Slide Titles and Headings

Ensuring the navigability of your accessible PDF document is important, adding a meaningful slide title to each slide helps achieve this. The slide titles are displayed as headings in the Logical Document Structure of your accessible PDF document and organizes your document. axesSlide also automatically creates the slide titles as bookmarks in your PDF.

Inserting Slide Titles

Always enter the slide title in the title placeholder of your slide. An empty title placeholder contains the text "Click to add title". If there is no title placeholder on your slide, assign a different slide layout to the slide or add the title using the Outline View. You can read more about this below in the section Check Slide Titles in the Outline View.

Check Slide Titles in the Outline View

You can use the Outline View to check whether all slides have a correctly assigned title. To do this, select the View tab in the ribbon and click on the Outline View button in the Presentation Views function group.

In the Outline View, you will find your slide titles in bold next to the slide number. In the example, the slide title for slide 2 is missing.

You can edit the slide titles either on the slide or directly in the outline view and add missing titles. If there is no title on your slide yet, a title placeholder is automatically created on your slide with the title you have entered.

If you would like to switch back to the view with the slide thumbnails, select the View tab in the ribbon again and click on the Normal button in the Presentation Views function group.

Controlling the Outline Level

You can control the outline level either via the properties in PowerPoint or via role mapping in axesSlide. PowerPoint offers only very limited options here, while role mapping allows you to select any outline level.

Using PowerPoint properties

By default, slide titles without role mapping are exported as heading 1 or 2, meaning with H1 or H2 tags:

• Heading 1: The slide title of the first page of your presentation (ideally the title page) and the first slide title of a new section are created as first-level headings (<H1> tag).
• Heading 2: The slide titles of all other slides are created as second-level headings (<H2> tag).

Using role mapping

You can control the outline level of your slide titles using role mapping:

1. Select the Role mapping button in the axesSlide tab. The axesSlide - role Mappings and Reading Order task pane opens.
2. Assign the slide title the role Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, or Heading (n) for Heading 4 and higher, depending on the desired outline level. If you select the role Heading (n), enter the corresponding Outline level in the input field. 
3. Done. Your slide title is now exported to the document structure and bookmarks with the desired outline level.

For more information on role mappings, see the article Button "Role mapping".

Non-Visible Slide Titles

If you prefer not to have the slide title visible on the slide but still wish to include it as a bookmark and heading in the Logical Document Structure of your PDF, follow these steps:

Overlay the title with a color-filled rectangle in the background color of your presentation so that the title disappears completely. Then mark the rectangle as decorative. You can find out how to do this in Add Alt Text or Mark Object as Decorative.

Alternatively, you can also hide the title behind an image.

Note: It is not possible to place the title outside your slide for the PDF export. Elements that are outside the slide cannot be transferred to the PDF. If there are elements outside your slide, axesSlide may not be able to process the slide correctly and the PDF/UA Standard may not be achieved. If you do save a presentation with elements outside your slide as a PDF with axesSlide, a message appears indicating which slides were processed with a limited PDF export. You can find out more about this under Message "Limited PDF Export".