Automation of audio descriptions of large bar charts for persons with visual impairment: Prototyping and proof of concept.

BACKGROUND: Current guidelines for accessing graphs non-visually are based on giving access to underlying tabular data and reading the values one by one. When data sets are large, it becomes impossible to get an overview. OBJECTIVE: This work presents a proof-of-concept of automated audio description of data sets up to 100 data points that can be used by persons with visual impairment or persons who for other reasons are unable to use their visual attention for data access. METHODS: A pilot study was conducted to elicit guidelines for oral chart descriptions, after which lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes were designed. Visually impaired and sighted users were involved throughout the process. RESULTS: The pilot study pinpointed important issues of oral chart descriptions and provided input for a lo-fi-prototype with three variants. The lo-fi-prototype singled out the most successful way of describing the charts based on which a hi-fi prototype for large data sets was created and tested. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the hi-fi tests are promising. Participants listened 1–2 times to the descriptions and were able to discuss details in the data. Thus, the initial guidelines and the following design process provided the necessary information to create a successful proof-of-concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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