PBIX A11y started as a small set of accessibility tools, and over time it has grown into a trusted resource for thousands of Power BI creators who care about clarity, inclusivity and good design.
Today, I’m excited to share the next chapter: Design Buddy, a structured, rule‑based design system companion built to help you design Power BI reports with confidence before you open Desktop.
Design Buddy brings together layout patterns, colour systems, branding rules, project workflows, pattern libraries and governance into one place, all built on the same accessibility‑first principles that shaped PBIX A11y from the beginning. And unlike AI‑driven tools, every output in Design Buddy is deterministic: the same inputs always produce the same results. No guesswork. No hallucinations. No surprises.
Why Design Buddy Is a Paid Tool
Everything you already use in PBIX A11y, the audits, simulators, calculators and accessibility tools, remains completely free. These tools run entirely in your browser and cost nothing to operate.
Design Buddy is different.
It’s a full design system engine with:
- Project creation, versioning and history
- Layout and UI pattern libraries
- Branding rules (logo sizing, placement, safe areas)
- Colour palette upload + WCAG/APCA pairing engine
- Design system generation (typography, spacing, tokens, theme JSON)
- Stakeholder & audience mapping
- Project‑scoped audit history
- Multi‑developer collaboration
- Governance, template locking and approvals (Business tier)
- PDF export containing the full specification
- A global upload library for brand assets
- A deterministic workflow engine that replaces improvisation with rules
These features require ongoing development, infrastructure and support, so Design Buddy is offered as a paid add‑on, with a 15‑day free trial for anyone who wants to explore it.
What’s Included in Each Plan
Explore the tiers here: Design Buddy Pricing
Why Design Buddy Matters
Power BI developers, BI consultants and report designers face the same recurring problem: reports are functionally correct but visually inconsistent, inaccessible, and difficult to justify. Brand colours fail WCAG, layouts are improvised, typography is arbitrary, and design decisions live in one developer’s head.
Design Buddy fixes this by replacing improvisation with rules.
Every module asks structured questions, applies predefined logic, and returns a reproducible output, a zone map, a WCAG‑checked palette matrix, a typographic ramp, a branding specification, or a complete project PDF that can be handed to a client or developer.
The free tools tell you what’s wrong with an existing report.
Design Buddy tells you how to build the next one correctly the first time.
All Accessibility Tools Remain Free
This is important, and I want to say it clearly:
Every accessibility tool in PBIX A11y remains free. No account. No limits. No paywall.
That includes:
• PBIX Accessibility Audit
• Theme Accessibility Audit
• Visual Design Audit
• Colour Contrast Checker
• Colour Blindness Simulator
• Cognitive Load Score
• Minimum Font Size Calculator
• UI Layout Calculator
• Alt Text Guidance (new, non‑AI version)
Accessibility should never sit behind a paywall, and it never will.
A Quick Update on the Alt Text Tool
After assessing the long‑term costs and maintenance required to keep an AI‑powered alt text tool running, I realised it would significantly increase the operating costs of PBIX A11y. And because I want this tool to remain free for everyone, I redesigned it to remove AI entirely.
The new Alt Text Guidance tool is:
• 100% deterministic
• 100% rule‑based
• 100% non‑AI
• 100% free
It now works as a prompt‑builder: you answer a few structured questions, and the tool gives you a clean, complete prompt you can paste into Copilot or any AI tool you prefer.
This keeps the workflow flexible, transparent and accessible, without introducing costs or barriers.
Learn more here:
Alt Text Guidance
Try Design Buddy Free for 15 Days
If you want to explore the new design system engine, you can start a 15‑day free trial today, no commitment, cancel anytime.
