BrailleR, a R package to improve access for blind users

From CRAN:

Blind users do not have access to the graphical output from R without printing the content of graphics windows to an embosser of some kind. This is not as immediate as is required for efficient access to statistical output. The functions here are created so that blind people can make even better use of R. This includes the text descriptions of graphs, convenience functions to replace the functionality offered in many GUI front ends, and experimental functionality for optimising graphical content to prepare it for embossing as tactile images.

Has anyone tried this yet? It sounds really useful.

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Experimental Noisycharts sonifies data for improved accessibility

Nick Evershed, for The Guardian, describes Noisycharts, an experimental component for their in-house charting tool:

What does rising global carbon dioxide sound like? Or the crash of the pound? How about Sydney’s record-breaking rainfall, or the share value wiped out following Facebook’s pivot to virtual reality?

While all of these things have been frequently graphed, now we can turn them into audio as well.

Noisycharts is a new tool created by Guardian Australia to easily turn data into sound, with an animation to accompany it.

One of the examples uses a modulated dog bark to demonstrate how the sounds can match with the context. That seems like a fun path to explore.

Unfortunately, it’s not meant for public use (yet?). For that, you might want to check out TwoTone.

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Accessible visualization with Olli JavaScript library

The Olli library aims to make it easier for developers to improve the accessibility of existing charts:

Olli is an open-source library for converting data visualizations into accessible text structures for screen reader users. Starting with an existing visualization specification created with a supported toolkit, Olli produces a keyboard-navigable tree view with descriptions at varying levels of detail. Users can explore these structures both to get an initial overview, and to dive into the data in more detail.

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A color tool for accessible schemes

Leonardo is an open source project from Adobe that helps you pick accessible colors. There’s a JavaScript API along with a browser tool that lets you select colors interactively.

Color is a common encoding to visualize data. It can be used directly in choropleth maps or heatmaps, indirectly as a redundant encoding, it can be decorative, and it can be used for all the things in between. However, a color scheme doesn’t work if a big chunk of your audience is not able to see the differences. So it’s good to see these sorts of tools available.

Leonardo is an extension of Chroma.js. Gregor’s Chroma.js palette helper is still my go-to to keep color schemes in check.

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Visualization accessibility

Øystein Moseng for Highcharts provides a brief guide on making your visualizations for accessible. Guideline #4 on not relying completely on color to show the data:

Relying on color as the only means of communicating information is a failure of one of the basic WCAG success criteria. This is because many users may not be able to distinguish between the different colors used.

Data labels, symbols, annotations and tooltips are some common ways to convey additional information in visualizations without relying on color. In addition, alternate presentations – such as an accessible data table – can be helpful. It is still encouraged to use color as a supplement to these techniques, this can make visualizations easier to understand, and in many cases more accessible.

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Visualization accessibility

Øystein Moseng for Highcharts provides a brief guide on making your visualizations for accessible. Guideline #4 on not relying completely on color to show the data:

Relying on color as the only means of communicating information is a failure of one of the basic WCAG success criteria. This is because many users may not be able to distinguish between the different colors used.

Data labels, symbols, annotations and tooltips are some common ways to convey additional information in visualizations without relying on color. In addition, alternate presentations – such as an accessible data table – can be helpful. It is still encouraged to use color as a supplement to these techniques, this can make visualizations easier to understand, and in many cases more accessible.

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Charts as a medium for expression

Christine Sun Kim, a deaf artist known for her work visualizing and creating experiences around sound, recently took up charts as a medium. From Anna Furman for The New York Times Style Magazine:

Channeling her experiences into images of geometric angles, musical notes and meme-like pie charts, Kim playfully combines different sign systems to create what she calls a “common language that all people can connect to.”

What’s she’s reading right now:

Maggie Nelson’s “The Art of Cruelty” and W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America.” I’m really into depictions of data. Du Bois’s book is a series of hand drawings and data graphs that visualize America. It’s just beautiful.

Nice.

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Mapping global accessibility to cities

From The Malaria Atlas Project, a global map of estimated accessibility to cities:

In the present study, we quantify and validate global accessibility to high-density urban centres at a resolution of 1×1 kilometre for 2015, as measured by travel time. The last global mapping effort to measure accessibility was for the year 2000, a time that predates both substantial investment and expansion of transportation infrastructure and an extraordinary improvement in the data quantity and quality of accessibility measures. The game-changing improvement underpinning this work is the first-ever, global-scale synthesis of two leading roads datasets – Open Street Map (OSM) data and distance-to-roads data derived from the Google roads database – which resulted in a nearly five-fold increase in the mapped road area relative to that used to produce the circa 2000 map.

The dark areas are the most fascinating.

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Would you like to meet a Tardigrade?

In the Canopy with Water Bears and Wheelchairs

We’ve already met tardigrades (or water bears) virtually. If you are an undergraduate with an ambulatory disability, you also have an opportunity to meet tardigrades in the tops of trees.

At ScienceOnline 2014 I learned from Meg Lowman & Rebecca Tripp during a very impressive keynote presentation about a research program to study tardigrades in forest canopies that was specifically focused on making field research accessible to individuals with ambulatory disabilities. Not only was the research fascinating (water bears are EVERYWHERE), but it also represents an important effort to help the social practice of knowledge building that we call science actually include the diversity of our society.

The project is organized through the lab of William Miller at Baker University in Kansas. If you or someone you know might be interested, contact check-out the announcement flyer below, the information sheet below that, and contact the Miller lab. The application deadline is 14 March 2014. Act quickly while supplies last.REU-2014-AnnouncmentFlyer-2 (1)

REU-Canopy-InfoSheet2014-1 (1)


Filed under: Items of Interest Tagged: accessibility, ambulatory disability, Baker University, disability, field research, meet the, Meg Lowman, NSF, Rebecca Tripp, reu, Tardigrade, Water Bear, William Miller