Making more Accessible Power BI Reports!
What is Accessibility?
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) there are 1 billion people globally that have some form of vision impairment, but did you know that nearly 2 billion (~20%) have a form of disability, whether: Visual, Hearing, Motor or Cognitive impairments (Creative Bloq, 2011).
What does this mean for us as Power BI report developers though?
What it means is that we should be looking beyond simple report design, and thinking about how we can make our reports more accessible to the wider audience, especially when creating public-facing reports. Remember that everyone has the right to consume and interact with data in our Power BI reports.
So in this blog, I share my tips & tricks for making your Power BI reports more accessible - I am by no means an expert in this area but thought it would be valuable to give my experiences, and show some techniques that I’ve picked up, including the following features:
Setting the Tab Order to improve keyboard navigation;
Configuring Alt Text including making good use of the Smart Narratives visual to improve screen reader narration of data (blog coming soon); and
Checking for and building colour-friendly palettes into our Power BI Reports (blog coming soon).
If you want more information on accessibility features in Power BI, then I have included further references at the end of this post that helped me out, including links to Meagan Longoria’s blogs, who has been a champion for accessibility in Power BI for a long time!
Tab Order
Lately at DiscoverEI we have been building out a few public facing reports and as part of the process were looking more closely at accessibility features in Power BI. The Tab Order is a simple technique we can use to allow users to more easily navigate across our reports using the keyboard alone. This is important for people with mobility challenges that are restricted with how easily they can use the mouse to navigate.
In this video I show you how to set the Tab Order up.
🎦 Check out our short video tutorial to see how to use and set-up the Tab Order feature 🎦
Tab Order Bonus Tips:
You can build the decorative shapes or static images into a background for your Power BI report - this will remove these additional features entirely from the Selection Pane and Tab Order list, and also speed up model performance as you have less objects to load.
If you want to avoid seeing Shape, Text Box, Button etc. in your tab order list, but don’t want to have a title showing in the report, you can always add a title to these visuals and then hide the title - the title will still show in the list but won’t show on the visual.
You can also play with the Power BI report for yourself in the embedded report below, or on the Power BI Data Stories Gallery page.
Power BI Accessibility Resources
Design Power BI reports for accessibility (Microsoft Docs): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-accessibility-creating-reports: An overview of in-built accessibility features and features which can be set-up within Power BI.
Microsoft Business Applications Summit (MBAS) 2020 (Meagan Longoria / Tessa Hurr): https://community.powerbi.com/t5/MBAS-Gallery-2020/Creating-accessible-reports-in-Power-BI/m-p/1080830: A video demonstration on accessibility features available today in Microsoft Power BI.
Improving Screen reader accessibility in Power BI (Meagan Longoria): https://www.bluegranite.com/blog/improving-screen-reader-accessibility-in-power-bi-reports: and https://datasavvy.me/2018/02/06/power-bi-screen-reader-accessibility/: Background explanation on the importance of accessibility and some great tips for catering for the Screen Reader.
Power BI Desktop December 2018 Feature Summary (Microsoft): https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-desktop-december-2018-feature-summary/#tabOrder: The December 2018 release summary description of the Tab Order list.
Keyboard shortcuts in Power BI Desktop (Microsoft): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-accessibility-keyboard-shortcuts: Microsoft overview of keyboard shortcuts and how to use it - I found this reference HIGHLY HELPFUL to learn more about the link between Alt text, screen reader and how to set-up the narration for visuals.
What Power BI Fonts May Help Report Viewers with Dyslexia? (David Eldersveld): https://dataveld.com/2020/08/25/what-power-bi-fonts-may-help-report-viewers-with-dyslexia/: A summary from Dataveld on what are considered more dyslexic-friendly font types.
More information on Screen readers for Microsoft: https://usabilitygeek.com/10-free-screen-reader-blind-visually-impaired-users/: Further reading on screen reader options.
Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG): https://webaim.org/intro/: The formal universally accepted accessibility guidelines - when designing public-facing Power BI reports, organisations may require you to meet a Level A, AA or even AAA standard, so you need to know what accessibility features can be built into Power BI, and where you may have some limitations.
Highlighting the importance of a Screen reader: https://webaim.org/techniques/screenreader/: A more detailed description on Screen Reader capabilities.
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