(This post is copied straight from twitter, for easier reading.)

It is #GAAD!

I am absolutely stoked to finally announce 2 big pieces of news!

First: 🎉 Announcing my paper on Chartability, published via @EuroVisConf 🎉

And second: 🎉 Chartability is now on Version 2, with 50 total heuristics! 🎉

A thread with more exciting details:

This thread has 2 main sections: first, I talk about the project. And then I talk about the research paper.

Chartability: The Project

Okay, for those that don’t know, Chartability is a project that helps makers and auditors do a better job ensuring charts, graphs, and data experiences are as accessible as possible.

It doesn’t just focus on helping identify visual access barriers, but a wide spectrum!

That last part is super important because both practitioners AND researchers center visual disabilities far more than others when making charts and graphs.

Chartability is an attempt to collect standards, research, and guidance that help folks consider way more.

So about 1 year and 1 month ago I released Chartability to the public: https://twitter.com/FrankElavsky/status/1382498883712868355?s=20&t=73cXNYzkh4NwExivWIIzBQ

Since then, we have done a lot of work with folks to make it even better and have seen it being used in some amazing places on cool projects.

Enormous thanks to @FizzStudio for sponsoring Chartability and helping play a huge role getting it into practice into really exciting orgs, teams, and projects.

I’m overjoyed that it hasn’t just helped individuals, but it has participated in accessibility change management too!

Okay, for those who just want to dive in or want to bookmark:

1st. Chartability’s now-online workbook, including a brand new, short, how-to section plus all 50 heuristics, including examples, sources, and tools for each one!

https://chartability.github.io/POUR-CAF/

Chartability the Paper

And 2nd. (For you academically-minded folks out there):

Our paper, published with amazing my co-author @clb5590 and advisor @domoritz:

https://www.frank.computer/chartability/

A note up front about the paper: making a LaTeX submission accessible is no joke. This took me quite a lot of time to do.

I kept track of the 50 things I did and the 16 things I recommend others should do in this messy little repo here: https://github.com/frankelavsky/latex_paper_to_accessible_html

I won’t outline the paper but instead I’ve decided to try something different.

I’m going to write example sentences of citations I’d dream others would write about our paper in their own work!

Maybe this will give you ideas for your next background works section or lit review?

Elavsky et al argue that standards, such as WCAG, cause significant labor for specialized fields, such as the visualization community, which must synthesize broad evaluation criteria into particular mediums and practices [1].

Section 1 (and throughout): https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#introduction

Elavsky et al demonstrate that virtually all accessibility research in visualization focuses specifically on visual impairment, with only 3 papers published in exception [1].

Section 2.1: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#research-advancements-in-data-visualization-and-accessibility

Elavsky et al demonstrate that current accessibility and visualization practice in industry and open source settings largely leave efforts to volunteers and non-central, uncompensated efforts [1].

Section 2.2: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#accessibility-practices-in-data-visualization-tools-and-libraries

Elavsky et al frame heuristics as a way to help practitioners do work in contexts with high levels of interpretability and break into under-addressed areas, such as accessibility evaluation for data visualizations [1].

Section 2.3: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#using-heuristics-to-break-into-under-addressed-areas

Elavsky et al demonstrate how practitioners informally appropriate research methods, such as using thematic analysis to build new theory [1].

Section 3: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#making-chartability

Elavsky et al demonstrate how to synthesize existing accessibility standards, visualization research, accessibility research, and practitioner artifacts into a set of heuristics for evaluating accessibility in a specific domain [1].

Section 3: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#making-chartability

Elavsky et al demonstrate that WCAG’s 4 principles (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust) are not sufficient for encompassing the needs of specific domains, such as data visualization [1].

Section 3: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#making-chartability

Elavsky et al demonstrate how to theorize new accessibility principles for a specific domain of practice [1].

Section 3: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#making-chartability

Elavsky et al demonstrate practical methods for evaluating assistive technology access barriers in complex, interactive, data interfaces [1].

Sections 4.2 and 4.3: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#keyboard-probing-operable-assistive

Elavsky et al demonstrate practical methods for evaluating cognitive and contextual access barriers in complex, interactive, data interfaces [1].

Sections 4.4 and 4.5: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#checking-cognitive-barriers-understandable-compromising

Elavsky et al demonstrate ways that practitioners use additional methods to evaluate projects compared to the typical scope of research evaluations [1].

Section 5.1: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#pre-validations-and-flipped-roles-participants-question-me

Elavsky et al show in a preliminary interview study that heuristics can be a valuable way to introduce practitioners to a difficult and specialized field of evaluation practices, such as accessibility in visualization [1].

Section 6: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#study-results

Elavsky et al show in a preliminary interview study that heuristics can still be valuable for expert practitioners in a specialized field of evaluation practices, such as accessibility in visualization [1].

Section 6: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#study-results

Elavsky et al demonstrate additional ways that practitioners capture the impact results of their projects and explorations, compared to typical research projects [1].

Section 7: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#extended-results

Elavsky et al implore researchers to engage the relationships between labor and access: who is expected to do access work and how much additional work are people with disabilities expected to do [1].

Section 8: https://www.frank.computer/chartability/#discussion

Massive thanks to the wonderful community that helped us form, improve, and test Chartability:

@demartsc @oysteinmoseng @ProQuesAsker @RyanShugart @shepazu @DogGeneticsLLC @spcanelon @LeonieWatson @emilykund @SarahFossheim @tedgies1 @LareneLg @MMazanec22 @abmakulec @AmyCesal

So many folks helped who prefer to remain anonymous (preference or due to IP concerns), but you know who you are!

We’ve seen Chartability used all over (@Microsoft, @Highcharts, @ProjectJupyter, @FiveThirtyEight, @UCLA, the @DataSF) and for a lot of different environments (D3, Vega-Lite, Python, R, Tableau, etc).

Thanks so much to everyone using it and giving feedback!

But Chartability needs help in order to adapt and survive throughout time! Standards, research, and practice evolve. Chartability should too.

Here’s how anyone can get involved: https://github.com/Chartability/POUR-CAF/discussions/1

/end