Designing accessible visualizations: The case of designing a weather map for blind users

Abstract

Major strides have been made to improve the accessibility of text-based documents for blind users, however, visualizations still remain largely inaccessible. The AISP framework represents an attempt to streamline the design process by aligning the information seeking behaviors of a blind user with those of a sighted user utilizing auditory feedback. With the recent popularity of touch-based devices, and the overwhelming success of the talking tactile tablet, we therefore suggest that the AISP framework be extended to include the sense of touch. This research-in-progress paper proposes such an extended design framework, MISD. In addition, the article also presents the preliminary work done in designing an accessible weather map based on our theory-driven design. A discussion and an outline of future work conclude the manuscript. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.