Data visualisations made more accessible to screen reader users – Cosmos Magazine

Cosmos » Technology » Data visualisations made more accessible to screen reader users

6 June 2022
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Imma Perfetto

Data visualisations made more accessible to screen reader users

Adding a line of code is all it takes to make data visualisations more accessible.

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A braille screen reader. Credit: Sigmund/Unsplash

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Data visualisation is an important part of online media, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. But they’re often inaccessible to people who use screen readers.

A type of assistive technology, screen readers are software programs that scan the contents of a computer screen and transform it into a different format – like synthesised voice or Braille – for people with complete or partial blindness, learning disabilities, or motion sensitivity.

Now, scientists from the University of Washington (UW) in the US have designed a JavaScript plugin called VoxLens that allows people to better interact with these visualisations.

VoxLens allows screen reader users to gain a high-level summary [...]

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