SVGPlott: an accessible tool to generate highly adaptable, accessible audio-tactile charts for and from blind and visually impaired people

Charts, such as bar or line charts, are used in many different areas, newspapers, in education, and other areas of life. Accessing charts or understanding data is a main requirement in various professions. Audio-tactile charts can be explored by touch. Producing tactile charts takes a high effort and the design is challenging. Especially, blind and visually impaired people are excluded from chart creation. That is why we investigated several studies and developed a concept for a tool that aims to improve the creation process as well as the quality of audio-tactile charts. We present our concept and describe ideas and properties for user input, input data, graphical user interface, the rendering process as well as the output files in detail. Afterwards, we present our current implementation that includes an accessible graphical user interface which supports well-designed default parameters for chart generation. Most properties are customizable while the GUI supports a live preview of the current chart. In addition, an accessible legend and description will be generated. We support the generation of grouped and stacked bar charts, line charts, and scatterplots in an accessible SVG format. We evaluated the resulting charts, the usability and accessibility of the GUI within two pilot studies with blind and sighted people where we find implications for further investigations.