Sharron Rush: So hello and welcome.
Thanks for joining us for Knowbility's monthly Be a Digital Ally series.
This month, we're really pleased to be doing these accessibility snapshots.
Becky Gibson and Thomas Watkins are here. They're two of our most most skilled and well-received presenters at XSU and they they're Presentations are always delightful and very informative.
I'm Sharon Rush. I'm the executive director and co-founder. Oh yeah, I'm supposed to turn on my video. Sorry, I forgot about that part.
I'm the executive director and co-founder of Knowbility, and we're really grateful that you're here and letting us be part of your own accessibility journey.
When we're together, well, always, we try to strive to create inclusive and accessible spaces We're pretty proud of how that works out in person at XSU as well as always online. We try to be kind, polite, and respectful.
And ensure accessibility. So I know that there were There were options to Let us know what your accessibility needs were in advance but If there's anything that you need at this time, don't hesitate to use the chat and let us know.
You're also welcome to use the chat to introduce yourself, say.
Where you're from and what your interest is. Kind of building community is also a very big part of what Knowbility does. We started in 1999.
We're based locally in Austin, Texas. But our programs, because they're so they're related to the internet so integrally Our influence is global.
And our mission is to create an inclusive digital world for people with disabilities.
We pursue that mission through a bunch of different services and programs. We do accessibility testing and auditing.
We often do programs in leadership and strategic consulting.
Training, of course, AccessU is just one part of the training. We also do customized training.
Accessworks is our usability programs. So we do usability studies and uh have a database of about a thousand people with disabilities of all kinds that we can recruit.
For your usability studies. And then we have a just-in-time accessibility help desk where you can just knock on the door to us at Slack and say, hey.
I need some help with this. We also have a number of community programs. Our Accessibility Internet Rally or air is an annual contest.
Accessu coming up, training conference. Accessworks that I just talked about. We have K-12 digital accessibility services for schools and school districts.
And of course, this program that you're part of tonight. So we're glad you're here.
We hope you'll come again to our monthly series. We try to keep it very basic, basic skills and principles that introduce accessibility.
And help people make digital content more accessible.
To people with disabilities. We have welcomed content creators of any skill level.
And especially those who are new to the field. So ask questions in the Q&A tab, please.
You can ask in person if you're here. Just raise your hand through the Zoom link.
Or type in the chat. And that's all of our public announcements. And now I have the pleasure to introduce our two esteemed colleagues and presenters. Becky Gibson is well known for her work on early on whey aria she helped write the specs
And Thomas Watkins is a great leader in the field of data visualization, and they're both here to share what they know and give you an idea of what you'll find in greater depth at XSU next month. So Becky.
Take it away.
Becky Gibson: Okay. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I like this be a digital ally. I kind of spelled it wrong because I'm thinking of it as be a digital accessibility bad.
You can finish the last word. Anyway, I'm here to talk about accessible names.
I'm a lead accessibility specialist at UKG, which is a human capital management company and workforce management, which I think are terrible terms, but they're industry terms.
Who am I? I had a 30 plus career your career as a developer, mostly at IBM I spent the Last 20 years focusing on accessibility, some more strategic things rather than all programming.
I'm passionate about making the web usable for all. Fun fact, I worked on a paleontology dig in the summer after high school. Another fun fact is I actually worked for Novelli Lee for a few years. My email is becky.gibson at ukg.com. My pronouns are she, her, hers.
That's enough for me. So what are we going to talk about today?
First thing we'll start with is defining an accessible name. I think people kind of get confused. It sounds so official. And so we'll say.
And then we'll look at some examples. I tend to do a lot of examples in my presentation. I think I learn best from examples. I don't know.
So that's how I teach. And we'll look at some ARIA examples. We'll talk about precedence for naming information.
So what is an accessible name? It's a name that gets provided to assistive technology, right?
