Cognos Accessibility

Here are some helpful links for ensuring your dashboards and reports meet ADA Compliance.

Accessibility Features:

• Keyboard-only operation
• Use of a screen reader
• Accessible report output for report runs, including jobs, job steps, subscriptions, and scheduled items
• Operable in high contrast modes
• Operable when the browser zoom level is increased up to 200%

Things to Avoid

• Avoid using visual cues, such as bold text or color, to convey important information.
• Avoid using pictures and OLE Objects in PDF documents, as these items are tagged as artifacts and ignored by the screen reader.
• Avoid using conditional formatting to convey important information.
• Avoid spelling and grammatical errors, as they cause the screen reading software to misinterpret the information.
• Avoid using features like calendar boxes and up and down selections on time controls. Instead use prompts such as check boxes, radio buttons, combo boxes, and multi-select boxes.
• Avoid using large, complex list or crosstab reports. Displaying the information in multiple simple lists or crosstab reports is more manageable for assistive technology users.
• Avoid using range prompt controls that contain radio buttons (See Figure 1).

Helpful Tips

• Accessible visualizations: table, list, and crosstab
• When selecting color palettes for report objects, choose patterns or shades of gray.
• Ensure that there is a table corresponding to chart types that are rendered as images because the screen reader ignores this information.
• Deliver reports in HTML format, which is the most supported output format for most screen readers.
• Ensure that the report has a title.
• Ensure that the target application is accessible when using embedded Web applications or drill-through paths.
• Add alternate text to images, charts, and other visual objects so that screen readers can provide context for them.
• When using tables, add summary text to provide context for the table content. If the top cells in a table behave as headers, designate these cells as headers so that screen readers can identify the relationships.

Accessibility Resources

Accessibility Overview - Overview of Accessibility in IBM Cognos

Enabling Accessibility When Subscribing and Scheduling - Learn how to subsribe to a report and get accessible saved output.

Cognos Keyboard Shortcuts - Keyboard shortcuts to help with Accessibility while using Cognos.