Common Accessibility Barriers within Dashboards
As a part of the University of Mississippi’s initiative to enhance web content accessibility, accessible tableau dashboards can go a long way to realize it. Nearly 1 in 5 people in the US experience some form of disability and more people have experienced some form of temporary impairment during their lifetimes. So, creating clean and intuitive tableau dashboards is no more an exercise in tackling some edge cases. It’s a way to showcase our visuals to a larger audience.
Creating accessible dashboards is a conscious design choice that creators at the University of Mississippi need to make rather than thinking about it after the fact. The Accessibility Solutions team is available to partner with teams/across the university to help them realize this goal.
Top 11 Ways to Create a More Accessible User Experience
- Use Only Accessible Dashboard Elements like Dashboard Titles, Dropdown List Filters, Text Objects, and Categorical Legends
- Publish your dashboard (on tableau server) and Embed it in an accessible web page
- Provide a textual description of visualization content in captions. Even default Captions can be useful.
- Add alt-text to any Image Objects
- Add tooltip text to any Button Objects in your dashboard
- Provide text explaining how various components of a visualization (ex: describe your legend)
- Use color blind color palette for marks
- Use contrast analyzer tools (like WebAIM’s contrast checker) to choose text colors and backgrounds with sufficient contrast ratios
- Ensure that there are ways to distinguish marks other than color: Add shapes to line marks, use begin/end caps or labels
- Focus Order: Set a sensible focus order for dashboard zones. Each .twbx file is an XML script. Please navigate the zones in your dashboard’s item hierarchy to ensure a more meaningful navigation for users working with keyboards
- Add an image object with a link to the Keyboard Navigation topic in Tableau Online Help
How to Make an Existing Dashboard More Accessible:
- Format for accessibility at the dashboard and workbook level
- Aggregate and reduce marks
- Eliminate redundant information
- Use color and shape to differentiate marks
- Use filters to reduce the number of marks in a view
- Add captions and legends
Resources
The PDF included in the resource table below is a highly recommended resource that is helpful in terms of how to start thinking about tableau dashboards being accessible. This PDF shines a light on the fact that creating accessible dashboards is a design choice that needs to be thought about during the design process.
| Please use the resources listed below for more information about accessible tableau dashboards |
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| Recommended Reading: A Tableau Conference PDF on How to Publish Accessible Dashboards |
| Tableau's Accessibility FAQ Page |
| Demo of an Accessible Tableau Dashboard |
| Downloadable .twbx File - Can be used as a starting point while building accessible dashboards! |
In addition to the listed resources, these videos explain how to start creating an accessible dashboard and how accessible dashboards work with assistive technology such as screen readers and keyboard only operations.
Accessibility Solutions is Available to Help!
Contact us at accessibility@olemiss.edu if you have questions or would like for us to review your dashboard for accessibility.