Accessibility / Reader

Owned by Karen Hogan (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Sept 02, 2022
2 min read

This functionality was primarily designed for use with embedded charts and enables piDashboard charts to be used in conjunction with screen reading software.

If the user is using a screen reader, and you don’t do anything in this tab, then the default system generated message for a chart will be read out. To see what that default system generated message would be click the ‘Generate the default message template for modification’ button  and the default message syntax will be displayed.

By default, the screen reader would read out the chart title ‘Employee Count by Age Group’, and any chart subtitle if this has been set up, and then ‘Where Age Group is 18-25 then Employee Count is 123’ and it would then repeat this information for each Age Group.

The default message is generated by the underling code behind the chart and can therefore by default look and sound quite programmatic. By manually editing the text, you can produce something that would be easier to understand. So, in the example shown above, editing the text to this would probably sound better.

Note that;

  • If you manually override the default message you may need to revisit it if the chart is subsequently changed

  • You don’t need to click the ‘Generate’ button if you just want to use the default message, this merely displays it for information and, if required, alteration

  • You can reference category objects {{ }} and system variables [[ ]] in the message

  • Non-chart functionality (such as the category name) is not read out, which is why this functionality is primarily intended for use in embedded charts