That means screen readers. That means other anybody, well, we'll get into that, but it gets provided to the assistive technologies. So all those things that visually we see a name aka a label Or we need to make sure that assistive technologies get them. It also is programmatically defined. If you're familiar with WCAG, you'll see that term often. It means that it's somewhere in the code so that the
Computer can figure it out right And it's important because labels support everyone, right? If you just see a field and it doesn't have a label, an input field with no label.
You don't know what to put in it. So you need a name or a label and then it's assistive technologies read that label or that name through the document object model. So if you were to go into inspect and ask, look at the accessibility tree
Or look at the code, that's where the the assistive technologies are pulling that out.
So we're going to go through some examples because I think that's the best way to really understand what an accessible name is and how you create it.
So you're going to see this form, pieces of it a lot, so I'll describe it. It's a dialogue that I got off, actually a design site, and it's meant to be a dialogue for a plant store garden center, something like that.
And on the right hand side, on the left-hand side is a label that says want 15% off.
And then we get, it says, get the dirt and save on your first purchase when you sign up today.
There's an email link. An email label with an input field for your email. There's a phone label and then an input field for your phone and a big green subscribe button. And of course, there's always the fine print down at the bottom. On the right hand side is a
Two plants in a pot. They are one of the plants is sitting on a stack of books and there's kind of a modern art painting behind them. And most importantly, in the upper right corner, there's a little white circle with an X in it, which presumably we would use to close the dialogue if we choose not to fill it out.
So let's start with a form field with a visible label.
So that visible label is your accessible name. It's right there for everyone to see.
And I'm sorry, I almost always have code in my presentation. Hopefully I'll explain it enough so you get the concept, even if you're not a code head.
Simple code. I've eliminated a lot of the extra variables, but we use the label element in HTML and we connect the labeled element with that input field.
So the label element has an attribute that points to the input field it's associated with. So in this case, the ID of the input is email and the label is for the element that has the ID email.
So it makes that connection. We can do the same thing with a button, right? Visible text is right there. It's inside the button.
And so that means it's programmatically inside the button. So therefore, it is the accessible name that visible text becomes the accessible name.
Why did my screen just suddenly go blank? As long as you can see things, we're good.
And okay. But with alt text.
So if the alt text for an image is accessible name. And in this case, because the image is inside the button, so we have a button with an image with a source and an alt attribute.
The close becomes the accessible name for the button.
That's the close button in the upper right hand corner. Again, we could do this with svg As well, there's always just ways to add accessible names, multiple ways. Here's just as again that close button in the upper right with the X. We have an SVG inside the button.
And inside the SVG element, there's a title element with the word close so you can always provide And an alternative text, if you're creating your icons with SVG or with images or Here, if we're looking at just an image, and this is my gratuitous image of my cat cersei.
The accessible name is the alternative text because if we don't say what this is, a person using a screen reader or most commonly a screen reader is going to encounter this And they're not going to know what it is unless we give it the image and name. So I just say we have Circe getting charged for the weekend.
And above the little image and then the alternative text is an image. It's an imminent element with a source attribute and the alt text is gray tabby cat sleeping in a heated bed that is plugged into an electrical socket. So that's a bit long for all text, but in order to get that connection to the
Comment I put about getting charged for the weekend you need a little bit more description of what's happening and that's why I included the electrical plug in the image.
The link text, that's another place. Again, it's visible text. It's part of the component. So here we have an image from the BBC of a beautiful orange bird with a black face and beak and a red eye and it's sitting in kind of a woven nest with a very green background.
And below it, it says inside the world of weaver Bird's stunning nest creation And then watch as weaver birds build intricate nests along the Blue Nile to attract a mate. And then there's a Seymour also a link so there's a link
Here, we just have an anchor element with an eighth draft that says you know whatever and then the visible text of that anchor element or link element is inside the world of the weaver bird stunning nest creation. Everybody gets the information they need.
Perfect. We'll talk about Seymour in a minute.
