Understanding Screen-Reader Users’ Experiences with Online Data Visualizations

Abstract

Online data visualizations are widely used to communicate information from simple statistics to complex phenomena, supporting people in gaining important insights from data. However, due to the defining visual nature of data visualizations, extracting information from visualizations can be difficult or impossible for screen-reader users. To assess screen-reader users’ challenges with online data visualizations, we conducted two empirical studies: (1) A qualitative study with nine screen-reader users, and (2) a quantitative study with 36 screen-reader and 36 non-screen-reader users. Our results show that due to the inaccessibility of online data visualizations, screen-reader users extract information 61.48% less accurately and spend 210.96% more time interacting with online data visualizations compared to non-screen-reader users. Additionally, our findings show that online data visualizations are commonly indiscoverable to screen readers. In visualizations that are discoverable and comprehensible, screen-reader users suggested tabular and textual representation of data as techniques to improve the accessibility of online visualizations. Taken together, our results provide empirical evidence of the inequalities screen-readers users face in their interaction with online data visualizations.