Computer Science
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Browsing Computer Science by Subject "Accessibility"
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access Enabling Accessible Charts Through Interactive Natural Language Interface for People with Visual Impairments(2023-03-28) Alam, Md Zubair Ibne; Prince, Enamul HoqueWeb-based data visualizations have become very popular for exploring data and communicating insights. Newspapers, journals, and reports regularly publish visualizations to tell compelling stories with data. Unfortunately, most visualizations are inaccessible to readers with visual impairments. For many charts on the web, there are no accompanying alternative (alt) texts, and even if such texts exist they do not adequately describe important insights from charts. To address the problem, we first interviewed 15 blind users to understand their challenges and requirements for reading data visualizations. Based on the insights from these interviews, we developed \seechart, an interactive tool that automatically deconstructs charts from web pages and then converts them to accessible visualizations for blind people by enabling them to hear the chart summary as well as to interact through data points using the keyboard. Our evaluation with 14 blind participants suggests the efficacy of SeeChart in understanding key insights from charts and fulfilling their information needs while reducing their required time and cognitive burden.Item Open Access The PISHI Concept: A Technique for Increasing Inclusion in the Design of Open-Source Assistive Technologies(2022-12-14) Akhavan Kazemzadeh, Sarah; Baljko, MelanieThis thesis addresses how to make Open-Source (OS) Assistive Technology (AT) more inclusive. The thesis employs a Research Through Design (RtD) methodology on a particular case study: the Switch Activated Writing System (SAWS) that is in transition to an Open-Source project (OSSAWS). Analysis of the literature reveals the potential to leverage persona representations into OS AT. This thesis includes three RtD iterations which focus on successive modifications of persona representations and markdown templating, converging on a final design concept called Persona Inclusion for open Source assistive tecHnology Innovation (PISHI). The PISHI concept centers on the representation of family-level dynamics, crucial in the AT domain and design innovation. The thesis develops persona representations for the users of OSSAWS following the PISHI Concept. This thesis presents a rationale for the generalizability of the PISHI concept, which will provide a crucial means for increasing inclusion in Open-Source (OS) Assistive Technology (AT).