Creating Accessible Content

Users who have visual limitations or encounter difficulties in distinguishing between certain colors require specially designed visualizations that assist them in accessing data in a meaningful, coherent manner. To create content that is appealing, engaging, and also complies with US Section 508 requirements, a selection of guidelines is recommended below.

Working with Colors

To cater for users with color vision deficiency (CVD), Pyramid has designed a “High Contrast” theme.

Theme Design Guidelines

Use the following guidelines for selecting theme colors if you want to design your own theme.

  • Do not use red, green, brown, and orange together.
  • Do not use the following two colors together:

    • Blue and Purple

    • Blue and Gray
    • Pink and Gray
    • Brown and Gray
    • Green and Gray
    • Green and Blue
    • Green and Black
    • Green and Red
    • Green and Brown
  • Use highly contrasted color combinations
  • Use colors with different light-dark characteristics

Design Guidelines

  • Use Pyramid’s “High Contrast” theme from the themes menu in the Design ribbon.
  • Use shape, size, labels, and tooltip drop zones to distinguish between data elements.
  • Use different color patterns for further color variety
  • Adopt a simple, minimalistic design to help avoid confusion.

User Guidelines

Users can change the existing theme with the high contrast theme for any existing Discovery regardless of the theme used when creating the Discovery.

Descriptive Text

By using meaningful text to describe the visualizations, users will gain more understanding about the data in the visualization.

Design Guidelines

  • Use properties to further edit the titles and captions
  • Add text boxes for additional, more in-depth descriptions
  • Avoid capital letters, acronyms, and abbreviations
  • Use simple, commonly used language
  • Use Pyramid’s dynamic text feature to create meaningful descriptive comments using data driven logic
  • Avoid using standardized non-descriptive wording like "As seen below”, "More", or "Click here"
  • Meaningful text-based insights can be generated using Illustrate, in conjunction with the “Smart Insights” feature.

Reduced Hierarchies and Data Points

  • Reduce the number of hierarchies, members, and measures to ensure the information is easily understandable.

Design Guidelines

  • Aggregate the data to a high level, so users don’t have to wade through large amounts of information
  • Reduce the volume of data points while at the same time provide sufficient data to ensure the main message is conveyed
  • Use filters to reduce the number of hierarchies and members in a visualization
  • Use simple visualizations, like line graphs and column charts for a more streamlined view of the data
  • Use text, color, shapes, line style, and patterns where appropriate to add additional variation to the visualizations

User Guidelines

  • Users should use the “Eliminations” feature to remove unnecessary hierarchy members
  • The “Analyze Further” feature can be used where further analysis is required
  • Users can view data in its native form using the “Show Data Grid” feature
  • Users can focus on a visual from within a dashboard by using the “Full screen” feature

Additional Resources

  • See Creating Content for Accessibility for more details on how to use Pyramid to create content compatible with WCAG.
  • See Pyramid VPAT 2022 for Pyramid Accessibility Conformance Report (September 2022). The voluntary assessment report describes the degree of conformance by Pyramid of the WCAG 2.0 and Section 508 standards. The review relates to the current version of the platform: 2020.