

Including some contrasting colors also helps the 5 Other Options for everyone.

6. Consistent Size and Placement

Symbols, shapes, and icons should be large enough to see but not so large as to dominate. Their placement should support the flow of the content.

This slide: Check. Size and placement are consistent and appropriate.

Use “DraftFinal” Until the Accessibility Checks Are Done

As discussed in Use DraftFinal Until the Accessibility Checks Are Done, accessibility is not a bolt-on step at the end of the process—it’s part of the methodology. Using the DraftFinal file-naming convention reminds you (and your team) that accessibility checks still need to be conducted.

Could you simply name everything FINAL? Sure. But doing so eliminates the discipline that accessibility requires.

Accessibility matters—not just to the 8 to 25 percent of people who struggle to see or hear—but to everyone. The things you do for them increase clarity for all.

DraftFinal is your reminder to finish strong.

A Larger Process Issue When Developing Presentations

In Looking for a Better Way to Develop Business Presentations, we emphasize that technical presentations often bog down because we build in too much complexity up front. Complexity steals time from editing, simplification, and accessibility improvements.

When time evaporates, accessibility is the first thing to get skipped.

This slide is a good example. It’s competent and well-intentioned, but the final polish—the accessibility polish—didn’t happen.

The FINESSE Accessibility Checklist

The FINESSE Accessibility Checklist© provides a practical, repeatable method for making your reports and presentations more accessible to people with vision or hearing impairments. It breaks accessibility into manageable pieces and reinforces the truth we see every day: the things you do for accessibility improve clarity and understanding for everyone.

When in doubt, check FINESSE.

Use Symbols and Shapes, Not Colors

It’s easy to fall back on highlighting and color cues. But those habits leave a quarter of your audience behind. It takes skill and intention to break old habits and adopt better ones.

Start with your next slide deck. Spend extra time focusing on symbols and shapes instead of colors.

Your work will become much easier to understand for everyone. That’s the essence of Communicating with FINESSE®.

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JD Solomon writes and speaks on decision-making, reliability, risk, and communication for leaders and technical professionals. His work connects technical disciplines with human understanding to help people make better decisions and build stronger systems. Learn more at www.jdsolomonsolutions.com and www.communicatingwithfinesse.com.