It's okay. Those are my HTML examples. I'm doing, I think, okay on time. I don't know if we have any questions before I dive into ARIA.
Right.
I did put a question in the QA, Becky. Just to clarify about the fact that on that closed pop-up. The image was an x-
I think, and that comes without we talk about icons a little bit in the next section but most people i think visually are aware that that x is a close. So I generally will just say what the function is, right? We don't want to describe the icon. We just want to say it's closed.
And because that close X forecloses fairly universal, I don't worry so much about having it be a just the word close and what the action is.
So now we'll dive into ARIA. Aria is the Accessible Rich Internet Application Specification from the W3C, Way Aria.
Web accessibility initiative. So again, I'm going to remind you, the first rule of aria is not to use ARIA, right? We like to use HTML as much as we can, but with the Everybody wants their own look and feel like they want to select and they want to select with a search. So it's a combo box and
They want their buttons to, well, you can always style a button but you know with all the toolkits we have and Angular and react it's not always easy to use plain old HTML. So sometimes you need to use ARIA in order to get full accessibility.
So just always say that reminder, do it the simplest way, which to me, if you're giving accessible names, it's use the visible text because there should be visible text.
But we'll look at examples for using ARIA label. Are you labeled by? And then we'll talk about the label precedence.
So ARIA label, we use ARIA label when there's no visible text. So that would be icon buttons like that close button. There's other ways that we can implement that close and we'll see that on the on the dialogue. We also use it to add more details to a link or a button.
And we'll come back to that see more link that we saw in the BBC article.
So our label, here we are. Again, we have that round button in the upper right of the dialog. It's actually on the picture.
Picture part of the dialogue and it has the x and so in this case say we were using CSS in a background image somehow to do it I'm no CSS whiz, but I have some of that basic understanding And in this case, I use, because there is no visible text, we always like there to be visible text on icons.
But in the case of some common ones like the magnifying glass on a search, you can often get away with it, not having it, and you'll get pushback from your designers because they don't always like to have that visible text there.
But anyway, in this case, we just use the ARIA label attribute to give it the close name or accessible name or its label.
I did put a font awesome example down here because a lot of people use that. Again, I have the icon within the button.
And the ARIA label is on the button. On the button so it's an attribute on the button or we are coming back to that see more link so we're back to the article about the weaver bird Again, in this case, the visible text and what the accessible name would be is just see more.
Well, think of somebody, the BBC had a lot of articles on it and they had a lot of these see more visible anchor in length.
And if you were someone on a screen reader and you just hear see more see more see more because you pulled up a list of links. That's not very helpful. So what we do is we'll use ARIA label to provide a little bit more detail.
For that link. And BBC is generally pretty good about doing that. I don't look to see exactly what they're version of it was but the aria label in this case i said see more about the weaver bird So that way, if you pulled up that list of links.
You could know where you were going to go. You wouldn't be Seymour, see me or see more.
So again, pretty simple way of going about it. So now that's a couple examples of ARIA label Let's look at ARIA labeled by usage.
Little fun fact about ARIA labeled by. Some people wonder why there's 2L.
So when we were working on the ARIA spec IBM, the person that was doing the work to implement this on the Firefox side was in Europe and that was how they spelled labeled.
In Europe. So we got two ls it ended up sticking. So anyway, you use the ARIA label by when you have visible text, but you can't use standard labeling. So this would be, and we'll see this example, maybe you have checkbox at the start of a table row and we need a label for that checkbox. We can't just have someone
Here, checkbox and not know which what it's associated with. We also use it for things that don't necessarily get focused, so they're not necessarily an interactive element that we're giving a name to sort of like the image is an interactive, but we give that a name
We use it for dialogue or group names. So if you have a grouped radio buttons or grouped check boxes, you can put a new. So if you're picking your pizza toppings and you you go into a list of checkboxes, you want to know that they're all associated with pizza toppings.
