Accessibility week: Navigating through a dashboard using a keyboard

Today marked the start of dashboard week for us and we built dashboards according to principles that improve its accessibility. I built a dashboard that adhered to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/quickref/?versions=2.1#on-focus), one of the principles being accessibility to keyboard users. Keyboard accessibility is one practice one can make use of to expand the base of users that can be able to consume and digest content.

One useful trick I learned today was how to organise a dashboard so that one can use a keyboard to interact with charts. The first trick is to organise the dashboard so that as you tab through the dashboard it will navigate through the elements as western cultures read (left to right, top to bottom). By pressing enter on a dashboard one can navigate through elements within a chart. This works with any charts that use discrete dimensions with column headers, so if you have any line charts, for example, you'd need to switch the dimension to discrete.

Best practice is to give instructions on how to navigate using the keyboard in an introduction, so once you've set up your keyboard-friendly dashboard, be sure to instruct the user as to how they should navigate through the charts.

Author:
Kealan Daly
Powered by The Information Lab
1st Floor, 25 Watling Street, London, EC4M 9BR
Subscribe
to our Newsletter
Get the lastest news about The Data School and application tips
Subscribe now
© 2024 The Information Lab