Today I’m excited to launch a brand‑new YouTube series on AccessibleBI: PBIX A11y Bytes, short, practical videos to help you make your Power BI reports more accessible and more usable for everyone.
This series is dedicated to Valerie Junk, who encouraged me to create it and reminded me how important it is to share accessibility knowledge in small, actionable steps.
In the first episode, I talk about colour contrast and why it plays such a big role in legibility. When contrast is too low, some users may struggle to perceive your visuals, especially people with low vision, those viewing your report on a very bright or very dim screen, or anyone working in poor lighting conditions. Good contrast helps everyone.
A simple rule of thumb:
- Light background → darker text, icons and visuals
- Dark background → lighter text, icons and visuals
But this doesn’t need to be a guessing game.
We have WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, an international standard that helps us design more inclusive digital content. For colour contrast, WCAG Level AA recommends:
- 4.5:1 for normal text
- 3:1 for large text and non‑text elements (icons, buttons, visual marks)
To make this easier, I’ve built a free browser‑based tool, PBIX A11y, that checks your theme colours and flags any combinations that don’t meet WCAG. It also suggests accessible alternatives you can copy straight into your report.
If you want to start improving the readability of your dashboards, Episode 1 is now live, watch it here. Visit PBIX A11y here.