And, you know, we could use field set and legend for that. Somehow people don't seem to like that. So we can use ARIA labeled by to associate that visible label at the top of the list with the other elements. And the good thing about the useful thing, and I said it was visible text is available
But in this case, ARIA labeled by will work with text that's been hidden using display none.
And that can be helpful if you want to have like a opens a new window text that you need to add to a bunch of links on the page.
And you want to use an ARIA labeled by to do that.
So if we look at that we see here's where I'm put together. And again, this is very simple code. We're looking at our email Again, our left-hand side of our form where we have the two input fields, but we also have that dialog title that says want 15% off.
So we have our container div that's going to become our dialog. So it has a role equals dialog We have the content within it. We have the close button probably is often where you put the first focus on a dialogue.
And then we have H2, our heading level two, that says want 15% off. Well, that has an ID of offer the id value is offer. So if we go back up to our dialogue our div that has role equals dialog, you can see that it says ARIA labeled by equals offer. So it says this
Element or this item is labeled by the other item that has an ID of offer. So the IDs match up sort of like we did with the four attribute.
When we were using the label element. So again, that's how we can do that for dialogue. We can also do that for a group of radios or checkboxes.
If we need to, you can have more than one ID. So you can build up a label using IDs.
Multiple IDs on ARIA labeled by. So in this case, the example is a three column table. It has a column of check boxes on the left and then a column for first name.
And a column for last name. So if I look at the code, I need to make sure those checkboxes are labeled.
I need to know that I'm checking the box for John Doe and not for Andy Lewis or Edward Howard's or any of the other name.
So the code here, we have our row element we have our TD for our cell element and we have an input type equals checkbox and it says ARIA labeled by equals J-O-N space DOE. Well, those are the two IDs
The IDJON is for the first name john that's in that first name field. So if we look at the cell, the TD for the First name, its ID is J-O-N. And if we look at the cell for the next name it's
John Doe, and I use three letters, so the ID is Joe. So this is going to be labeled by it will say John Doe checkbox not checked. I guess I probably could have picked a better examples since the name and the IDs were not the same, but it's actually reading the data that's in those cells that are identified by the ID.
Here's a bit of a contrived example, but it does work and it shows the point. So here I just have an image where I have a link that goes to the WCAG 2.1 spec.
And it's followed by an icon with a black icon with a white eye in the middle. And below that is another link that goes to the ARIA 1.2 spec. And again, it has the information icon.
So what I've done here, what I'd like to happen when you press that icon button is I wanted to say the word acronym and then read out web content accessibility guidelines.
So I've hacked this in with just using simple code with an on click and alert.
So what happens is the href The WCAG 2.1 has an ID of wca And this hidden text at the very top, it's a div. It has an ID macro, and it has a style equals display none none It says acronym colon.
Space. So what happens is I put that two together on that info button And it says that the name for the info button will be acronym colon WCAG 2.1. And when you activate it, it's going to say web content accessibility guidelines.
Same thing. And I did the same thing Again, you can see this. I actually made a little code pen of this and tested it with the three screen readers.
Common screen readers, JAWS, NVDA, and voiceover, and they all will announce that hidden word acronym. Now you have to use display none I didn't test visibility hidden. It will not work with ARIA hidden because ARIA hidden equals true really hides things from the screen reader.
So the next thing and close up so I don't get too much overtime. We have ARIA label or already labeled by and we have labeling. You need to choose one.
I often see that people will put both or more than one ARIA label, are a labeled by?
Or ARIA label when we have perfectly good visible text. So you need to understand the precedence. If you have more than one on an element, the ARIA label by wins.
So use it wisely. And if you only have two or you only have one, of course, if you only have one, you're going to get whichever one you have.
Then ARIA label will come next. And then the standard labeling, either the label element or the visible text, will come third in line. It's always best. You really only need one.
