Basic Power BI accessibility is easier than you think

[StephanieBruno]

When we are designing a report in Power BI, we often have checklists and standards to ensure our reports meet our company's branding guidelines, allow for report consumers to find insights and make decisions, and have good navigation and security, among other things. Frequently, though, accessibility is not on that list. Often it feels too difficult, or not important enough to spend time on, or we just forget. Getting into the habit of designing accessible reports will not only ensure that your report can be used by a broader audience, it will also make you a better report designer in general. 

What is accessibility?

Accessibility simply means that whatever we're developing can be consumed regardless of any impairments. Your role as the developer is to reach as many users as possible by not limiting their ability to consume the content you’ve spent time creating.

Why is accessibility important?

Many people have a disability, and sometimes those disabilities are not obvious. In fact, 1 in 6 people have a disability, which translates to 1.3 billion people globally. In the United States alone, 6 million people have a visual impairment. Some people rely on screen readers, others cannot use a mouse and use keyboard shortcuts, for example. You may not even realize that some of your colleagues may have a disability, and you don't want them to feel obligated to share that with you so they can understand your reports. It's best to assume that someone in your audience will have a disability and always design for that. 

There are standard guidelines for the web that we can use to help guide our thinking around accessibility in Power BI reports. The key principles of the guidelines are that web pages should be:

1. Perceivable. Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
2. Operable. User interface components and navigation must be operable.
3. Understandable. Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.
4. Robust. Content can be interpreted by a wide range of user agents including assistive technologies.
   

How can you make a Power BI report accessible?

The following items are the basic standards that we should include in our report checklists:

• Tab order is one of the easiest and most important features on each page to ensure that people navigating the page with a keyboard instead of a mouse have information presented to them in a logical way. If you expect people to look at the visuals on the page from left to right and top to bottom, you shold ensure that your visuals have tab order assigned in that same way. Fortunately Power BI makes this very simple. The Tab order section of the Selection pane has a button that will automatically set the tab order in that way. It’s also important to hide certain elements from being included in keyboard navigation if they are simply decorative and would just be annoying to a user who is navigating with a keyboard, such as a shape like a line.
  
  
  
  
• Alt text takes a little more effort than tab order, but it's very high value for people who use a screen reader. Screen readers read the type of object, the title, and any alt text. Without alt text, the only information a screen reader will be able to provide is on the title. At the very least put some descriptive text on all the charts on the page. Power BI also allows you to use a measure for alt text, so you can even provide dynamic values for alt text. Alt text isn’t necessary for decorative items, and in those cases tab order visibility should be set to hidden.
  
  
  
  
• Color contrast is the contrast between two colors, often a text color on a background. Color contrast can be measured with tools like the color contrast checker. Power BI also includes some out-of-the-box accessibile themes that can make color contrast easier, as well as support people with different types of color blindness. There are very specific standards that define whether two colors have acceptable color contrast for people with vision loss. You can learn more about the minimum levels and enhanced levels of these definitions.
  
  

Power BI Accessibility Checker

One community tool to check whether your reports meet basic accessibility standards is the Power BI Accessibility Checker. This tools is a downloadable .pbix file. You can supply it the location of one ore more Power BI desktop files and it will provide you with information on the tab order and alt text of the report. You can also provide it with a hex code to check a color against all the other colors on visuals. You'll still have some extra work to do on color contrast, but it will give you a good start.

Other tips and resources

Power BI documentation has a section on accessibility that covers these ideas as well as more information on how to consume reports with accessibility features. It's a great read to understand the how and the why of accessibility in Power BI.

Some of the helpful tips to keep in mind in addition to the basic features above include:

• Use font sizes of at least 12pt
• Use the built-in accessible report themes
• Don’t use jargon or acronyms
• Ensure you have clear titles and labels
• Avoid using only color to convey information
• Don’t cram too much on a single page
• Don’t rely on tooltips to provide key information

Once you get in the habit of always including accessibility standards in your report, you'll find that it makes you a better report designer in general.

[Takami]

This is great guide!!  Thank you so much for sharing this knowledge.  

I will definitely use Accessibility Checker tomorrow!

[thefarside]

Thank you this was very helpful! I also really appreciate the links to the the tools. The PBI Accessibility checker found some missing alt text on my latest report, very helpful!