"Making a visual format accessible for people who can’t see is challenging, but there’s a huge community already invested in working out viable solutions. The tension that remains for them is in receiving a clear mandate for this work from senior leaders within organisations. Accessibility champions in the data viz community are being left to figure things out and implement solutions on their own. Limited time and resources mean that this isn’t always achievable, and the uneven experience for audiences continues. A second issue: guidelines available for organisations and data viz designers are minimal. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) framework lays out the bare minimum that should be done for blind people. It doesn’t offer a pathway for making the experience of visual data equitable for blind people. This may come in the next iteration of the WCAG guidelines, but these won’t be published for a few years yet, which leaves a gaping chasm for innovation. There’s a very real opportunity for any organisation that dares to go further than compliance with WCAG and make a meaningful difference in how they present their visual data journalism." (Conclusion)
What do we mean by web accessibility? 6
What is data visualisation supposed to do? 9
Alt text and Context, 11
Accessibility transcends compliance, 13
What solutions are available then? 16
Build it and they will come, 19
The curb-cutting effect, 22
Alternatives to alt text, 23
Conclusion, 27