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Usability of Accessible Bar Charts

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Diagrammatic Representation and Inference (Diagrams 2010)

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Abstract

Bar charts are one of the most commonly used diagram types. Tactile diagrams are a widely used technique for presenting graphics to people who are blind. We explored how to present bar charts using a tactile presentation. Our user study used blind participants and evaluated both user preferences and performance. We found that providing grid lines and values in a tactile diagram was preferred to a direct transcription. In addition, presenting the data as a tactile table was preferred to a tactile chart. Both of these approaches reduced the error rate, and presentation as a table had performance benefits. We also investigated the comparative usability of: a tactile presentation, an audio description of the bar chart, and a tactile/audio presentation in which a tactile diagram is overlaid on a touch-sensitive device which provides audio feedback on demand. We found that tactile was the most preferred while audio was the least.

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Goncu, C., Marriott, K., Hurst, J. (2010). Usability of Accessible Bar Charts. In: Goel, A.K., Jamnik, M., Narayanan, N.H. (eds) Diagrammatic Representation and Inference. Diagrams 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6170. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14600-8_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14600-8_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-14599-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-14600-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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