From Charted to Uncharted Territory: Accessibility and Interactive Data Experiences

Access to information matters. Information helps us make decisions and is a key part of being able to participate in society: from getting details about elections, learning about a global pandemic, and keeping track of personal health, we create interactive experiences with data in order to help people live fuller, more-informed lives. But many of the visualizations, dashboards, charts, and graphs we create exclude people with disabilities from accessing information.

In this session, I'll give a short introduction to accessibility, what it is and why it is important, and share helpful frameworks, tools, and guidelines for how to get started doing accessibility work for designing and building interactive data experiences. I'll teach practical, applicable skills and attendees will have exposure to examples that can help reinforce what they've learned. This talk is intended to give everyone a sense of shared understanding of what accessibility is and how to practically apply it to data work.