Designer | Accessibility & Usability Features - We'd Love Your Feedback!

Hello Fellow Alteryxians!

The Accessibility Team here at Alteryx has recently developed some new features that will allow assistive technology users as well as anyone else, to navigate and manipulate elements of Designer using only the keyboard. We are very excited about these new features and those further on the horizon, but we need feedback!

Who we're primarily looking for:

- Users who regularly use keyboard commands to navigate.

- Users of assistive technology

- Users that want/need to build workflows quickly

The above are definitely not hard requirements, if you've got the time and the inclination, we'd love to hear what you think!

If you're interested in providing feedback on keyboard navigation features or assistive technology features either now or in the future please contact me here or at accessibility@alteryx.com

Any feedback is appreciated!

Thank you!

Tips and Tricks

Accepted answers

All comments

Horn

Will engage with the team internally to see if there's any feedback relevant.

csmith11

I came to the Community to Post a recommendation for Keyboard Navigation. I found this post first so I will post my recommendation here.

Recommendation:

If it doesn't already exist, Alteryx should add a hotkey to 'Set Focus and Zoom' to a currently selected tool.

Use Case:

With Larger workflows, an error or a message may pop up in the result pane. When a message is clicked often the related tool is selected but it is not always visually identified. A quick hotkey to zoom and set visual focus on the tool would be helpful in understanding where a tool is located relative to the workflow as a whole.

iCFO

I regularly use keyboard shortcuts, macro combos and UI macros via external controllers and keyboard / mouse configuration software to simplify my work. I would be happy to share how I work around the current shortcut limitations and how I use some of my macros and button assignments.

It would be super useful to improve the visual cues for what is selected in a workflow. When zoomed out of a large workflow it can become impossible to see which connection line or tool is "selected" because they the small black box and thin line darkening does not stand out. A much better system would be a thicker bright color connection line or bright color filled in box behind a tool to show what is selected. Preferably the selection color would be controlled as a user setting so that people could choose what stands out best to their eyes in their workflow color schemes. The only way I can even find which tool is throwing an error or warning in a large workflow is to zoom in to an incorrect spot before selecting it, so that it jumps to the tool at a reasonable zoom level. Otherwise there is no apparent visual indication of the selected tool among the other hundreds of tools.

binu_acs

looking forward to seeing the new features!!!

gaurav_aga

Please find attached Solution for Practice2.

Thanks & regards

Gaurav aga

Practice2_Solution.yxdb

Kishan25896

Eagerly want to know about it.

Cadistra

I am very new at using Designer, but I am a huge user of keyboard shortcuts. I was actually a bit surprised to see that Ctrl + W didn't close the workflow file I was using, and when I hunted around to see if there was a place to set keyboard shortcuts, I wasn't able to find any.

I have over a decade of art program experience (Photoshop, etc) where hotkeys are king - they shave time off of small things that can really build up.

I'm not nearly as experienced but happy to offer any assistance I can!

Shifty

Hey @A11yKyle - this is a great initiative. Is there anywhere we can see a list of the changes implemented on the back of this exercise?

IraWatt

Very interested in hearing more about this. I have to ask if more colouring/theme options in designer are being considered for development in this program?

philipmannering

I can't help but feel Alteryx 2022.1 is a small step backwards in accessibility for me and my poor eyesight being able to see the smaller icons.

FreeRangeDingo

Here are some hot keys I would love to see....

Hotkeys that open the different sections of a tool - configuration, navigation, annotation.
Hotkeys to move to the next tool in a flow (I know flows can split but this would still be useful).
Let us assign hotkeys to add specific tools to the palette

Pls and thanks

Rohitpatil7

looking forward to seeing many more features

Shibasisnamdev

zikra_9820745767

Like we have interactive videos for learning Alteryx, Similarly, do we have video for weekly challenges solution. Kindly help

Carlithian

For Navigation

Hot keys for search bar

and everything @FreeRangeDingo recommended

For visual

Any tool that uses formulas should have the same colour coding that we get in the formula tool, and the ability to tab for indentation. It would make tools like Multi-Row and Action tools much easier to read

7894008684das

thanks.

Carlithian

Can the drag and snap logic be customizable?

It can become quite frustrating when tools decide they should fit together but they aren't on the same wavelength as me, and I have to keep deleting out connections and hooking things up properly. This is generally a problem when my hand/wrist is acting up so I don't have my normal range of movement.

Nolimitdv

Very Interested to hear more about this. I would like to see more color options as well as the ability to have themes, and possibly a built in scheduler so we don't need to make python scripts to schedule on windows task manager! (:

LuisKahn

(the paragraph above was "stolen" from another user in this forum, but I so much loved how she explained this mega pain point that I couldn't write anything better.

someotherguy

In the formula tool:

from the column selection/create column name field the tab key should go to the formula field instead of the four icons down the left side
after clicking the data type field, clicking the first letter of any data type should auto select it

muhammadimranhakimi

Looking forward for more!

luqmanariff

anticipating moree

Dr_Hammann_619

Interesting new features.

Mincridible

Very relevant

Raj

looking to get some new features !!

eleee3

Hey there,

I only use my keyboard to navigate Alteryx. While accessibility has generally been fine, the one feature which I was surprised wasn't there was the ability to scroll left and right in a workflow using a trackpad. Implementing this feature would hugely improve the accessibility for me, as dragging the bar at the bottom can get quite cumbersome.

Note that I use Alteryx on a Mac using Parallels, so not sure if this is Mac-specific or also affects Windows users. Note that for almost all other programs on Mac, touching the trackpad with two fingers and scrolling left and right moves the screen left and right.

DFranklin

I'd also like to see an ability to change icon sizes in the tool palettes and expand the palettes. With the latest update, it is often hard to read the small fonts and see the icon details to discern which tools are which. Larger icons are helpful for those with visual impairments who are not using assistive technology to zoom in the screen as a whole.

hnguyen1832

Hi,

I'm recently learning and experiencing Alterryx in my Accounting class. Before Alterryx, Excel was my favorite software for analyzing and modifying data. Alterryx is a game-changer; modifying data with Alterryx is much easier and faster, and the designer has more valuable features than other software. Alterryx is very interesting and I'm glad I get to know and learn about it.

jchau1553

I am curious to learn more about this! New to Alteryx, and been fun so far.

StellaBon

Not a keyboard issue, but I would love to see the Interactive Videos have an option in settings to reduce playback speed to .75

Thank you

AbdulBasit

I am a regular excel user . I think the shortcuts should be some what fimilar with excels style of short cuts.

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