Lisa,

PowerPoint is definitely accesible with Jaws. I'm 90% certain it is 
accessible with System Access, and there is now some accessibility for 
PowerPoint in NVDA, though I haven't tried it with this last yet.

I use PowerPoint often, but not regularly, so I end up having to relearn 
a few basics, and the rest comes easy. What I think I remember is that 
you just open a slide show and press the spacebar to move from one slide 
to another. Jaws reads each slide to you. If you want to review a slide, 
tab a couple of times to get to an option called edit, review, or maybe 
title. For some reason, I think I tab, then press the context key. When 
you do that, you can edit the slide or review it carefully.

For best results, run a Google search on "Jaws, PowerPoint," to find 
details. I remember finding a great Jaws tutorial, probably by Freedom 
Scientific. My browsers seem to be tired tonight; otherwise, I'd try to 
find the link for you. What I think I remember is that System Access 
commands for PowerPoint are similar to the ones Jaws uses.


Slide shows tend to read like outlines. Each slide has a small amount of 
text: a sentence or two or maybe a short bulleted list with relatively 
few words in each item. Slides tend to emphasize eye-candy, pictures or 
charts illustrating what's being said. sometimes, if there's no 
eye-candy, the slide may use word art, text presented graphically in 
interesting colors and forming curves or shapes, with dots or stripes, 
etc. the Eye candy tends not to be accessible, but the outline-ish 
material usually reads just fine.

If you can download the presentations for reading on your computer, you 
should do all right. If the presentations are to be viewed online, I'm 
not sure. I have mostly not had good luck with those.

Ciao


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