Overview

Visualizing data using tables, graphs, videos, or images can help in making the data itself or stories and takeaways related to it more accessible. However, these tools can also have the opposite effect for some users, making the output we provide less accessible. This is why it is important to know our audience. Who is going to access our graphs? Where are they integrated? Will the content be shared with others?

Diverse abilities, disabilities, and barriers

People have different abilities, skills, and preferences. So it's safe to say that they behave and interact with interfaces—and data presented—differently.

Examples for different kinds of disabilities (non-exhaustive list):

• Visual (e.g. color blindness)
• Cognitive, learning, and neurological (e.g. dyslexia)
• Physical (e.g. parkinson's disease)
• Auditory (partial or total inability to hear)
• Speech (e.g. stuttering)

Features that provide accessibility to some might be inaccessible to others and it is also possible that a person has a combination of disabilities, e.g. deaf-blindness (including partial loss of sight and hearing). The two-senses or multi-sensory principle can help increase accessibility: make information perceivable by at least two senses.

Required by some, helpful for others

Accessibility features can be helpful for everyone. Even some everyday objects were actually invented as tools for accessibility, like the electrical toothbrush, or vibration alarm for mobile phones. Similarly, accessibility features for digital content can increase the usability for all users, for example by providing closed captions for videos, or providing audio for long texts.