Operation Manual

Creating Accessible Reports
Improving data table accessibility
C
552 Crystal Reports User’s Guide
As with all objects in reports, the order in which you place text objects on the
report can affect accessibility. Screen readers read the objects in the order
they were originally added. (For details, see “Placing objects in order” on
page 539.) The correct placement order is critical when you add a text object
that identifies the contents of a particular column in a data table. If you add
the text objects at the end of the design process, they may be read after the
columns that they refer to. When you add text objects that describe values in
a report, ensure that you place them on the report in the order that you want
them to be read.
Before you can create an accessible data table, you must plan your report in
advance, determining which objects and database fields you want to include.
Because objects must be placed in the order you want them to be read,
planning your content for accessibility is essential. As part of this planning, it
is good practice to choose how you will use text objects to identify data table
values. You can simply add text objects before each database field. Or you
can conditionally suppress text objects or use formulas to combine text
objects and values.
Labelling data tables with text objects
Before each field, add a text object that describes the field’s position in the
table. In the following example, the text box provides information about the
Employee ID number. When the report is read with a screen reader, each
number is preceded by the brief explanation in the text box.
Providing extra information for each value can make a data table appear
cluttered for people without vision impairments, so you may want to hide the
extra text objects by changing the font color to the same color as the
background. The extra text is invisible, but is still detected and read by screen
readers.