Towards accessible graphs in HTML-based scientific articles

Recently, several proposals and discussions have tried to push the use of HTML for preparing and sharing research works within the scholarly domain. Therefore, several native HTML-based templates and formats have been introduced for allowing researchers to write scientific documents, which could be access even with assistive technologies, e.g., screen readers. While HTML can be a good basis for guaranteeing accessibility of such papers, several issues are still in place when we consider the inclusion of non-textual entities in the main text, such as complex formulas and figures. In this paper we experiment on the use of one of such HTML formats, i.e., the Research Articles in Simplified HTML (RASH) format, extended for creating accessible graphs automatically out of CSV data. In particular, we introduce an extension to RASH to let the creation of accessible graphs. Moreover, we analyze the outcomes of some preliminary experiments we have done by using different screen readers on several operating systems and browsers.

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