ABSTRACT VIEW
MAKING CHARTS ACCESSIBLE: FROM VISUAL VOCABULARY TO MICROSOFT EXCEL
R. Alcaraz Martínez, M. Salse Rovira, M. Ribera Turro, B. Splendiani, R.M. Satorras Fioretti, J. Barea Colomer
University of Barcelona (SPAIN)
In an increasingly multimedia world where education is largely delivered through digital platforms, teachers have incorporated a whole catalogue of new instruments and formats with a marked visual character, which have shown benefits in learning. However, these resources usually incorporate content created with little or no knowledge of the specific needs of students with disabilities, specifically visual, cognitive, or neurodevelopmental disorders.

The software used by teachers increasingly incorporates more tools to create accessible content, in accordance with increasingly clear and established international legislation and guidelines. In this regard, the European Accessibility Act is particularly relevant.

However, it is often not enough for applications to incorporate more and more accessibility options; it is necessary for teachers to know how to create this content according to the principles of universal accessible design.

The Adaptabit teaching innovation group at the University of Barcelona has been working since 2010 to bring technology and the content it generates closer to all people with functional diversity. In this communication, the aim is to bring knowledge on how to make graphics accessible to teachers who use data visualizations. To achieve this goal, the recognized types of graphics from the Visual Vocabulary (https://ft-interactive.github.io/visual-vocabulary/) are used, and an accessible version of a wide selection of these is generated.

We want to demonstrate that it is possible to make graphics accessible without an excessive investment of time and, at the same time, raise awareness of the advantages and importance of starting to consider our graphics under these parameters as educators. For this work, we have empirically worked with existing data sets from the Visual Vocabulary website.

Specifically, the following graphics have been worked on:
- Deviation: Diverging bar & Spine
- Correlation: Scatterplot &Column + line timeline
- Ranking: Orderer bar & Lolipop
- Distribution: Histogram & Population Pyramid
- Change over Time: Line & Area Chart
- Magnitude: Paired Column & Marimekko
- Part-to-whole: Pie & TreeMap
- Spatial: Basic Coroplet (rate/ratio) & (count/magnitude)
- Workflow: Waterfall & Network.

To develop the proposals, the original tables from the mentioned website were downloaded and made accessible, mainly using Microsoft Excel, as it is the tool most used by educators for handling tabular data and graphics. When this was not possible, tools such as Highcharts Maps were used..

For the preparation of the data and the creation of the graphics, the "Guia per a la creació de gràfics estadístics accessibles amb el Microsoft Excel 365" (https://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/handle/2445/180736), previously published by the Adaptabit Group, was followed.

Once the graphics were created, they were subjected to an accessibility evaluation that included reviewing these objects with screen readers such as NVDA.
The resulting documents will be published in an open repository on the Adaptabit website. They will also be offered to the creators of Visual Vocabulary in case they wish to create accessible versions of the existing graphics.

In the future, the work will continue until all the graphics of Visual Vocabulary are completed.

Keywords: Accessibility, Disabilities, Information Visualization, Microsoft Excel, Graphics.

Event: EDULEARN25
Session: Accessibility & Assistive Technologies
Session time: Tuesday, 1st of July from 12:15 to 13:45
Session type: ORAL