Making Shiny dashboards accessible for users who rely on screen readers and keyboards

R/Medicine 2026 Demo

Online dashboards use data visualizations to quickly convey information. Interactive elements like charts and data filters often display additional information not accessible by screen readers. Navigating these elements often relies on a mouse and may not be accessible by keyboard. Accessibility features improve the overall presentation and user experience by adding functionality. These features augment, amplify, and enhance the content so that users can interact with and understand the same content in multiple ways, depending on their needs and preferences.

Our demonstration will cover how to address several accessibility issues in Shiny. We have chosen issues related to screen reader use, keyboard use, and understanding that may be overlooked in sources that cover accessibility in Shiny. We will use an example dashboard that failed several accessibility checks. For each check, we will demonstrate the issue, show a way to revise the dashboard code to address it, and demonstrate how to test it. We estimate 20 minutes of instruction, 15 minutes of live coding, and 15 minutes of demonstration, with 10 minutes for questions at the end.

All files, including the presentation, starting script, and suggested solution script, will be available in the GitHub repository https://github.com/ajstamm/shiny-a11y-app for attendees who wish to code along. Our past presentations on accessibility in Shiny dashboards can also be found here.

Resources
Main repo: https://github.com/ajstamm/shiny-a11y-app
R/Medicine: https://rconsortium.github.io/RMedicine_website/
R Consortium: https://www.r-consortium.org/

Видео Making Shiny dashboards accessible for users who rely on screen readers and keyboards канала R Consortium