When presenting to an audience where some of the members are blind, use audio description techniques. In this situation it is useful to begin with a brief visual description of you… “I’m Kevin, your presenter today. I’m sitting with a green plant behind my right shoulder and behind my left shoulder is a picture of sailboats as well as the artwork of my 6-year-old grandson. I have grey hair that my stylist calls ‘platinum’…which is why I keep going back to him!” This sets the scene for them.
For each PowerPoint slide, I begin by describing that also, “This slide is divided into four squares, in the first square…”
One way to understand the impact is to find a movie with “audio description” where a narrator fills in the action with words in between the dialog. This will help you get ideas that you can then use.
For virtual presentations, most blind audience members are able to use the chat function easily with their adaptive software.