So pick one. But in the case where somebody has added more than one.
Your ARIA label gets first ARIA label is second and your standard labeling next. So I think that's it for me I hope this gives you an idea of what accessible names are.
And use one of the many options to always provide an accessible name for components.
So that was quick. I know. I went zipped through it fast. I'm not doing a session on this necessarily at AccessU, but if you do come, I'm doing a session on how to do testing.
With no tools required. So if you're new to accessibility testing and you want to have a quick look at your site, I'll go over that. And I'm also doing an introductory section on WCAG and ACRs and VPATs, oh my, will go through the accessibility
Digital abc soup. So with that, I will stop sharing.
Thank you.
Sharron Rush: Oh, Becky, thanks so much. I always learn something from you. So I think my big takeaway for this is if the standard label works.
Becky Gibson: Right, right. But there's sometimes you you do need it.
Sharron Rush: Then use the standard label and forget about ARIA, right? So it's only the aria stuff is only to use when the standard labels don't quite do the deal for you.
Becky Gibson: Don't work. And you need to add more information right yep
Mark Boyden: We have a question. We have a question for Becky.
Sharron Rush: Awesome. That's really great to know. Well, I have a little treat for those of you who stuck Oh, well…
Mark Boyden: Curious how labeled by mixes with table scoping.
Becky Gibson: When I played around with table scoping I haven't had any real problems, but if you want to send me an email, becky.gibson at UKG, I can play around with it a little bit more.
Or give me a more specific example of where you have issues.
Mark Boyden: Thank you. That's all the questions currently. Just a reminder, you can put them in the Q&A or you can raise your hand using the menu bar at the bottom.
Or put them in chat.
Sharron Rush: So I just put something in chat. You'll see it says April BADA.
And those of you who are here in person on Zoom.
Get a special 10% discount. If you haven't registered for AccessU yet.
And you would like to, we're saying thank you to you for coming today and If you go to register You can register for any combination of the you can get a standard you can get a You can get a one-day ticket
Global Accessibility Awareness Day. You can get the premier which is all four days And whichever one you choose, if you put in the code APRILBADA, you'll get a 10% discount off that total.
So that's only for y'all who showed up today in person on Zoom. So thank you all very much.
And next up We have Thomas Watkins.
Who's going to talk to us all about data visualization. I think that's a big challenge for a lot of us.
That when we see all these charts and um graphs and graphs and and ways that data is delivered to us in a graphic form How do we make that available to people with disabilities, especially those who use screen readers?
Thomas has the answer for us. So take it away, Thomas. Thank you.
Thomas Watkins: Thank you so much, Sharon, for the nice introduction there. Thank you, Becky, for the informative presentation you just gave. And thank you everyone for being here. I love AccessU. I always learn stuff.
When I am involved. With Knowbility stuff. So my name is Thomas Watkins. I am a UX practitioner and a design psychologist, as I think we all are here to some degree.
One of my core passions, specific passions is data visualization. I come kind of from the school of Edward Tufte, Stephen Few, that mindset where we want to take data And format it in a way that it caters to our sensory perceptual and cognitive systems. And this is something I teach about at all the UXPAs every year for the past 10 years.
Uxpa International workshop on this. And then for this class, I focus on the accessibility layer to this.
Some of the things we'll go through here, these are just some of the slides from here, but some of the questions we all have answered if you make it to the actual presentation next month is who is the blind professor who is
Trailblazing new ways of experiencing data. And how did she get the idea to do this and how do you visualize data for everyone, even blind people?
If you are not visualizing data, what are the other modalities that you can use to achieve the same thing?
How do you cut through the extraneous factors involved with data visualization to solve the actual problem that data visualization is actually trying to solve?
What are the cutting edge futuristic kind of options and forward-looking things that we can think about, work on, and look forward to, especially those of us who have labs and test new methods and ideas. And then what are the current practical methods that you can do
For communicating data insights and what are the design psychology principles that unite all available approaches. So just to go through a few ideas here Data visualization as it exists now Even for people who do not rely on accessibility technologies and extra measures.
