10 Accessible visualizations

 

This chapter covers

  • Understanding how people with disabilities navigate web content
  • Providing easy-to-read text and instructions
  • Ensuring sufficient color contrast and using double-encoding
  • Allowing proper navigation to screen reader users
  • Accessing interactions with a keyboard

When designing and developing data visualizations, we tend to focus on the fun stuff, such as selecting a color palette and a font that match a specific look-and-feel or developing delightful, out-of-the-box interactions and animations. But many of us fail to give accessibility the consideration it deserves.

In the United States, 26% of adults live with a disability and 4.9% have a vision disability that requires screen readers (see Geoff Cudd, “57 Web Accessibiity Statistics,” https://ddiy.co/web-accessibility-statistics). But in 2022, only 3% of the internet is accessible to people with disabilities (see David Moradi, “What’s Next for Digital Accessibility,” http://mng.bz/X10M).

10.1 How people with disabilities access web content

10.2 Meeting the accessibility standards

10.2.1 Textual information

10.2.2 Visual information

10.2.3 Screen reader access

10.2.4 Interactions

10.2.5 Other considerations

10.2.6 Additional resources

Summary