5 things I learned about Accessibility today

by Zdravka Bratuhtcheva

Today was the second day of the last week of training at The Data School. We learned how to make dashboards friendly to audiences with different needs. For my project I had to redesign a dashboard to make it easy for someone with Dyscalculia to read. So the one of things I learned was today was:

1. What is Dyscalculia?  According to Wikipedia is a 'disability resulting in difficulty learning or comprehending arithmetic, such as difficulty in understanding numbers, learning how to manipulate numbers, performing mathematical calculations and learning facts in mathematics. It is sometimes informally known as "math dyslexia", though this can be misleading as dyslexia is a different condition from dyscalculia.

The essence of data analysis and visualisation is creating charts to make it easier to understand numbers. This already is a step in the right direction.

2. What is Universal Design?  According to Kyle Waterhouse Accessibility Project Manager at Alteryx,  “Universal design is the idea that you design for everyone. You don't just design for "normal users." At the same time, you don't just design for users of assistive technology. You design for everyone who could possibly use it. A good example of this is you don't build stairs up to a door and then bolt a ramp on the side. You create stairs that incorporate a ramp. Something that's pleasing to the eye and also serves all the needs of anybody who could use it.” Or said in a few words: Universal design is the design of buildings, products or environments to make them accessible to all people, regardless of age, disability or other factors  (Wikipedia).

3. How can we apply universal design in Tableau

  • Using colour-blind accessible palette
  • Labeling line directly (in high-contrast colour)
  • Labelling marks in multiple ways (colour and shape)
  • Increasing the text and mark size
  • Avoiding visual overloading with marks, colours, or categories
  • Using caption to describe the chart. Makes it available for screen readers.
  • Showing most recent value (keyboard controllers cannot access tooltips)
  • Describing how to interact with chart and see underlying values

4. What are the general accessibility principles according to the Web Content Accessibility Guideline?

  • Perceivable - adding text content to non-text content to make it possible for screen readers to read it.
  • Navigable - making the dashboard easy to navigate without using a mouse by organsing the content in a sensible order that is easy to follow. Using titles wherever possible will help a lot as they are often readable by screen readers.
  • Adaptable - making the dashboard in a few different version to cater for different user needs
  • Distinguishable - making elements of the dashboard easy to read and understand. Have in mind that there are different colour-blindness (more on this below). There are fonts that are making it easier for users to distinguish between capital I and lowercase l. These letters are called Imposter letters.

5. How many different colour blindness are there? There are 7 official types of diagnosed colour blindness, 4 of them fall in the red-green cathegory, 2 are in the blue-yellow spectrum and one version describes vision that is lacking ability to distinguish any color (source: www.allaboutvision.com). Creating a truely accessible dashboard should allow any of these cathegory users to see and understand the infomation displayed.

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Zdravka Bratuhtcheva

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