It's already problematic, right? So even for someone who's fully sighted and has no handicaps.
Data visualization, the way it's done often is it causes disabilities for a lot of people.
Because it's done in such a wrong way. And we'll discuss some of the ways and the dimensions by which these things get in our ways when we're trying to get data insights. What I'm showing on the screen now is a
Data visualization, a dashboard that has all kinds of sort of extra over the top fancy stuff.
But does not succeed in communicating well. But then when we get to the conversation about screen readers, reading out a data display.
What are some of the challenges that we have there and where does it help versus where does it still come up short? I'll just play a quick example.
Of a person who's using a screen reader to interpret a dashboard.
And what that typical experience might be like.
>> And so tabbing at this point moves between the different components of the visual.
>> Graphic, plot area section.
>> And then I can decide once I pick which component I want to explore further.
I can just hit enter.
>> Product Amarilla. Sales 17,747,116.06 14.95%.
>> And now I can tab between each of the individual data points to hear the data behind each slice of the donut.
>>Product Carreeterra.
Sales 13,815,307.89 11.64%.
Thomas Watkins: When a sighted person is interpreting a graph. Versus if somebody is listening to that screen reader, do they get similar insights from both of those types of experiences how can that How can that gap be closed? What are some things that we think we can do about that? Here are some methods that
Are out there and have been tried out. I'll click on two examples here of data sonification.
Which is the turning of data into sound. The first example I'll click here.
Which is an example high charts, functionality by high charts to sonify data This is an example of just taking sort of this simple way for those who aren't seeing this you've got sort of a wave like a sine wave that starts off
Small on the left hand side and then grows to be larger on the right hand side. And if we listen to this, then it sounds like
What are some areas where something like that might be useful? Where are other areas where something like that might fall short? How scalable is it?
Here's another example. Of a data sonification. This one is from, it's about uh Oklahoma earthquakes. And this was put together to help Okay, we're getting a commercial here.
Sorry, folks. I don't think I can turn this off. Oh, boy.
Do I have to, I'm sorry, folks. I haven't had that happen before.
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Thomas Watkins: In this presentation. Let's see if it does it again because I started over. Okay, this is a sonification of earthquake tremors in Oklahoma.
With your host, Rick Vincent, the Uhuru Maggot.
Someone in the comments noted that it sounds quite common coming for an earthquake. Let me close this because it sounds like the commercials have kicked off again. So those are some things to think about what kind of situations might that be appropriate for and not appropriate for.
We know from human neuroplasticity that we can be trained to interpret all kinds of things. But is that a scalable solution? And if not, where would we want to something like that. And then we have tactile graphics, also known as lithophanes this is
Basically using something that was an ancient art where you're taking a thin sheet of something and you scrape away layers of a solid surface to where you hold it up to the sun and it's essentially an image. And this is a situation where you can
You can experience the image if you're sighted or if you're using tactile means and touching it.
The surface of it you can also get information from it. Showing on the screen right now is a lithophane image of a lion, a lampshade of Star Wars characters and some lithophanes of some graphs.
Okay. And so… these are… these are some things. And then right now I'm showing lithophanes that show a sort of more high-tech sort of technical scientific use case where there's sophisticated graphics and data readouts from from being shown by the lithophane. So in my talk, I'm going to go through a bunch of subtopics where they are
You know, subtopics of data visualization and accessibility and pulling those things together into a framework that allows us to think about what would be successful long-term solutions when we're thinking about communicating data insights to people.
And then what are some short-term solutions and things that we can do with present technology in terms of equalizing the playing field and making sure everyone can that we can benefit from everyone's brilliant mind when it comes to questions of interpreting and making decisions based upon
Data that is there to be communicated. So I will pause right there.
