Visualization designers increasingly use diverse types of visualizations, but assistive technologies and education for blind and low vision people often focus on elementary chart types. We explore textual explanation as a more generalizable solution. We define three dimensions of explanation strategies based on education theories: comparing to a familiar chart type, describing how to draw one, and using a concrete example. We develop a prototype system that automatically generates text explanations from a given chart specification. We conduct an exploratory study with 24 legally blind people to observe both the effectiveness and the perceived effectiveness of the strategies. The findings include: description of visual appearance is overall more effective than instructions for drawing, effective strategies differ by each chart type and by each participant, and the user's perceived effectiveness does not always lead to better performance. We demonstrate the feasibility of an explanation generation system and compile design considerations.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581139
Anthropographics are human-shaped visualizations that aim to emphasize the human importance of datasets and the people behind them. However, current anthropographics tend to employ homogeneous human shapes to encode data about diverse demographic groups. Such anthropographics can obscure important differences between groups and contemporary designs exemplify the lack of inclusive approaches for representing human diversity in visualizations. In response, we explore the creation of demographically diverse anthropographics that communicate the visible diversity of demographically distinct populations. Building on previous anthropographics research, we explore strategies for visualizing datasets about people in ways that explicitly encode diversity---illustrating these approaches with examples in a variety of visual styles. We also critically reflect on strategies for creating diverse anthropographics, identifying social and technical challenges that can result in harmful representations. Finally, we highlight a set of forward-looking research opportunities for advancing the design and understanding of diverse anthropographics.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581086
Even though screen readers are a core accessibility tool for blind and low vision individuals (BLVIs), most visualizations are incompatible with screen readers. To improve accessible visualization experiences, we partnered with 10 BLV screen reader users (SRUs) in an iterative co-design study to design and develop accessible visualization experiences that afford SRUs the autonomy to interactively read and understand visualizations and their underlying data. During the five-month study, we explored accessible visualization prototypes with our design partners for three one-hour sessions. Our results provide feedback on the synthesized design concepts we explored, why (or why not) they aid comprehension and exploration for SRUs, and how differing design concepts can fit into cohesive accessible visualization experiences. We contribute both Chart Reader, a web-based accessibility engine resulting from our design iterations, and our distilled study findings – organized by design dimensions – in the creation of comprehensive accessible visualization experiences.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581186
Two people looking at the same dataset will create different mental models, prioritize different attributes, and connect with different visualizations. We seek to understand the space of data abstractions associated with mental models and how well people communicate their mental models when sketching. Data abstractions have a profound influence on the visualization design, yet it's unclear how universal they may be when not initially influenced by a representation. We conducted a study about how people create their mental models from a dataset. Rather than presenting tabular data, we presented each participant with one of three datasets in paragraph form, to avoid biasing the data abstraction and mental model. We observed various mental models, data abstractions, and depictions from the same dataset, and how these concepts are influenced by communication and purpose-seeking. Our results have implications for visualization design, especially during the discovery and data collection phase.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580669
Data is everywhere, but may not be accessible to everyone. Conventional data visualization tools and guidelines often do not actively consider the specific needs and abilities of people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD), leaving them excluded from data-driven activities and vulnerable to ethical issues. To understand the needs and challenges people with IDD have with data, we conducted 15 semi-structured interviews with individuals with IDD and their caregivers. Our algorithmic interview approach situated data in the lived experiences of people with IDD to uncover otherwise hidden data encounters in their everyday life. Drawing on findings and observations, we characterize how they conceptualize data, when and where they use data, and what barriers exist when they interact with data. We use our results as a lens to reimagine the role of visualization in data accessibility and establish a critical near-term research agenda for cognitively accessible visualization.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581204
This study builds on past research to present a domain-specific empirical investigation of artists and math & computer scientists on their respective relationships to, perceptions of, and interactions with data visualization. We conducted a three-phase study utilizing mixed-methods to investigate performance on visual and text representations of data between domains. Our findings evidenced how math & computer scientists are proficient utilizing text representations of data while artists benefit more from visual chart representations. Finally, we present perspectives from artists to gain an understanding of their approach to visual and mathematical tasks. Our findings indicate that artists are especially adept at statistical visual tasks and that development of cognitive skills could be fostered by individuals to potentially benefit visualization task performance.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580765