Keyboard-Only and Code-First Workflows for Report Authoring?

[alish_b]

I'm working on making Power BI accessible for screen reader users. TMDL should cover the modeling side well (measures, relationships, sorts), but report authoring is still very mouse-driven and I'm hitting walls (I've tried navigating on-object interaction with Ctrl+F6 but found it painful, though I could be doing it wrong).

Looking for any community-tested approaches: keyboard-only techniques for building visuals, editing PBIR JSON for layouts, or template-based workflows.

This feels like a gap in the platform. Has anyone found workarounds, or is there anything on the roadmap I might have missed?

[v-sshirivolu · Accepted solution]

Hi @alish_b   ,
Thank you for reaching out to Fabric Community Forum.

Microsoft Power BI provides documented accessibility features for report authoring, including keyboard navigation and keyboard shortcuts in Power BI Desktop.

Power BI Desktop supports keyboard navigation across different areas of the application, including report canvas objects, page tabs, panes, and other UI regions. Microsoft also documents keyboard navigation support for areas such as the Visualizations pane and Fields well.

Power BI Desktop also provides keyboard shortcuts for common actions, including navigating between sections, selecting objects, entering visuals, and moving or resizing visuals while editing.

For code-based development, Microsoft documents Power BI Projects (PBIP) and the enhanced report format (PBIR). PBIP stores report and semantic model definitions as files, and PBIR stores report artifacts such as pages, visuals, and bookmarks in separate report definition files.

For semantic model development, Microsoft documents Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL), which provides a text-based way to define and manage semantic model metadata such as tables, columns, measures, relationships, and other model objects.

Documentation:

Accessibility in Power BI Desktop

Keyboard shortcuts in Power BI Desktop

Power BI Projects (PBIP)

Power BI enhanced report format (PBIR)

Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL)

Thank you.

[alish_b]

Thank you @v-sshirivolu for putting this all together. I really appreciate it. I will go through all of them.
I will keep the thread open for a while to see if I can catch any other creative workflows that the community has discovered.
Thanks again for the help!

[v-sshirivolu]

Hi @alish_b ,
Thank you
Happy to help. I’ll keep following the thread. Please let me know if any of the suggestions work out or if you come across any other ideas, as it may also help other users facing a similar issue. Thanks for your contribution.

[v-sshirivolu]

Hi @alish_b ,

I wanted to check if you had the opportunity to review the information provided. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions. 

[alish_b]

I did and they were super helpful. Thanks for those again!