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Frank ⌁ Profile picture
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8 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Hell yeah! This is why I believe in the work that the folks at Visa Chart Components (my old team) are up to!

They were careful to consider why a design system chart library (via web components) was the right idea, accessibility being a huge part of it.

developer.visa.com/pages/chart-co… Design systems and accessib...
This is the exact sort of language a good design system uses when talking about accessibility. It's about providing a base tool to work with, it provides no guarantees. The accessibility of Lion U...
Turns out my old team team is HIRING!! Literally the best job ever.

Your coworkers are the coolest people ever, your boss genuinely cares about the important stuff, the upper management is supportive enough to let us open source!

Visa's first OS lib!

Amazing job opportunity.
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More from @FrankElavsky

Frank ⌁ Profile picture
9 Dec
"What are examples of accessible, effective chart descriptions?"

I get asked this question a LOT, so I am going to make a thread here to easily link to later.

(This thread covers both simple and complex use-cases for human-authored descriptions.)

Feel free to share/bookmark! This is a screenshot of NCA...This is a screenshot of NCA...
First, I use "descriptions" because "alt text:"
- is a specific technology
- limits the potential to layer/chunk complex information
- is non-visual (only available via screen reader).

Tables, titles, and data-interfaces don't always use "alt" and are good for everyone!
The first set of examples is Benetech's DIAGRAM Center guidelines. These guidelines are research backed, super comprehensive, and easy to apply!

There are nearly 20 examples of different kinds of charts/diagrams.

diagramcenter.org/table-of-conte…
Read 20 tweets
Frank ⌁ Profile picture
2 Dec
This is a deep and provoking statement. I've never really heard it referred to explicitly as a "political document" before!

Lots of potential for discussion in the context of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
I would love to know what other folks think about this!

I'd argue that science isn't really about being the "best" either.
If anyone gets close to whatever "best" is, it's probably whoever synthesizes standards and research in collaboration with people with disabilities to make something specific that is usable and accessible.

Read 6 tweets
Frank ⌁ Profile picture
1 Dec
Is there a place where I can look up each WCAG criteria and then any research studies that influenced its creation?

There are plenty of studies *on* WCAG. But what research studies (if any) were used to *inform* WCAG?
One of the tricky things when trying to tell researchers they should make their stuff accessible according to the same standards adopted by international law is they will sometimes ask if those international standards were research-backed.
This is especially important when writing papers and mentioning accessibility standards: I want to make assertions and the way we build trust in our claims is through citations to research.

Citations to WCAG are sometimes met with "this isn't empirical."
Read 4 tweets
Frank ⌁ Profile picture
1 Dec
I am tempted just to say I work with data visualizations and leave out the accessibility part. It makes a lot of folks think this is some extra topic or feature, like voronoi diagrams or storytelling.

But everyone should be doing accessibility work. It is part of visualization.
It's part of the job! Everyone should make their charts, graphs, figures, interactives, and interfaces accessible.

Scientists, designers, engineers, analysts: this should be on all your minds!
The bad news: you can only make something as accessible as your tools and environments allow.

So a lot of the responsibility falls to tools like Tableau (who rely heavily on community-provided accessibility) or journals like @ieeevis/@ieee_tvcg that still use inaccessible pdfs.
Read 4 tweets
Frank ⌁ Profile picture
30 Nov
Why is it that virtually every leftist I know IRL is a kind, passionate, generally good person while all the famous leftists online are just the most insufferable goblins imaginable all of the time?
Like, the left online is often viciously opposed to kind and unironic aesthetics/discourse even though these are the things that found mutual aid, community organizing, and fighting for a better world.

We have the most insufferably elitist and hipster online communities.
Like, why is empty critique like this so popular in leftist spaces? 2.3k likes? What goblins lmao.

In every organizing community I've ever been a part of learning how to take accountability for your actions is Organizing 101 (acknowledging intent vs acknowledging impact). Screenshot of a tweet by @B...
Read 11 tweets
Frank ⌁ Profile picture
24 Sep
The state of web accessibility is pretty depressing.

- Standards have been around 20+ years, but 97% of the top 1mil sites fail to meet them.
- Standards are hard to learn but automating accessibility is terrible and makes it worse.
- Standards are still the bare minimum. (cont)
- Standards are the best way to make consistent experiences but this makes non-standard or novel experiences even harder to design for.
- We still largely have a "market driven" approach to accessibility, which means justifying human rights in terms of a business case.
- Veteran folks burn out all the time and new folks have a pretty hard time getting started.
- The veterans who don't burn out are often pretty grumpy and are not kind when they spot the same mistakes happening they've been seeing for 20+ years.
Read 8 tweets

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