Accessibility
For today's Dashboard, we focused on accessibility, with the start of the day looking at how we can consider accessibility and tailor our work towards inclusivity and reach.
What do we have to do? Our Brief
Today's Client was an expert whom Access London hired to assess how inclusive London's top attractions and transport links really are. Our Expert is visually impaired and solely relies on navigating through dashboards using their keyboard.
They had specific requirements for us to create a dashboard that our expert can use. Those being :
- Tab through borough-level filters
- Accessibility Feature Check Boxes
- Attraction List
Today's Output
Rethinking Dashboard Development
When you are limited to the keyboard, there are a lot of things that must be considered as you build out. With an even larger focus on user interaction than usual. Every choice you make affects how your audience draws insights from you.
How did Power BI Help with considering accessibility?
- Microsoft has extensive and quite clear documentation that helps both developers and users interact with Power BI, and it is clear that they heavily consider a diverse range of user groups.
- There are native Accessibility themes to choose from, aiding both in your consideration when developing, but also allowing for consistency when building
My Experience Using Power BI
As mentioned above, Power BI is very inclusive in considering its audience and does an extremely good job in guiding you, as a developer, on how your dashboard will be consumed. One thing that I found fascinating was that when you add elements or make edits through the Fabric interface. Those changes don't update the Tab Order, and thus the screen-reading order. This then impacts the order of consumption of your dashboard and is something to consider. Anything edited in Fabric will be placed at the bottom of your Tab Order.
Conclusion
I had alot of fun with this project and learnt something new and integral for future work. Looking forward to taking this piece forward!