Audial: A natural language interface to make statistical charts accessible to blind persons

Abstract

This paper discusses the design and evaluation of AUDiaL (Accessible Universal Diagrams through Language). AUDiaL is a web-based, accessible natural language interface (NLI) prototype that allows blind persons to access statistical charts, such as bar and line charts, by means of free-formed analytical and navigational queries expressed in natural language. Initial evaluation shows that NLIs are an innovative, promising approach to accessibility of knowledge representation graphics, since, as opposed to traditional approaches, they do not require of additional software/hardware nor user training while allowing users to carry out most tasks commonly supported by data visualization techniques in an efficient, natural manner.