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Power BI Accessibility

How to Improve Accessibility of Your Power BI Reports

When creating Power BI reports, it’s important to remember that there’s no universal solution that fits all businesses and teams. Organizations and their users have unique needs, goals, and requirements for generating insights and making data-driven decisions. Therefore, it is more important than ever to take Power BI accessibility into account!

I have written articles about various techniques such as storytelling, targeting the audience, data-driven report design, and design techniques in general. Yet to be addressed is the importance of accessibility in Power BI reports. By prioritizing design for all users, including those with visual or motor impairments, reports become more inclusive and effective.

Colored High Contrast

While researching accessibility and Power BI report design, I found lots of information highlighting ways design can be enhanced to make it more accessible. If you have any tips or guidelines, feel free to share them with me.

Interested in an overview of accessibility features in Power BI? Microsoft provides a list: Microsoft Accessibility documentation.

Topics Covered

Power BI - Built-in accessibility features

Power BI offers several accessibility features; some are built-in and don’t require configuration from the report developer, while others need some configuration to unlock the full potential.

Built-in, no configuration needed

  • Keyboard navigation (remark: you need to configure your report to work with keyboard navigation)
  • Screen reader compatibility
  • High contrast color view
  • Focus mode
  • Show data as table

Built-in, requiring configuration

  • Tab order
  • Alt text
  • Titles & labels
  • Accessibility themes

Keyboard navigation and Tab order

The first two features I want to discuss are keyboard navigation (built-in) and tab order. After learning more about these features, I realized that most of the reports I have designed in the past probably do not work very well with keyboard navigation. Simply because I have never taken the tab order into account (since I was unaware that this can be changed).

Keyboard navigation

Power BI reports and visuals can be navigated using keyboard shortcuts. To access the most frequently used keyboard shortcuts in Power BI, press Shift + ?. This will open a pop-up showing all available shortcuts. Microsoft also provides an overview of all shortcuts [here].

Some of the shortcuts I find very handy:

  • Ctrl + F6 = Move focus between sections.
  • Ctrl + Shift + F11  = Show visuals as tables.
  • Enter / Esc = Entering or exiting a visual. 
  • Ctrl & Space = Multi-select data points after you enter a visual.
  • Ctrl + Shift + C = Unselect all filter selections made.
Visuals Tables
Tab order

After uncovering the keyboard navigation, I quickly discovered that something in my Power BI report did not work as expected.

  • The selection of the visual seemed random
  • Shapes were selected
  • The title (a text inside a shape) could not be selected. This was also an issue when I used a screen reader because it did not “see” the title.
A screenshot of a dashboard with marks for the keyboard navigation. The navigation is not working properly because the tab order is not configured correctly.
Tab Order visualized

Changing the tab order

Changing the tab order is not hard once you know where to find the setting. In Power BI, you will need to navigate to the selection pane. If you can’t see it on the right side of the screen, you will need to activate it by going to View (Ribbon) and then clicking on Selection.

After opening the Selection pane, you will see the options “Layer order” and “Tab order” at the top. Clicking on “tab order”, you can drag and drop the elements of the report into a logical order (starting at the top left and ending at the bottom right).

When I opened my selection pane, I quickly uncovered something else I apparently had not done in the past. Almost all my shapes and visuals had the same name, which made it hard to rearrange elements logically. So, my first step was clicking on the 3 dots and changing the names.

After changing the names, I clicked on the “tab order” and arranged everything logically. This improves the accessibility of the Power BI report when keyboard shortcuts are used.

Power BI Selection Pane
Selection Pane in Power BI
Power BI Tab Order Pane
Tab Order in Selection Pane

High contrast option

Power BI offers the possibility of changing the contrast of any report in the online environment.

There are 4 options available:

  • High-contrast #1
  • High-contrast #2
  • High-contrast Black
  • High-contrast White
High contrast colors view in Power BI. High-contrast #1 High-contrast #2 High-contrast Black High-contrast White
High Contrast options Power BI

You can easily access the high-contrast colors view by clicking “View” on the ribbon (top right). Then click “High-contrast colors” and choose the option that works best for you! 

Are there any limitations with high-contrast views?

I noticed that when I used high-contrast color views, the elements that had been modified using conditional formatting (such as the color of certain data labels) didn’t automatically adjust with the different views.
Keep this in mind when you want to enhance the accessibility of your report and ensure that your conditional formatting selections are compatible with these views.

