"Sectioning" within data tables in Power BI & resulting Accessible PDF tags

[bethwhitmer]

Hello,

We are working on paginated reports within Power BI Report Builder and some of the report tables will include a LOT of data points. We prefer not to include all of these data points as column headers within the table because the table would become very wide and may not be usable once converted to Accessible PDF, which is also something we need to be able to support. To accommodate this, our BI team wanted to "section" the data so that some of it appears above the table as depicted in a test table below:

Note: The example table above only shows 9 columns but we have some reports that could have up to 22. 

So basically you have some "sectioned" data on top of the table (e.g., Dept, Dept Unit, Fund, etc.) and then a classic data table below it. The problem we're encountering is that the "sectioned" data above the table is included within the <table> markup that gets generated within the Accessible PDF, which is incorrect from a PDF tagging perspective and results in incorrect TH/TD cells counts within each row of the table. Since these will be automatically generated PDFs, we don't have the ability to manually edit the markup to our preferences. Our Power BI team also says that this "sectioned" data MUST be part of the table within the Report Builder tool in order to generate the table properly (i.e., there is no option to try to separate out the "sectioned data" to prevent it from being included in the PDF <table> markup). 

Is there any way to somehow designate in Power BI Report Builder that the "sectioned" content should NOT be included in the table tagging for the resulting Accessible PDF? Thanks! 

[v-xiaoyan-msft]

Hi @bethwhitmer ,

You can use the property to set heading levels for text boxes and specify table cells as table headersStructureTypeOverwrite.

Here’s how you can set the heading value:

Text Box Properties window: Right-click a text box and select Text Box Properties. In the Accessibility tab, in the Overwrite structure type box, select a heading level.
Textbox Property grid: If the Property grid isn’t open, on the View tab, select the Properties checkbox. Select a text box. In the property grid, in the Accessibility property group, select a value in the StructureTypeOverwrite property.

For more you may refer to：

Improve accessibility in Power BI paginated reports with StructureTypeOverwrite - Power BI | Microso...

Accessibility features in Power BI paginated reports - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Best regards.
Community Support Team_Caitlyn

[bethwhitmer]

Hi @v-xiaoyan-msft - Thanks for your response. We tried doing what you described above but unfortunately what ends up happening in the Accessible PDF is that you get both the table markup and the heading markup for the content. So instead of having something like this in the PDF tags tree:

<Table>
<TR>
<TD>
<p> DEPT

You get something like this:

<Table>
<TR>
<TD>
<H2> DEPT

So you still have all of the table markup present which causes issues for the rest of the table.