PowerBI Accessibility Guidance

Guidance for Assistive Technology Users

If you rely on a screen reader or keyboard-only access to a Power BI report, there are some keyboard shortcuts that are important to know:

  • If a Power BI report is embedded in an iframe on a website, use this keyboard shortcut after focusing on the report:
    Windows: Ctrl + Enter
    Mac: Command + Return
    NOTE: It may not be clear when you are focused on a report. If you navigate to the “Microsoft Power BI” link at the bottom of the report, you can then use the keyboard shortcuts.
  • For a list of other available keyboard shortcuts, press ? (Shift + /)
  • To move between sections of the report, use this keyboard shortcut:
    Windows: Ctrl + F6
    Mac: Command + F6
  • After using the shortcut key above to land on a main section of the report, use the Tab key to navigate between controls within the section.
  • To futher explore a section of the report after tabbing to it, enter focus mode using this keyboard shortcut:
    Windows: Alt + Shift + F11
    Mac: Option + Shift + F11
  • When in focus mode: 
    • Move between pieces of the report using the Tab key or arrow keys
    • Press the Enter key or Space bar to interact with elements, then the Tab key or arrow keys to move between elements
    • Press the Esc key to stop interacting with elements

  • When in focus mode, Power BI presents a properly formatted data table that should be useful for screen reader exploration of the data in a given section of the report.

    For more information, visit Consume Power BI reports using accessibility features(link is external).

Guidance for Report Authors

Choose colors with sufficient color contrast

To set color of titles:

In “Visualizations” –> matrix –> Format –> Title.  The font color for the title can be changed (also can increase text size or change font family)

To set color of graph lines:

These can all be customized in the desktop application. In “Visualizations” –> line chart –> format –> “Data colors”.  

Use WebAIM’s color contrast checker

Focus order is not logical as a user tabs around the report region.

The tab order can be adjusted!  To set the tab order, you can open the selection pane (under “view”) and select Tab order.

You can drag and drop the fields to reorder the tab order. (set the title first on each slicer in order to know which slicer you are ordering – turn off the “slicer header” and use the “title” instead)

Select “show markers”.  Different marker shapes should also be used for each line.

Alt text should be added to all objects in a report. The slicer regions can be labeled with a title and alt text so then the combo box label can be inferred from the slicer region (since combo boxes do not have labels).

The title of the data table or line chart can be dynamically updated as slicers are selected.  More information:

Expression-based Titles in Power BI Desktop(link is external)

Chris Webb’s BI Blog

More on PowerBI from Microsoft

An overview of accessibility in Power BI(link is external) from Microsoft includes how to design, consume, and create more accessible reports.

We highly suggest using Microsoft’s Report Accessibility Checklist(link is external) to ensure a more accessible report.