According to Microsoft estimates, at least 30 million PowerPoint

presentations are made every day. Now that is a lot of information and

ideas which will be communicated with the help of these presentations.

Most of them will be delivered from a PC or notebook and PowerPoint assumes that you will be delivering it as an on-screen

presentation with a beamer or overhead and creates a PPT file containing all of the code needed for the presentation.

Even though PowerPoint files are normally used in live

presentations, they are extremely common on the web. But the normal PPT format that PowerPoint

generates, cannot be used online without using a lot of bandwidth and

extra software to make it work. Although there are ways to improve the

accessibility of PowerPoint

files, the only way to ensure that a PowerPoint presentation is truly

accessible is to create an HTML alternative instead of or in addition

to the PowerPoint file.

People

who use screen readers will need to have the slides in HTML format in

order to access them. Online presentations using VOIP conference

solutions will also need the presentations in HTML to enable the

moderator to run the presentation easily.

In my experience, the one major consideration I had to make when hosting PowerPoint

HTML files on my own server, was the bandwidth needed to serve the

presentation to the viewing audience. This adds up quickly when you

have 50 or more people attending an online seminar. If your server only

has a limited amount of bandwidth available every month, you can end up

with your server not being available at all, simply because the

bandwidth has run out. This is not only annoying, but does cost you

money to upgrade your available bandwidth not including any loses made

through lost sales because the website was not reachable.

One

alternative to using the HTML version of your PowerPoint

presentation is to make screenshots of each slide and convert the image

to a graphic file. You simply reduce the image size to a smaller

format, like for example 600 x 480. You save the file to png or jpg

format and experiment with the image compression to reduce the file

size and save on needed bandwidth. You now just embed

the graphics onto HTML page, add a bit of code to change the page with

one click to the next in the series and you are up and running.

Of

course, the only problem with this is the fact that the presentation is

now static and does not scale to the required page size. But, I believe

this is a small price to pay to have a fast moving presentation and

much less bandwidth than using the HTML generated from PowerPoint.

Regardless of which method you use, the

major problem with generating a HTML presentation suitable for the

Internet is, not only must the HTML files be generated, but they also

have to be uploaded to a server to be available for use online.

Although most people can make their own presentations with a little

practice, the technical side of publishing a presentation for use

online is beyond the majority's capabilities. Usually this means you

have to get the IT department to upload the presentation or at least

get someone who is Internet savvy to do it for you.

Let's

face it, PowerPoint is a wonderful software for presenting your works,

but for some uses you need to have the right tools to make it perfect.