Fig. 1. Visualizations like "Flatten the Curve" (A) efficiently communicate critical public health information, while simultaneously excluding people with disabilities [11, 28]. To promote accessible visualization via natural language descriptions (B, C), we introduce a four-level model of semantic content. Our model categorizes and color codes sentences according to the semantic content they convey.

Figure 1: As part of an inclusive design workshop at the Perkins School for the Blind, we created a 3D printed tactile translation of a time-series chart by William Playfair. In this paper, we show how these one-to-one translations, while based on existing best-practice guidelines for tactile graphics, can be pedagogically ineffective and incur prohibitive costs. ABSTRACTAccessibility-the process of designing for people with disabilities (PWD)-is an important but under-explored challenge in the visualization research community. Without careful attention, and if PWD are not included as equal participants throughout the process, there is a danger of perpetuating a vision-first approach to accessible design that marginalizes the lived experience of disability (e.g., by creating overly simplistic "sensory translations" that map visual to non-visual modalities in a one-to-one fashion). In this paper, we present a set of sociotechnical considerations for research in accessible visualization design, drawing on literature in disability studies, tactile information systems, and participatory methods. We identify that using state-of-the-art technologies may introduce more barriers to access than they remove, and that expectations of research novelty may not produce outcomes well-aligned with the needs of disability communities. Instead, to promote a more inclusive design process, we emphasize the importance of clearly communicating goals, following existing accessibility guidelines, and treating PWD as equal participants who are compensated for their specialized skills. To illustrate how these considerations can be applied in practice, we discuss a case study of an inclusive design workshop held in collaboration with the Perkins School for the Blind.

Current web accessibility guidelines ask visualization designers to support screen readers via basic non‐visual alternatives like textual descriptions and access to raw data tables. But charts do more than summarize data or reproduce tables; they afford interactive data exploration at varying levels of granularity—from fine‐grained datum‐by‐datum reading to skimming and surfacing high‐level trends. In response to the lack of comparable non‐visual affordances, we present a set of rich screen reader experiences for accessible data visualization and exploration. Through an iterative co‐design process, we identify three key design dimensions for expressive screen reader accessibility: structure, or how chart entities should be organized for a screen reader to traverse; navigation, or the structural, spatial, and targeted operations a user might perform to step through the structure; and, description, or the semantic content, composition, and verbosity of the screen reader's narration. We operationalize these dimensions to prototype screen‐reader‐accessible visualizations that cover a diverse range of chart types and combinations of our design dimensions. We evaluate a subset of these prototypes in a mixed‐methods study with 13 blind and visually impaired readers. Our findings demonstrate that these designs help users conceptualize data spatially, selectively attend to data of interest at different levels of granularity, and experience control and agency over their data analysis process. An accessible HTML version of this paper is available at: http://vis.csail.mit.edu/pubs/rich-screen-reader-vis-experiences.

How can we build more just machine learning systems? To answer this question, we need to know both what justice is and how to tell whether one system is more or less just than another. That is, we need both a definition and a measure of justice. Theories of distributive justice hold that justice can be measured (in part) in terms of the fair distribution of benefits and burdens across people in society. Recently, the field known as fair machine learning has turned to John Rawls's theory of distributive justice for inspiration and operationalization. However, philosophers known as capability theorists have long argued that Rawls's theory uses the wrong measure of justice, thereby encoding biases against people with disabilities. If these theorists are right, is it possible to operationalize Rawls's theory in machine learning systems without also encoding its biases? In this paper, I draw on examples from fair machine learning to suggest that the answer to this question is no: the capability theorists' arguments against Rawls's theory carry over into machine learning systems. But capability theorists don't only argue that Rawls's theory uses the wrong measure, they also offer an alternative measure. Which measure of justice is right? And has fair machine learning been using the wrong one?

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract