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Microsoft Power Apps User Experience and Accessibility

Source: My notes on Microsoft session with Sravani Seethi on 2023-02-27

Background

Section titled “Background”
  • About 15% of the world’s population have some form of disability and 30% have vision impairements and less than 10% have hearing impairments
  • Disability - mismatches human interactions
  • Types of Accessibility Needs:
    • Permanent (body), Temporary (injuries), and Situation (during a job, family situation)
    • Touch, See, Hear, Speak
  • Advantages of accessibility
    • More users
    • Inclusion
    • Save time for future development
    • It is kind

Built-In Accessibility for Power App Makers

Section titled “Built-In Accessibility for Power App Makers”

  • Accessible app development like contrast, shortcuts

  • Remember you have more responsibility of development when you have more control For example, high control and responsibilty for canvas apps and custom development and lower for packaged apps and model driven apps

  • Best practices:

    • Use app templates
    • Use color contrast
    • Assistive technology like keyboard navigation
    • Use default theme - much research was done and that theme is the most accessible
    • Use accessibility checker
      • Under accessibility, common issues are missing accessible labels
    • Use Accessibility Insights for Windows to scan app
      • For example, checks color contrast
    • Use solutions to test accessibility before deployments
    • Name screens in app as they will be used by screen readers
    • For controls, labels, components:
      • Role set to heading like fx:
        • TextRole.Heading1
      • Use tooltip and AccessibileLabel to describe controls on hover and screen readers
      • Live is Assertive, Off, Polite - sets whether a screen reader should be read by screen reader during field changes
    • Use HTML controls to custom development the screen
    • Check https://pcf.gallery for custom Typescript Power Platform controls
    • Control design:
      • Set control sizes based on app/parent control like fx 2*Parent.Height/3
      • Use containers to control sizes of controls inside the containers
      • Use controls like flexible galleries which will scale based on items

  • Known issues / gaps

    • Power Apps does not support accessible modals (messages in foreground like accept something)
    • Scroll bars not accessible with keyboard only
    • Date picker is fixed

User Experience with Accessibility

Section titled “User Experience with Accessibility”
  • Users can use:
    • Screen readers
    • Scan mode: jump to different controls
    • Transcription
    • Keyboard shortcuts

Demonstration

Section titled “Demonstration”
  • Show different functions:
    • Change theme, font size
      • For example themes/font choices for a user can be stored in Dataverse to persist them