Accessibility and Keyboard Shortcuts
This article provides information about the features that make Business Central readily available to people with disabilities. Business Central supports the following accessibility features:
- Keyboard shortcuts. See Keyboard Shortcuts.
- Touch and pen gestures on tablets and phones. See Touch and Pen Gestures.
- Navigation
- Headings
- Alternative text for images and links
- Support for common assistive technologies
- Zoom in or out on any page
- Tooltips on elements in the user interface
Tip
Take free e-learning content about the Business Central user interface in Microsoft training.
Navigation
You can use different combinations of the Tab, Shift, and arrow keys of your keyboard to move between elements on a page. Elements include actions, fields and columns, parts, and other controls. In general, select Tab or Shift+Tab to move to the next or previous element.
When you focus on an area that contains actions, like the navigation bar on the top of role center or action bar on other pages, use the arrows keys to move through the different actions and groups. Select Enter on a group to open its underlying actions, and then continue using the arrows keys. Select Tab or Shift+Tab to move out of the action area.
By using the tab order, you can also switch between the main browser page and dialog boxes that request confirmation, for example, or the sign-in page.
Headings in Content
The HTML source for Business Central content uses tags to help users of assistive technology to understand the structure and content of the page. For example, on list pages, the columns are defined in TH tags and the column headings are set with TITLE attribute inside the tag. Captions for elements, such as FastTabs, FactBoxes, and fields are included in heading tags (H1, H2, H3, and H4).
Image and Links
A descriptive text for images is set with the ALT attribute inside the IMG tag. A descriptive text for hyperlinks is set with the title attribute inside the A tag.
Assistive Technologies
Business Central supports various assistive technologies, such as high contrast, screen readers, and voice recognition software. Some assistive technologies may not work well with certain elements in Business Central pages.
Zoom
Most browsers use standard keyboard shortcuts to zoom in and out on the current page. These keyboard shortcuts aren't specific to Business Central, but they work when you use Business Central in a browser. For a list of supported keyboard shortcuts, see Keyboard Shortcuts for Zooming In and Out.
Tooltips
Tooltips are available on most elements in the user interface, like page fields and columns, actions, cues tiles, and charts. A tooltip provides extra text that explains an element to help you better understand its purpose.
Tooltips are accessed in different ways, depending on the client (web or mobile) and the device that you're working with. Use the following table as a guide. Some tooltips can be read by screen-readers. In this case, you access the tooltips as described in the table, then use the screen reader to navigate to the tooltip as you would with any other element.
Accessing tooltips
| Element | Mouse action for web client | Keyboard shortcut for web client | Touch gesture on tablet/phone for mobile app | Screen reader support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Page fields and column headings | Hover over or click the field caption or column heading | Move focus to the field or column heading, and select Alt+Up Arrow keys | Tap the field caption | yes |
| Charts elements, like a bar, line, pie slice | Hover over the element | Move focus to element, for example, by using arrow keys | Tap and hold the element | yes |
| Actions | Hover over the action | none | none | no |
| Cue tiles | Hover over the tile | none | none | no |
For more accessibility information
You can find additional information about accessibility with Microsoft products and assistive technologies on the Microsoft Accessibility site.
See Also
Getting Ready for Doing Business
Work with Business Central
Frequently Asked Questions