Every once in a while, someone asks a question like “Can Power BI be accessible?” or “Is Power BI WCAG compliant?” It makes me happy when people recognize the need for accessibility in Power BI. (I’ll save the discussion about compliance not automatically ensuring accessibility for another day.) But most people don’t appreciate the answer to either question.
The answer is that WCAG compliance and accessible design are highly dependent upon the report creator. Microsoft has added many built-in accessibility features such as keyboard navigation, high contrast view, and screen reader compatibility. But they can’t make your report automatically accessible as there are accessibility features requiring configuration by the report designer. We need to set the tab order and alt text and use descriptive chart titles – there is no artificial intelligence to do this for us (yet?). Beyond that, things like color contrast and colorblind-friendly design are almost entirely the responsibility of the report designer.
Accessible design used to be solely the domain of UI developers. But as we democratize analytics to have everyone building reports, we now have to create awareness and a sense of responsibility among Power BI report creators, especially those who don’t consider themselves developers.
There is a similar challenge going on with data security. It used to be that people thought of it as a concern only for the IT department. Now, it is widely accepted that everyone in an organization plays a role in maintaining data security. I hope the same attitude will be widely adopted when it comes to accessibility in data visualization and analytics.
This challenge is present in any low-code environment with users of diverse backgrounds and technical expertise, which means it is relevant to the entire Power Platform and other similar tools. There is a white paper on PowerApps Accessibility Standards and Guidelines that has a great description of the situation.
PowerApps embodies the idea of “democratization of development”—anyone in your organization can quickly and easily create a powerful app and share it broadly. But the app maker has an ethical, and sometimes legal, obligation to support “democratization of usage” as well—any user of your app must be able to use it as it was intended.
Based upon the popularity of the Power Platform, I’d say the democratization of development has been a wild success. But we still have some steps to take to democratize usage. Microsoft is doing their part to make their products accessible and to fix accessibility bugs quickly. Now we need to recognize and honor our obligation to design inclusively.
The Microsoft Docs on accessible report design were recently updated to provide more guidance. I hope you’ll check them out and start implementing the recommendations in your reports.
