Jump! [A to Z a11y]

Epic riffs and dancing Prime Ministers? Nope…

Welcome to the J of the A to Z Accessibility: Power Platform Edition, and this one is all about Jump!

Those who enjoy music or Christmas romantic comedies may be hearing epic riffs or picturing Hugh Grant dancing through No.10 Downing Street. If you are more O/G about this then you may be hearing the Pointer Sisters. As I am a man of eclectic tastes I’ve got all three running through my head. But I’m not talking about epic hair, and over enthusiastic movements. I’m talking about something that you wouldn’t think is an accessibility feature but really is.

You can read more detail about the concepts I am discussing by clicking here to check out the WCAG specification page.

This topic applies to Power Bi, Power Pages, and Microsoft Office. It also applies to web design as well.

Jump to it!

You’ve opened the web page, or the dashboard, or the document… and it’s massive – The pages are either long or there’s a lot of them. The natural thing to have is a table of contents, or a navigation bar that allows you to jump around the content.

OK, it seems tenuous I will grant you that, but it fits.

There is an art to this that takes us beyond a simple sidebar on a portal, or an inserted Table of Contents in the document and for that we look at Bookmarks.

If you are a web developer who is familiar with HTML itself then you will probably be aware of using id tags in content and then a “#” href in a hyperlink to allow you to jump to specific parts of the content, either on the same page or even to a specific point on a different page. It’s this type of functionality that makes it easier for users and consumers to get to where they need to go.

Why is Jump an Accessibility thing?

If the person accessing your content cannot process long pages, or overwhelming amounts, of information then providing a handy index at the top and bottom of your pages allows them to go straight to where they need to go. This also helps those with dyslexia and people using screen readers as they can don’t have to try and absorb information that they don’t need to be processing to get to the one bit they are looking for.

If you look at the Microsoft documentation on the Learn website you will see that there is a box with “In This Article” links at the top of each page (where appropriate) as well as the main navigation on the left hand side.

OK, but how does this relate to Power BI?

The best Power BI dashboards and reports do not overwhelm users with an overload of information and colours. Instead they present highlight, core, information and then subpages that allow people to consume the information they need as and when they need it. Finding which tab or page you want to be on is where a table of contents makes this go from being one of the best, to being beyond awesome.

It allows your consumers of data to go straight to what they need to see, in an easy, friendly, and accessible way.

Placing this in the top left corner of a dashboard, on each page/tab, means it is easy to find and screen readers will read that first so that people don’t have to listen to a whole page of info before getting to the one link that they need to find.

Baby you’re the Tops

Getting to the content you want to find is really useful, but to really put the cherry on the top of the cake it needs to be easy for people to get back to the top of the document, page, report etc.

Adding a simple “Top” link at the end of each section in a document or web page, before the next heading and at the bottom of the page, allows users to jump right back to that handy index of content and move to the next relevant section.

It’s a really easy thing to add, and many web sites especially have this, but it makes the navigation experience for users much nicer and means they are a) more likely to return to your content and b) more likely to link to your content in other places!

The digital content Kerb Cut effect

If you’ve made it this far you can probably think of places where you’ve seen these points in action. You can probably even think of times that you have made use of such features. This is the kerb cut effect in practice, in fact in some ways it’s also a reverse kerb cut effect as a Table of Contents existed in documents long before accessibility was a consideration.

What I mean by this is that there are things we can do that aid accessibility but in turn provide a benefit to people who do not use assistive technologies or would find these accommodations a help.

It’s a win-win-win!

Thanks for reading this chapter of the A to Z a11y – JUMP!

Thank you for reading JUMP!. This post is one chapter of my [A to Z a11y] series the “A to Z Accessibility: Power Platform Edition”. Click here to go to the introduction article where I keep a Table of Contents, or simply check out the Accessibility section of the website from the top menu or by going directly to the category page here.

Content in this series is © Mike Hartley. I am happy for folks to quote or reuse snippets (with attribution) but this has taken a lot of work to compile so please do not copy whole sections. If there are any corrections or suggestions, then please use my social links to contact me. I am always happy to add additional content and remarks with full credit given. Likewise, these pages will evolve as my learning and understanding grows, so make sure to keep this bookmarked