When building an accessible Tableau dashboard, it’s worth thinking about keyboard navigation as part of the layout itself.
By default, Tableau generally follows a top-to-bottom, left-to-right tab order across dashboard objects, so elements across the top are reached first, then the next row down, and so on.
That means you can often make the default order work for you simply by designing with it in mind. For example, placing filters and controls across the top of the dashboard can create a sensible keyboard flow without any additional work.
However, more complex layouts don’t always produce the tab order you want. If the visual arrangement of the dashboard doesn’t match the logical order a keyboard user should move through it, you can manually change the order in the workbook XML.
I found the method here, but will walk through the steps here too. One tip before you get started - manually renaming each item on you dashboard that you need to find in the XML later will he very helpful, especially for filters which I found often had names from nearby text rather than the headers shown in the dashboard on the filter or in the layout pane.
When you have done this, follow these steps:
- Save the workbook as a
.twbfile and open it in a text editor. - Find the relevant
<dashboard>element. - Change
enable-sort-zone-taborder='true'tofalse. - Find the
<zones>section. - Each dashboard object has a zone ID.
- Renumber the IDs in the order you want keyboard focus to move through the dashboard.
- Save the file, reopen it in Tableau, and test the tab order by navigating through the dashboard with your keyboard.
While the easiest fix is often to design with Tableau’s default tab order in mind from the start, XML editing gives you more control when the dashboard layout needs a more deliberate navigation order. One small thing to watch for: after editing the XML, you may find that a container has resized slightly when you reopen the workbook. Don’t panic; this happened to me, and I was able to simply drag the container back to its original size.
Overall, making your dashboards more accessible for keyboard users is quick and easy, and might make a huge difference to someone trying to use them.