That is the end of my… teaser presentation.
Sharron Rush: So you're not just you're not just pausing. You're done.
Thomas Watkins: Yeah, I guess so. I guess it'd be stopping. I could keep going, but… I'll save some for the uh For the presentation.
Sharron Rush: Yeah, okay. For AccessU. I guess then we would ask if there are any questions.
From our attendance our attendees of anything that you've heard so far.
Any questions, conversation?
>> I have lots of questions, but I want to see his access sheet presentation.
Reflections.
Oh, you want to see his? Yeah. Yeah, I know, aren't they?
That was very cool. Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah, those sonifications were, those were pretty amazing. They've got lots of good reactions for those.
Mark Boyden: One of the questions was about the music aspect of your sonic explanation. It was about hearing the cyclical nature of the earthquakes.
And whether or not, is it the higher that a higher, I guess, frequency as it goes with more vibration.
Thomas Watkins: I think that touches on a very key point. To me, that touches on the point of standardization.
Because I think that any, I think what you're saying is a pretty good guess um and But the truth is any team can come up with different ways of how they think data should be sonified. So when you think about
Very multi-dimensional multivariate data.
That there's a lot of ways that you could imagine doing it. What way do you pick?
Um and uh how long would you have to train someone before you can get to the point where they can… just reliably get good data from it? And might this be suitable for certain situations, certain professions um you can imagine that needs to be able to interpret
Lots of multidimensional data so um The short answer to your question is I'm not sure how they coded that like the high frequency, high note kind of thing. And then when you have the rumbling coming in But I think to me that points to the important question of
How moving forward on that, do we standardize it and how do we pick the best variables to um for our data sonification.
Mark Boyden: There's a few comments about that in here as well. One was asking about standardization so you touched on that.
And then the aspects that you just spoke to. The next part is, do you have any advice for students on making their data visualizations accessible?
As well as things to look out for in making the course itself accessible.
Thomas Watkins: Yes. So I'll be going through some exhaustive thinking in the presentation, but folks who need stuff now.
I don't want to leave you hanging. I would… point to some big chunk of advice that overlaps very heavily with what Becky Gibson has shared with us today, which is that labels always help.
And that can just go a long way toward increasing accessibility. And then that's something that we can all do now.
Mark Boyden: And Nina comments that they work for a nonprofit and currently use data visualizations, for example, in their annual report and is interested in incorporating more accessible solutions, but also need to stay mindful of budget and time constraints.
Thomas Watkins: Yeah, ditto. Big issue. I think that um I think that uh following data visualization practices that are responsible to begin with.
You know, just gets you to that first level of the bar. I'll throw a book name out there.
Creating more effective graphs This is not an accessibility book. It's just a book on responsible data visualization by Naomi Robbins is a good summary of a lot of the good responsible stuff that's been found and written about in the field.
Yeah, so I think that is a big start.
Mark Boyden: Right. And I'll remind people you may raise your hand too via the menu bar and ask your question live if you'd like.
George notes there's an entire field of audio astronomy, which not surprisingly has a lot of blind scientists involved.
Who are audiophying astronomical data to make new discoveries. More.
Thomas Watkins: Yeah, and that's kind of also what I was thinking about when I was thinking about like the high multidimensional data is how do you that may be a space where something like that might be more appropriate. And yeah, if you have a lot of blind
Scientists who, because if your eyes are not functioning, you often have more cortical area dedicated to audio processing You know, this will happen in a sighted person if you stay blindfolded even long enough, is cortical areas in the occipital lobe will start being
Leveraged for audio interpretation. So yes, I think that's an excellent example.
Mark Boyden: And on a similar note, Daniel notes that he thinks a frame of reference would almost have to be established for each new sonification instance.
Thomas Watkins: Totally agree.
Mark Boyden: Oh, all right. So Danielle has uh We're going to unmute, Daniel.
