Use Tableau to Make Your Dashboards Accessible
When we work in Tableau, our goal is to translate data into information for our users. This can be in the form of crosstabs, bar charts, line charts, scatter plots, maps, and many other types of visualizations. But, what happens when our users are unable to utilize the workbook in the same way as others? What if our users are color blind or unable to see all together? Tableau is a data visualization tool, but we can still design our charts and dashboards to be as accessible as possible to all users by following some simple guidelines and tricks.
Color
Color can be a powerful preattentive attribute for identifying patterns or categorizing dimensions in Tableau; however, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women are color blind. This means that the vibrant colors you are using to deliver information probably aren’t being seen in the same way by these individuals. To better design for these challenges, it’s important to understand what these users see when they use your dashboard and provide features that allow them to consume the information the same way as others.
First, you need to understand what they see in your dashboard when they view it. To assist with this, there are extensions available in Chrome to render web pages as they are seen with various types of color blindness. Using these tools, you can render your workbook in the various color palettes and see what ...
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