Ribbon in Power BI. Explanation on how to navigate to the section. You can set the view manually in Power BI Service (online). At the top right, you can select the "View" button and then navigate to "High-contrast colors." There, you can choose one of the 4 views (or go back to the standard view of the report)
Navigation: View -> High contrast colors

Alternative text

Adding alternative text (also known as alt text) to every element on a Power BI report is essential to ensure the accessibility for users with screen readers. Alt text provides meaningful information about the visual, table, shape, or image on a report, which someone who can’t see the content needs to understand.
You can add alternative text to every element in Power BI by selecting the Format section and then opening the “Alt text” section. Note that the text can’t exceed 250 characters. Good to know: you can make the alternative text dynamic using DAX by clicking on the fx button next to the text box.

Alt text in Power BI
Add alt text to every element

Meaningful titles and subtitles

When creating visuals in Power BI, a title is provided by default. This title describes the columns and measures added (for example, Sales Order by Year). A title like that gives the end-user an idea about the data used in the report. However, it provides no context or indication of the possible insights created.
When using dynamic (sub)titles in Power BI reports, you can guide the end-user through the data and provide a preview of the result without the user needing to analyze the visuals themselves. End-users are typically looking for insights to take the next step, rather than enjoying digging through data and examining different aspects of the visuals provided.

Title Dynamic subtitle

Which colors should I use?

4.5:1 Ratio

When creating reports, it is important to ensure that there is enough contrast between the text and background colors. 
A good practice is to aim for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between the text and the background color. 
And if you wonder what 4.5:1 means: The lighter color (background) is 4.5 times brighter than the darker color (text).

To verify this, you can use various online tools to check if the contrast ratio meets the recommended standard. Personally, I find https://accessible-colors.com very useful as it not only allows me to assess the ratio but also provides examples of how to enhance it, which can be valuable for creating accessible and professional reports.

A screenshot from https://accessible-colors.com where I checked the ratio of my color choice
Checking the ratio of my color choice. Left: how it would look like, middle and right: how it can be improved.

Power BI Accessibility themes

Power BI provides 5 accessibility themes that can be chosen during report creation. It is important to know that the themes will only change visuals that have are not  customized yet (for example, when you choose to color the bars of a chart in different colors). If you have already customized the color of your visuals, you can always click “Reset to default”.   

You can find the accessibility themes by going to the ribbon, clicking on ‘View’, and then selecting one of the 5 themes: Orchid, Tidalm, City Park, Neutral, or Default.

Power BI Accessibility themes
Power BI Accessibility themes
An overview of the 5 Power BI accessibility themes
An overview of the Power BI Accessibility themes

Several tools, browser add-ons, and websites can help you check if your Power BI report is accessible to people with vision impairment. One website I use to check my reports is www.color-blindness.com. You can upload a screenshot of the report and test its visibility.

A quick check can also be the “squint test”. Turn down the brightness of your screen and squint. Can you still see the most important parts of the report? And turning the brightness down, do you still see the difference between elements in a visual?

Ultimately, it is also really important to check with the end user. What are their needs, and what is their experience looking at your report?

Color blindness Power BI report checked
Checking a report for accessibility

Checklist for accessibility in Power BI

Are you interested in checking your reports for accessibility? Microsoft posted guidelines [here].

    • Check for color contrast.
    • Check if your report works for users with color vision deficiency.
    • Do not just use color to convey information but also text & icons.
    • Add alternative text
    • Check the tab order. Is it simple to navigate through the report with keyboard shortcuts?
    • Are all bookmarks and filters accessible using keyboard shortcuts?
    • Don’t use tooltips to show important information, users who can’t use a mouse can’t see them.
    • Mark all “decorations” like shapes as hidden in the tab order otherwise the screen reader will to read them.

Key takeaways

Improving accessibility for Power BI reports is important, and Power BI offers a lot of built-in functionality to make reports more accessible. Some of this functionality needs to be configured, like the alternative text and the tab order. When creating reports, we should always consider and design for the target audience.
Most aspects that increase accessibility will help all users understand and work better with Power BI reports. For example, adding context by using meaningful titles and subtitles and choosing a color scheme that a broad range of users can use improves user experience in general.

Video Playlist: Power BI Accessibility

Do you prefer watching a video instead of reading an article, or are you curious about the step-by-step process? I recorded several videos that you can find on YouTube.

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