Daniel Bernardo: Hi there. Yes, my name is Daniel Bernardo. I'm over at the University of North Texas. I've gone to AccessU a few times, but… One of our big focuses is actually, this would probably be a question for Becky. I'm drafting an email now for it, but
I work a lot in music accessibility and there are certain images and shorthand that are used in music beyond music notes. And I'd like to know if you're familiar with anything using that kind of HTML code and ARIA labeling for such figures and symbols.
I linked it up there a ways ago and it kind of got lost, but I have a good example of what it would look like here.
A 5-6-5 chord linked here in this image I just threw into the chat.
We are already working on Braille and screen readers for sheet music.
But Roman numeral analysis can be written into a web page where it would say like Roman numeral five with a six and a five over it.
But it doesn't read well to screen readers as far as we've tried so far.
Have you had an experience with anything that is geared toward music in that regard?
Becky Gibson: I have not. I'm not very musically inclined myself, unfortunately. I wish I was.
So I don't have a lot of experience with music, but I do know a me and Nina Saika, who's the head of the Web Accessibility Initiative or co-chair of the application program.
Programming architecture, accessible platform architectures working group there is a wonderful pianist and she is blind. So my thought was I was going to reach out to her to see if she had any advice on how she gets that information. Oftentimes, just like we have MathML, there are offshoots for different industries. So there may be something
Some kind of annotations to HTML for music, but again, it's not a field that I'm aware of. So I'm willing to go dig a little and ask Nina.
But that's all I can offer today.
Daniel Bernardo: Oh, no worries. It's a tricky field. I'll send you an email with that info and if you can get me her contact, that'd be wonderful thank you so much.
Becky Gibson: Okay. Yep. Sure.
Mark Boyden: Sean notes my team at Austin Community College have a chat GPT Teams license and are having success using AI to help describe complex visuals.
Examples include complex maps, DC circuit diagrams, ChatGPT does a great job of description, conversion.
To data tables and describing trends in complex data visualizations and can customize them to the course questions or student needs.
Sharron Rush: Wow, that sounds so cool. You know, we have several um You should go to the XSU website because there are seven student Scholarships offered this year by a company called Test Party.
And the guy who's the CEO there says, I couldn't go to conferences when I was a student.
So he's offered these seven Scholarships and I've been surprised this year, not very many have applied. So if you've got people at Austin Community College who are enrolled students.
You should have them look. That's a full scholarship for the whole conference.
Mark Boyden: Do we have any more questions?
Sharron Rush: Well, I guess that brings our… April BADA to a close.
Again, the code, if you want to use that discount code it's April BADA, just go to the registration and use that code and do um Do look for those scholarships, y'all, who are students.
And I hope to see All of you there.
And if not, hope to see you again at our next uh be a digital ally. I think we're… we are not going to do be a digital ally in May because we're going to be all teaching all month at AccessU but we'll see you again in June and we'll have information
Oh, Tina put in the chat, there are opportunities for volunteers And of course, it's hybrid, so you can attend just about everything and you can even volunteer online.
So we hope to see you. And thanks again so much.
For joining us this evening. Thanks to our excellent presenters Becky and Thomas, and thanks to Mark for doing all the good on the tech side.
Tina, Susan, the Knowbility staff, and most of all y'all for coming and And caring about this.
Thanks.
>> Okay, thanks.
>> Thank you. See you next time.
>> Thanks.
Mark Boyden: And there's some on the screen here, there's some how to stay connected with us. And if you would give us a little bit of feedback on this session.
We would greatly appreciate it. You can use the QR code. You can go to Knowbility.org slash bought a survey.
It'll take you about two and a half minutes to give us a little feedback to tell the presenters what they could have done better or what you loved about them and other topics that we might be able to bring you in the future.
Thank you so much.
>> Thanks, everyone. Thanks, the presenters.
>> Awesome. Thank you, everyone. Cheers.
Sharron Rush: Bye.